> Succeeding. Perfect. I can't tell you how much luck and right place / time comprises my career as a (middling but largely satisfied) entrepreneur. I decide

> Succeeding. Perfect. I can't tell you how much luck and right place / time comprises my career as a (middling but largely satisfied) entrepreneur. I decided that would be my path about a year and half out of college. Six months later I resigned to start a competitor to the company I was with. I was only able to because I found two willing partners and then had the stars align on a project big enough to bootstrap the company. Businesses I started later (the successful ones) also had a significant timing / luck element. If that first company didn't materialize? Maybe I would have decided it wasn't worth the effort. And that's a pretty wild thought given how much of my identity is tied up in the successful businesses I've built -- and how much that's shaped my life. I think the only reasonable prediction to make is the very obvious: You can't succeed if you don't try. Beyond that there's a massive amount of survivorship bias. There's nothing particularly wrong with that until you start giving unqualified advice to others -- or worse, start believing that advice yourself.