[tylertringas]

Can you say more? We explicitly do ask, at the end of each section, if founders want to (optionally) send us the results to build up their profile/"application"... so there's some above board data collection happening.

What's your main concern re: data collection with SS and/or trailhead?

[pcmaffey]

My concern is the moment when the question arises: "what else can we do with all this data co's are sending us" besides form a relationship with that co?

At your scale, it's not much of an issue yet. But at larger scale, like SS or with what Social Cap's Capital-as-a-Service program was trying to do, founders are freely contributing their co's data to unknown investment algorithms, in exchange for ??. .ie a honeypot.

That's not really different from how it is now (giving your data away to VCs). But rather than solving the asymmetry problems between founder / investor, my concern with any kind of VC platform model is that asymmetry will be magnified at scale.

(All that said, I think Trailhead is a great approach to invert the standard process based on how things stand today.)

[tylertringas]

Ah yes, fair. I'm not sure there can be a true solution to "we have to see your data before know if we can invest or not"

Our approach here is 1) we always give value before we ask for anything. Some strategy, resources, writing prompts, and anything else we can think of on a topic.. THEN we say "hey if you want to share your thinking on this here's how" 2) it's 100% optional. Founders can go through the entire process, get feedback from the community, hopefully improve their strategy, without ever sharing anything with us.

But good points to consider and thanks.