The keys to wild success are getting in early and being lucky. I'm entirely sure a lot of the early people at Amazon were in fact quite bright and hard working

The keys to wild success are getting in early and being lucky. I'm entirely sure a lot of the early people at Amazon were in fact quite bright and hard working, and many good decisions were made, but plenty of other people knew selling stuff online was going to happen but couldn't get the stars to align on funding, or had a key member suffer a personal setback early on, etc.