What makes a new business become a success?
Twenty years ago Bill Gross started Idealab. He helped launch over 150 start-ups, and had over 45 of them either go public or be acquired. He got curious about why some succeeded and others failed.
The startup organisation is one of the greatest forms to make the world a better place. If you take a group of people with the right equity incentives and organize them in a startup, you can unlock human potential in a way never before possible.
But if the startup organization is so great, why do so many fail?
So Bill Gross tried to look across what factors accounted the most for company success and failure. He focused his research on five factors. They were:
- Idea – What is the problem the startup is trying to solve.
- Team – Does the startup have the people and knowledge to execute the idea
- Business mode – Does the company know how to make money. Is the business model scalable?
- How much money did the startup raised to fund its growth?
- Did the company start working on right things at the right time?
Gross analysed not only all of his own companies, but also some popular startups which either succeeded or failed. Watch Bill’s TED talk and learn more about what factors matter most for company success.
