Posted on by Paul Pangaro

What’s the most important element of a startup?

Bill Gross of Idealab fame reports on his study of 200 startups reviewed from 5 lenses:

  1. Quality of the idea
  2. Quality of team, including adaptability and execution
  3. Business model
  4. Amount of funding
  5. Timing

The most important feature according to his research? Timing.

Very useful but begs the question: how can we use this finding to execute better startups? In other words, how can we shift our actions to become more “evolutionarily current”, fitting with the times?

[Disclosure: I was founding CTO at one of Idealab’s companies in 2004-2005, Snap.com. It did not succeed in overturning the predominant search UI paradigm of the time then; or of now, for that matter.]