YouNoodle and Why We’re Cancelling The Top 100 Australian Web Startups Index

Sad day for us at The Next Web Australia – we’re removing the Top 100 Australian Web Startup Index from the site (it used to be accessible from the toolbar).

The list, powered by YouNoodle, has been an interesting tool to rank startups based on YouNoodle’s algorithm, which measures a wide range of variables to determine a score out of 100.

If it’s such a great tool, you may be wondering why we’re removing it. Well the problem is that the list is setup and run by YouNoodle – i.e. we don’t control the list, all we do is send YouNoodle a list of startups and they measure then rank them.

That’s a problem because for some months now YouNoodle has failed to return my emails asking for updates to the list to be made. The list is now missing a bunch of deserving startups and has a bunch of startups on it that probably don’t deserve to be there.

As such, I don’t believe that the list reflects the Top 100 Aussie Web Startups anymore, so it’s coming down.

My apologies to the startups that have sent through their details over the past few months asking to be included, and to the many web startups we’ve covered that aren’t on the list either.

I assure you I’ve done everything I can to get the list updated, to no avail. I also apologise to all the startups I suggested should add themselves to YouNoodle to be included in the list. If I had known that YouNoodle would prove to be so unscrupulous I would never have promoted their services.

If you’re as upset as I am about the list coming down please feel free to vent your anger at YouNoodle via their [email protected] email address.

Also, a while ago I set up an issue on OneEyeDeer asking for suggestions for how to best rank startups. That issue lost momentum as YouNoodle presented itself as a viable solution. Clearly we need a new system for ranking startups so I encourage everyone interested in having a working ranking of Aussie web/tech startups to either add your thoughts/ideas to the existing solutions or to start a new ones.