A lot of comments discuss Zuck's luck, but a better example would be William Henry Gates III. Here was a kid born to a wealthy family, given a chance to learn a

A lot of comments discuss Zuck's luck, but a better example would be William Henry Gates III. Here was a kid born to a wealthy family, given a chance to learn about computers at an early age (before he was 11!). He leveraged that knowledge into a software business that was doing.. ok ish, whilst at Harvard. But his luck continued when IBM decided they wanted to outsource creation of an OS for their personal computer. He deflected IBM to another company, who, to this day, must be kicking themselves for messing up the opportunity, only to take on the task himself. His skills/company weren't great in that direction, having his mother on the IBM board saved his bacon many times over. Once he cashed that lottery ticket in, his more business minded friends saw to it that it was exponentially more valuable than anyone could have imagined. Whilst Bill was certainly skilled, there was more than enough luck involved for everyone.