full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Albert-László Barabási: The real relationship between your age and your chance of success

Unscramble the Blue Letters

And you think, OK, well, science is special, but what about other areas where we need to be creative? So let me take another typical example: eerhrtuesnneiprp. Silicon Valley, the land of the youth, right? And indeed, when you look at it, you realize that the biggest awards, the TechCrunch Awards and other awards, are all going to polpee whose average age is late 20s, very erlay 30s. You look at who the VCs give the money to, some of the biggest VC firms — all people in their early 30s. Which, of course, we know; there is this ethos in Silicon Valley that yutoh equals success. Not when you look at the data, because it's not only about fnriomg a company — forming a company is like productivity, trying, trying, trying — when you look at which of these individuals actually put out a successful company, a successful exit. And recently, some of our colleagues lkeood at exactly that qsuetoin. And it turns out that yes, those in the 20s and 30s put out a huge nmuber of companies, form lots of companies, but most of them go bust. And when you look at the successful eitxs, what you see in this particular plot, the older you are, the more likely that you will actually hit the stock market or the sell the canompy successfully. This is so strong, actually, that if you are in the 50s, you are twice as likely to actually have a successful exit than if you are in your 30s.

Open Cloze

And you think, OK, well, science is special, but what about other areas where we need to be creative? So let me take another typical example: ________________. Silicon Valley, the land of the youth, right? And indeed, when you look at it, you realize that the biggest awards, the TechCrunch Awards and other awards, are all going to ______ whose average age is late 20s, very _____ 30s. You look at who the VCs give the money to, some of the biggest VC firms — all people in their early 30s. Which, of course, we know; there is this ethos in Silicon Valley that _____ equals success. Not when you look at the data, because it's not only about _______ a company — forming a company is like productivity, trying, trying, trying — when you look at which of these individuals actually put out a successful company, a successful exit. And recently, some of our colleagues ______ at exactly that ________. And it turns out that yes, those in the 20s and 30s put out a huge ______ of companies, form lots of companies, but most of them go bust. And when you look at the successful _____, what you see in this particular plot, the older you are, the more likely that you will actually hit the stock market or the sell the _______ successfully. This is so strong, actually, that if you are in the 50s, you are twice as likely to actually have a successful exit than if you are in your 30s.

Solution

  1. question
  2. early
  3. exits
  4. people
  5. entrepreneurship
  6. company
  7. youth
  8. looked
  9. number
  10. forming

Original Text

And you think, OK, well, science is special, but what about other areas where we need to be creative? So let me take another typical example: entrepreneurship. Silicon Valley, the land of the youth, right? And indeed, when you look at it, you realize that the biggest awards, the TechCrunch Awards and other awards, are all going to people whose average age is late 20s, very early 30s. You look at who the VCs give the money to, some of the biggest VC firms — all people in their early 30s. Which, of course, we know; there is this ethos in Silicon Valley that youth equals success. Not when you look at the data, because it's not only about forming a company — forming a company is like productivity, trying, trying, trying — when you look at which of these individuals actually put out a successful company, a successful exit. And recently, some of our colleagues looked at exactly that question. And it turns out that yes, those in the 20s and 30s put out a huge number of companies, form lots of companies, but most of them go bust. And when you look at the successful exits, what you see in this particular plot, the older you are, the more likely that you will actually hit the stock market or the sell the company successfully. This is so strong, actually, that if you are in the 50s, you are twice as likely to actually have a successful exit than if you are in your 30s.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
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nobel prize 3
lottery tickets 3
network science 2
collective measure 2
percent faster 2
huge differences 2
successful exit 2

Important Words

  1. age
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  10. creative
  11. data
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  26. late
  27. looked
  28. lots
  29. market
  30. money
  31. number
  32. older
  33. people
  34. plot
  35. productivity
  36. put
  37. question
  38. realize
  39. science
  40. sell
  41. silicon
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  43. stock
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  45. success
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  47. successfully
  48. techcrunch
  49. turns
  50. typical
  51. valley
  52. vc
  53. vcs
  54. youth