full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Bill Gross: The single biggest reason why start-ups succeed

Unscramble the Blue Letters

Some of our early successes, Citysearch, came out when people needed web pages. GoTo.com, which we announced actually at TED in 1998, was when ciemaopns were looking for cost-effective ways to get taffric. We thought the idea was so gaert, but actually, the timing was probably maybe more important. And then some of our failures. We started a company called Z.com, it was an online eanmrttenneit company. We were so excited about it — we raiesd enough money, we had a great business model, we even signed incredibly great Hollywood talent to join the company. But bbdaaonrd penetration was too low in 1999-2000. It was too hard to watch video cntonet online, you had to put codecs in your browser and do all this stuff, and the company eventually went out of business in 2003.

Open Cloze

Some of our early successes, Citysearch, came out when people needed web pages. GoTo.com, which we announced actually at TED in 1998, was when _________ were looking for cost-effective ways to get _______. We thought the idea was so _____, but actually, the timing was probably maybe more important. And then some of our failures. We started a company called Z.com, it was an online _____________ company. We were so excited about it — we ______ enough money, we had a great business model, we even signed incredibly great Hollywood talent to join the company. But _________ penetration was too low in 1999-2000. It was too hard to watch video _______ online, you had to put codecs in your browser and do all this stuff, and the company eventually went out of business in 2003.

Solution

  1. broadband
  2. raised
  3. traffic
  4. content
  5. great
  6. entertainment
  7. companies

Original Text

Some of our early successes, Citysearch, came out when people needed web pages. GoTo.com, which we announced actually at TED in 1998, was when companies were looking for cost-effective ways to get traffic. We thought the idea was so great, but actually, the timing was probably maybe more important. And then some of our failures. We started a company called Z.com, it was an online entertainment company. We were so excited about it — we raised enough money, we had a great business model, we even signed incredibly great Hollywood talent to join the company. But broadband penetration was too low in 1999-2000. It was too hard to watch video content online, you had to put codecs in your browser and do all this stuff, and the company eventually went out of business in 2003.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
business model 5
startup success 2
startup organization 2
broadband penetration 2

Important Words

  1. announced
  2. broadband
  3. browser
  4. business
  5. called
  6. citysearch
  7. codecs
  8. companies
  9. company
  10. content
  11. early
  12. entertainment
  13. eventually
  14. excited
  15. failures
  16. goto
  17. great
  18. hard
  19. hollywood
  20. idea
  21. important
  22. incredibly
  23. join
  24. model
  25. money
  26. needed
  27. online
  28. pages
  29. penetration
  30. people
  31. put
  32. raised
  33. signed
  34. started
  35. stuff
  36. successes
  37. talent
  38. ted
  39. thought
  40. timing
  41. traffic
  42. video
  43. watch
  44. ways
  45. web