There is the matter of skills as well. There is no skill in buying lottery tickets[1]. But there are many skills that help you succeed at startups(technical/dom

There is the matter of skills as well. There is no skill in buying lottery tickets[1]. But there are many skills that help you succeed at startups(technical/domain knowledge, persuasion, marketing etc.). You have control over the skills you develop. The quality of your work is a reflection of your skill. And at the very least high quality work in the right context has slightly better than random chance at succeeding. Of course, the right context is so so important, and the multitude of factors that go into that are what probably make people draw the confusion that it's all luck. Just because luck can create some overnight succeeds stories doesn't mean that all successes were purely created by luck. You have to be in a position to benefit from a lucky break in the first place. [1]I'm not counting cases where people exploited weak randomness in ticket numbers to predict wins