F6S VS Gust VS Younoodle

Brett Noyes
2 min readAug 13, 2016

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For my first class of unbank.ventures I used 3 platforms to accept applications. I did this because I wanted to learn which one worked best. Below is an overview of the pros and cons of each platform.

Ranking

1. F6S

2. Gust

3. Younoodle

Younoodle

I learned about Younoodle while judging a startup competition at IoT World. The co-founders were facilitating the startup pitches. After the event they invited me to judge accelerator applications. I was impressed with the UI and how easy it was to use. Unfortunately, my experience using it for applications was not great. I found it difficult to setup the application. I eventually abandoned the application and moved onto Gust. I went back and completed the application but did not link it to my website. In spite, of loving the founders I was underwhelmed with the product.

Pros

  • Great customer service. Assigned a dedicated person.
  • Attractive UI
  • Efficient judging process

Cons

  • Difficult to setup
  • No community — startups are not looking for Younoodle applications
  • Expensive: 1 free app/year. 2nd application is $2,000

Gust

I woke up one morning and received an email from Gust. It was like the universe was reaching out to me. I had not used Gust since I worked at an Angel investment group in Spokane, WA. I quickly setup an application and linked it to my website. The UI is clean and the platform just works. I have only on complaint about this product. The quality of companies on this platform are not great. Gust generated the most applications but I only setup one interview with the companies on this platform. This is a great platform if you can create your own pipeline.

Pros

  • Easy to use
  • Great SEO. This application comes up before my website.
  • Generates applications and interest.
  • Free

Cons

  • Quality of applications
  • Slow to respond to customer issues

F6S

Upon recommendation from a colleague I setup an application on F6S. Shortly, after setting up my application the founder reached out to me. I was skeptical of his motivations. I figured he was going to try to sell me something. The only thing he asked was that I put a link to my F6S application on my website. This rubbed one of my colleagues wrong but I had no loyalty to a platform at the time. He offered to put me in his newsletter for free. This helped generate a relatively large amount of applications. The quality of applications and customer service was great. I don’t love the UI but it is not a deal breaker. It is a bit cluttered in comparison to Younoodle and Gust.

Pros

  • Quality of community
  • Cost (Free)
  • Customer Service

Cons

  • UI somewhat difficult to navigate

Going forward, I plan on streamlining the process. I plan on using a single application. Managing two platforms is difficult from an evaluation process. I do fear that I may be missing out on companies but using a single platform just makes more sense from an operations standpoint. With all that said I have decided to exclusively use F6S for the next application batch and recommend that you do the same.

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