The single biggest reason why startups succeed

I just watched this TED presentation The single biggest reason why startups succeed by Bill Gross, founder of Idealab.

There are more of his talks linked from Idealab.

His finding in a nutshell:

• Timing 42%
• Team / Execution 32%
• Idea "Truth" Outlier 28%
• Business model 24%
• Funding 14%

He leaves it at that, but I wonder what could entrepreneurs do about it?

Regarding the timing, how can they even know if it is too early or too late? Is this something that one can observe while working on the project or is this something that one can only know in retrospective?

Given an idea, could the the entrepreneurs tweak it to improve its timing? Maybe by changing the target audience or by changing the business model?