Over the last few months, one common trend I've seen on Hacker News is that there are a lot of articles about characteristics of successful entrepreneurs, or wh

Over the last few months, one common trend I've seen on Hacker News is that there are a lot of articles about characteristics of successful entrepreneurs, or where to live if you want to succeed, or the ideas/implementation debate, and so on. I think a lot of people (including me) are constantly trying to reassure themselves that they have what it takes to succeed, by double-checking if their own attributes are contained in the "must-have" checklist of the day. I think this is okay as far as academic learning and analysis goes. But a lot of times (not in this post though) people get into flamewars about which attributes will actually lead to success. If the "idea people" win out over the "implementation camp", no shit, the hardcore programmers amongst us are going to feel left out and start arguing for the opposite argument. If we say Silicon Valley rules and everywhere else is sub-optimal, Europeans are going to be pretty pissed. But I think it's silly for anybody with attribute X to feel upset or left out because the latest "attribute discussion" decided, by popular vote, that attribute X will lead to failure. There is sufficient variation in attributes amongst successful entrepreneurs, that you don't need to make any grand changes in your lifestyle to succeed at this game. I.e. you don't need to switch from being a programmer to an idea guy, or vice versa. You don't need to move, or change industries, and so on. I'm just saying that tons of people already have what it takes to be an entrepreneur, and if they just think for themselves about what to do and ignore all the external discussions, they have a pretty good chance of succeeding.