> we don't read articles about the CEOs who make bad bets and lose them Yes we do, all the time: Theranos, WeWork, WebVan, Myspace, Friendster, BlackBerry, Enr

> we don't read articles about the CEOs who make bad bets and lose them Yes we do, all the time: Theranos, WeWork, WebVan, Myspace, Friendster, BlackBerry, Enron, Worldcom, etc, etc, etc. Sure, we don't hear about companies that never get anywhere because they never did anything interesting to start with, because that's unremarkable. But we hear a lot about the companies that attracted a lot of success or hype early but then "bet" wrong. (In fact, these stories arguably get a disproportionate amount of coverage, due to schadenfreude from journalists and their audience.) The roulette spin analogy is not apt, because building a successful company is not a single bet; it's many many bets, every year/month/day over many years, which moves it well out of the realm of random chance and mostly into the realm of skill. And before someone says it: nobody argues good luck is not a factor in a company's success. But that is mostly at the very beginning (e.g., Steve Jobs meeting Woz; Bill Gates' mother knowing the chairman of IBM) and luck alone is not nearly enough. Skilled leadership over the long term makes all the difference between success and wasted opportunity.