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The more you win, the more you are going to win. The more you lose, the more you are going to lose. If you win one time people will treat you differently than i

The more you win, the more you are going to win. The more you lose, the more you are going to lose. If you win one time people will treat you differently than if you lose. Easier to get capital. Psychologically it will affect you and others around you. Win twice, and this will escalate, people will literally be in awe over you. People will literally do whatever you will tweet. There is also an extremely low chance that you are always going to win in your lifetime, many books will be written about you while a huge graveyard of entrepereneurs that were more capable than you have written on their tombstones: "But what have I done wrong?". But it wasn't their fault, they actually did whatever it was in their power. They were fooled and led to ruin by randomness.

AbrahamParangi 5y ago
It seems odd to me to simultaneously hold the view that luck is the dominant factor and advantages (like being lucky once) are incredibly important. If advantages are important doesn’t it follow that advantages like intellect, wisdom, or courage might be decisive?
- tjs8rj 5y ago
  You have to consider the problem from first principles. A startup is always: creating value by addressing a need for a group of people. Skill and luck weave through all of this. Finding the group of people? Maybe you strategize and seek those out, often they end up being the group you’re a part of or adjacent to (luck or skill?). How about finding that need for that people, and an important need too? If you have past experience maybe you know where to look, maybe you know how to filter the opportunities better and what to focus on. The process of creating value? Maybe you went into a discipline seeking those skills specifically for a startup, or you just happen to know people with the necessary skills to execute. Overall: it’s a hard problem with constantly changing rules and strategies, and often you end up competing with other smart and talented people. Skill stacks the odds, but the problem is so complex that what we call luck is just the lack of deep understanding of the problem. There is probably a set of steps that you could take one after the other that guarantees you’d make $1 billion dollars. Figuring that out is so difficult and complex and changing that thus far the best one can do is be as skilled and hardworking as possible, optimizing where you can, but even that doesn’t guarantee the solution: hence luck. The whole thing IS a skill problem, but it’s so complex that all the parts we can’t fit in the equation we just call luck. Serial founders have gone farther in deciphering that “luck” into skill, so luck is less of a factor for them.

AbrahamParangi 5y ago

It seems odd to me to simultaneously hold the view that luck is the dominant factor and advantages (like being lucky once) are incredibly important. If advantages are important doesn’t it follow that advantages like intellect, wisdom, or courage might be decisive?

tjs8rj 5y ago
You have to consider the problem from first principles. A startup is always: creating value by addressing a need for a group of people. Skill and luck weave through all of this. Finding the group of people? Maybe you strategize and seek those out, often they end up being the group you’re a part of or adjacent to (luck or skill?). How about finding that need for that people, and an important need too? If you have past experience maybe you know where to look, maybe you know how to filter the opportunities better and what to focus on. The process of creating value? Maybe you went into a discipline seeking those skills specifically for a startup, or you just happen to know people with the necessary skills to execute. Overall: it’s a hard problem with constantly changing rules and strategies, and often you end up competing with other smart and talented people. Skill stacks the odds, but the problem is so complex that what we call luck is just the lack of deep understanding of the problem. There is probably a set of steps that you could take one after the other that guarantees you’d make $1 billion dollars. Figuring that out is so difficult and complex and changing that thus far the best one can do is be as skilled and hardworking as possible, optimizing where you can, but even that doesn’t guarantee the solution: hence luck. The whole thing IS a skill problem, but it’s so complex that all the parts we can’t fit in the equation we just call luck. Serial founders have gone farther in deciphering that “luck” into skill, so luck is less of a factor for them.