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Disagree. No matter how lucky you are. No matter who you or your family knows. If you give up quickly because you lack patience and/or grit, you are very unlike
by SEJeff 11y ago
Disagree. No matter how lucky you are. No matter who you or your family knows. If you give up quickly because you lack patience and/or grit, you are very unlikely to still be successful. How many startups succeed or become "unicorns" without at least a single pivot? Precious few. IMO grit is not the only factor of a successful person, but it sure as heck is one of the most common things you'll see in a successful person. A few examples.
Elon Musk, first generation immigrant, didn't come from money, is now a billionaire. An article was released this week interviewing Mr Musk where he plainly states he put his desk at the end of the assembly line in th Hawthorne Tesla factory. He then went on to mention how he has a sleeping bag and often sleeps there.
One of my favorites is to look at how many awful failures Abraham Lincoln went through. It would have broken most people, yet he soldiered on and ended up being one of the most important Presidents in US history: www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/education/failures.htm
Virtually everyone on HN knows how much of an obscene work-a-holic Steve Jobs was. He was also a first generation Syrian immigrant. Luck? He was fired as CEO from Apple before founding Pixar and NeXt. He still refused to give up. Grit doesn't mean being a work-a-holic though, it simply is extreme perseverance.
This inability to fail but sheer willpower is called grit. You're underestimating the power of raw unadulterated willpower if you take things outside of your comfort zone and to the extreme. Those people did, and your great grand children will likely hear their names.
Yet another take on Mark Cuban, Richard Branson, and Larry Ellison. The common thread in every one of these stories is grit, the inability to accept failure at face value and continue on until you succeed.
www.inc.com/minda-zetlin/how-mark-cuban-richard-branson-and-larry-ellison-failed-spectacularly-before-bec.html
- ThomPete 11y agoI am not underestimating anything. You are simply missing the bigger point here because your understanding of luck is too simplistic. Many people have grit not all of them become successful. Steve Jobs was lucky he met Wozniak.
- ra1n85 11y ago>Steve Jobs was lucky he met Wozniak Luck here seems to be the lazy way of explaining events. Rather, Steve Jobs likely felt the need to pair with a very smart engineer in order to do what he wanted, and came upon Wozniak.
- flyinglizard 11y agoIt's not nearly as much as an ordered process as you imply; the fact Woz was in his immediate environment was the reason they teamed. Jobs didn't go on a process of finding a technical cofounder.
- wslh 11y ago> ... and came upon Wozniak There was only one Wozniak in the world at that time, remember that very few people had that knowledge, time (being very young) and hands-on experience on electronics. Since I am replying deep on this thread, I just want to say that Steve Jobs had also some rare skills but they were very lucky to meet in the world. I don't know of any other country, beyond UK (ARM/BBC/Acorn/Sinclair/Amstrad), where you can have this early access to computers and electronic components.
- zepto 11y agoThis is known to be false. Wozniak and Jobs just happened to meet socially, and Jobs didn't know what was possible in computing until after he and Wozniak had already collaborated on other projects.
- SEJeff 11y agoThat is one point of view, but dare I say your understanding of luck is too all encompassing. Luck is really more of a probability, which can be explained mostly through an understanding of statistics. Steve Jobs wasn't lucky that he met Woz any more than Bill Gates was lucky for buying DOS for peanuts and then reselling it to IBM for many times more. Statistically, Steve would have met the right person if he tried hard enough, it just so happens he met Woz. Like I said previously, grit is one of the most common things (not the only) thing you'll find in successful people. If you get "lucky" that will certainly help, but it all comes down to intellect and drive (which we will call grit for this conversation). How many lottery winners or sportsball superstars end up broke 10 years later? They were lucky, what happened to them? They were idiots :)
- ThomPete 11y agoYes it's probatilistic just like success. You are confusing what you would like to be the case (that you can predict success purely by human factors) with what is the case (that success is also probatilistic. To claim that it's to encompassing makes no sense. If you want to truly understand instead of chanting some simplistic catchprases we entrepreneurs like to tell us self then it cant be encompassing enough. Life is mostly probatilistic and we have much less control of our lifes than we would like to tell ourselves and each other.
- mwfunk 11y ago...and Wozniak was also lucky he met Jobs. So I'm not sure what the point is. The subtext sounds like you're bitter that it's hard to become a billionaire on the the basis of engineering skills alone, and that you don't value certain qualities in other people unless you perceive yourself as also having those qualities. I mean, it's not really subtext even, it's practically dripping from your words.