Generally Accepted Startup Principles (GASP)

Because there is no standard industry practice in venture capital to assess startups, we took it on ourselves to design a framework that can be used and re-used freely by anyone anywhere. The objective of this framework is to offer a common set of variables that can be derived to easily perform feature engineering tasks for machine learning. In other words, by standardizing the collection of startup data we empower investors to put that data to use, uncover insights, and not let it sit on a dusty spreadsheet, never to be looked at again. We named our framework the GASP (Generally Accepted Startup Principles), a very obvious pun on the mother of accounting standards, the GAAP.

The GASP in its most complete form is currently represented in a 10 tab spreadsheet. Each variable is approached from a historical perspective, meaning we’re interested in the evolution of each variable over time. A detailed explanation of each variable is available in the documentation folder of the GASP GitHub repository. We open sourced the framework because we believe it’s only through collaboration and transparency that we can transform venture capital from its current subjective practice to a highly analytical one.

Prerequisites

The framework is presented as a Microsoft Excel file (.xls). Several other software applications are capable of working with this type of file (Google Sheet, Open Office, etc.). However we recommend editing the document with a recent version of Microsoft Excel to avoid any compatibility issue.

Usage

This framework is made to facilitate data collection of startup information. The GASP_1.0 document is a spreadsheet designed for collecting startup data following the GASP methodology. One GASP spreadsheet equals one startup. Each tab covers a different aspect of the business. The first tab (User growth and traction statement) is used to collect data about the team at large, the product, the market, and some frequently asked traction metrics. The second tab (Income statement) is used to collect financial data relative to the company's profit and losses. The third tab (Balance Sheet) is used to collect data on the company's assets and liabilities. The fourth tab (Cash Flow) is used to collect data on the company's cash flow. The fifth (Patents) and sixth (Trademarks) tabs are used to collect data on the company's intellectual property. The seventh (Board of Directors), eighth (Founders), and ninth (Key Team Members) tabs are used to collect data on the company's most influential team members. In each tab simply fill the empty cells with available business data about the startup. Do not forget to change the dates in the top rows to timestamp the data collected. Values entered should reflect the company's evolution on a monthly basis. A second Excel file named Documentation_Fields_Explained.xls describes every field in details and offer calculation methods when needed.

Contributing

There are two ways you can contribute to this project:

• Send us suggestions or edits to gasp@preseries.com. It is the easiest way to contribute to the project. If your changes or ideas are accepted, your name will appear in the Authors section as “contributor”, along with a link to the social media account of your choice.

• Through GitHub. It is the fastest way to contribute but you need to be familiar with GitHub:

  1. Fork the repository. Then you will have a copy of our GASP repository in your own account.
  2. You can clone the repo in your local system and start working with the file making changes, pushing changes into your forked repo, etc.
  3. If you want to share with us your changes in order to us modify the GASP standard, you need to perform a Pull Request

  If you are new to GitHub, here is short illustrated guide on how to perform the steps mentioned above: https://guides.github.com/activities/forking