I'm in no way attributing his achievements solely to luck. You say there were those who "were trying and failed" and those "gave up or never started." He had to

I'm in no way attributing his achievements solely to luck. You say there were those who "were trying and failed" and those "gave up or never started." He had to have the skills and perseverance to not be in the last group, and the skills to make the choices that didn't lead to early failures. But there is a point at which the compounding effects of luck separates the successful from the ridiculously successful. If you re-rolled all the dice that defined the random chances and situational conditions in his life, I'd expect someone like Gates to come out reasonably successful in many cases. But he had to get one very specific set of roles to be where he is now, you'd have to re-roll forever for that set to come up again. And It's not unreasonable to think that there are a fair number of people out there who could achieve the same ridiculous level of success if you re-rolled their dice enough times.