Bill Gross from Idealab has founded over 100 startups in the last 20 years and incubated many others. Bill Gross set out to understand why some succeeded and others failed. He gathered data from hundreds of companies, his own and other people’s, and ranked each company on five key factors. He found one factor that stands out from the others — and surprised even him.

The top factor across 200 startups was TIMING followed by team & execution, you can see the percentage of the remaining factors here below.

Watch the full TED talk video here

Credit to: Bill Gross (Idealab) & TED