LinkSViewer is the first application of GroupScope’s network analysis engine.  This engine is the result of academic research and has the potential for widespread application across a spectrum of practical uses.  More information about this background is available at GroupScope’s website: www.groupscope.com. 

This first application has been made possible thanks to our partners at Link Silicon Valley (LinkSV) who have collected data about all different aspects of companies, venture firms, and their inter-relationships on their website.  They offer users the opportunity to search through that wealth of information to find out more about people, companies, and investors, but plugging their data into LinkSViewer allows the user to see the inter-relationships on the fly and quickly learn from how the entities in the LinkSV database are connected.  The information in LinkSViewer draws from LinkSV’s data for investors, companies, board members, management teams, and capital interactions.

The long term goal for LinkSViewer is to serve as an interface to allow interested laypeople to benefit from the advances in network analysis.  However, it is clear that in the near term the first adopters of this new technology will be current analysts.  Those people who already spend time and energy in analysis of venture capital relationships in Silicon Valley should see this as an opportunity.  LinkSViewer is a great new tool to add to their toolbelts.  It should not be seen as a replacement for other older analysis techniques, but a new addition that can be made more valuable by incorporating standard analysis techniques into it to create a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. 

It is hoped that professional analysts will be among the first to see the potential of this analysis and adopt LinkSViewer for immediate use even though there is an initial learning curve to achieve a deeper understanding of how to manipulate the networks and create personalized statistical measures from the networks.  However, even the casual user can benefit by learning to make visual inferences about the connections between the people, investors, and companies in which they are interested.