New Decade, New Data
Bill Gross, Idealab’s founder, gave a TED Talk about why startups succeed. As the leader of a company that has built many successful companies (with some flops as well) Bill had the data to help quantify what makes a startup successful.
He ended up finding that “great timing” was the largest contributor to success. While this is worth talking about in its own right, what interested me most was this could become the basis for a company.
What if there was a company that analyzed the data on the creation of startups?
Data analytics is becoming an increasingly crowded field as company’s flock to leverage the vast troves of data that technology now allows us to collect and store. A company focused on the data analytics of starting companies is just the continuation of this trend.
While anybody could delve into the success rate of startups, Idealab is uniquely poised to analyze large amounts of data on the aspects of startups that are often hidden from the public, like team size or team composition. The unique insights Idealab has would allow them to enter this space relatively unchallenged.
Perhaps it would make sense for Idealab to take this concept, follow their tried and true business model, and build a company around it. They would continue to collect data as they create startups, but they would start selling the insights to venture capital firms and other organizations vested in the success of budding startups.