Hubs: Hubs Data

List of Variables

For a more in-depth of the variables and procedure please see: Hubs: Mechanical Turk. This page will reflect the variables being collected separated into three categories. Each variable will include a breakdown of levels being collected if the definition is not trivial and an approximate approach.

As of Week of 7/25

Group 1

Variables Difficult to Obtain

1. Founding Date
   • Difficulty: Finding date based on our strategies
   • New Approach:
     1. Whois.net Date
     2. Factavia/other press release searches
2. Multiple locations within city + Franchise (as of now just addresses)
   • Difficulty: Company or establishment level will impact measurements
   • New Approach: Will record all addresses at company level
3. Onsite Venture Capital v. Angel Investors (e.g. # and Assets Under Management)
   • Levels: Binary, list of investors
   • Difficulty: Hub website usually does not include investors
   • New Approach:
     1. Google key terms with address of Hub
     2. Start with partners and use google/crunchbase

Group 2

Variables Comfortable, Not Complete (rough order of most difficult to least difficult)

1. Onsite accelerator
   • Levels: Binary, count, list
   • Difficulty: Usually not a list, which requires more scrubbing as many other variables just require us to find one page on a website.
   • Approach:
     1. Google searches and procedure to use on website yields decent results
     2. Similar procedure to onsite investors
2. Size (# members)
   • Levels: Count for companies (currently not planning to include list of companies given that some potential hubs have 200+ members)
   • Difficulty: Some companies don’t list all members - only selective ones-, others do not separate current members and alumni, and some just write "we have served more than 120 startups..."
   • Approach: For companies that have a list, we will count. For those with select members, we will count those they listed and try to see if there is a comment about how many they have. For those that just have a statement "with over," we will write the number and + (e.g. "120+).
3. Office hours investors and Office hours mentor/advisors
   • Levels: Binary for OH, binary for two separate OH, list of names/descriptions of OH
   • Difficulty: Some companies do not list who OH are with, not always obvious if investor, mentor, or advisor, sometimes not clear if mentor is investor/future investor
   • Approach: Google approach to get to OH pages and then lookup key words in description to separate out
4. Onsite temporary workshops and Networking Meetups (Count)
   • Levels: Binary for do they exist, count for each
   • Difficulty: Difficult for Turkers to differentiate between these two and also other potential events (e.g. symposiums)
   • Approach: Uses key search terms (e.g. Java/etc.) to separate out workshops and key terms (e.g. lunch/happy hour) for networking meetings
5. Onsite code school and Curriculum
   • Levels: Binary for do they exist, binary for each
   • Difficulty: Difficult for Turkers to differentiate between long-term coding programs for individuals and curriculum for startups
   • Approach: Uses key search terms (e.g. specific code schools) to separate out known code schools and also to look into key terms (e.g. leadership) for curriculum
6. Sponsors/Partners (University, Corporate) (not always clear the difference among sponsors, partners, investors)
   • Levels: Count, list of sponsors/partners (if exist), separate columns for university and corporate
   • Difficulty: Not all companies will list sponsors, partnesrs, or either
   • Approach: Use two different levels and use of google search, then if list exists, separate by "college"/"university" and rest
7. Alumni Network
   • Levels: Binary, list
   • Difficulty: Not all companies list alumni, some only list "selected"
   • Approach: Include all that have lists
8. Size (sqft)
   • Levels: Number in sqft
   • Difficulty: Not all companies list square feet online
   • Approach:
     1. Google search with key words
     2. If results do not appear, use of press releases is possible
9. Onsite Mentors
   • Levels: Count and list of mentors (if exist)
   • Difficulty: Not all companies list mentors - bigger issue is onsite investors
   • Approach: Use two different levels and use of google search

Group 3

Variables Easy to Obtain

1. Twitter activity
   • Levels: Twitter Handle, # Tweets in a Month, # Followers, # Retweets
   • Approach: Easy to get twitter handle from Turk or Veeral's code that allows us to run a series of searches on google and then use Gunny's Twitter crawler to get other levels from handle
2. Site URL
   • Levels: URL
   • Approach: Google using Veeral's code that allows us to search
3. Address
   • Levels: Will include all addresses
   • Approach: Google key terms (e.g. Contact Us) and URL using Veeral's code
4. Nonprofit status
   • Levels: Binary variable indicating if the potential Hub is a nonprofit organization
   • Approach: http://www.guidestar.org/ is a site that we can use to search if a company is nonprofit or not
5. Mission statement
   • Levels: Official mission statement or description of company (if mission does not exist)
   • Approach: If not explicitly stated mission statement, will include "About" or statements on main page
6. Specific Industry
   • Levels: Industry included in statement (no aggregation)
   • Approach: *Based on Mission Statement, not aggregated
7. Price for a space/office
   • Levels: Two prices one for shared, other for private
   • Approach: Uses google methodology with key terms and URL