Luck matters a lot, as with anything in life. But the better you are, the less it matters. If you are some super precocious young scientist who had already de

Luck matters a lot, as with anything in life. But the better you are, the less it matters. If you are some super precocious young scientist who had already developed a novel drug, Stanford would be calling you. If you show investors a killer product and early traction, it doesn’t really matter who you are, they will be knocking on your door. Now obviously its not easy to do either one of those things. And most of us are somewhere underneath those very high bars, so luck does matter. Getting into a good undergrad, getting into YC. I won’t lie. In my experience, these things have helped me immensely. But optimizing for them is like studying for the test, not for actual learning. If you want to be an entrepreneur, worrying about luck, Stanford, YC is all misguided effort. Start a business, succeed, fail, learn, start again. This is what will actually get you closer to your goal. This is what will get you good enough so that the whims of luck won’t make or break you.