After building 3 products/companies from scratch and working on countless others from small side projects to massive unicorn success stories, I can't deny the l

After building 3 products/companies from scratch and working on countless others from small side projects to massive unicorn success stories, I can't deny the luck factor, but it rubs me the wrong way when people focus on it as an explanation of success. For one thing, luck is not really a single factor, rather it's the sum effect of all the chaos and entropy in human systems. Any given instance of luck (eg. IBM licensing MS-DOS in 1981 because they didn't foresee the market value of software) is just one-off serendipity unrelated to all other instances of luck. In a tautological sense luck is definitely the most important thing because if it wasn't, a given opportunity would be obvious and already exploited. But my true critique is more personal—luck is by definition is something which one has no agency over. Some use this as a mental crutch to justify sour grapes about their own lack of success. However by focusing on luck and thinking of it as the end-all-be-all, one can easily lose sight or motivation to do the things under their control, which, ironically, could improve their luck. The better mental model I believe is to focus on your base qualities: develop hard skills, a work ethic, systems understanding, and relationships. No one is great at everything, but within these broad categories are many valuable traits, and by combining a few of them you can open the door to novel opportunities. By doing so, you are primed for luck (although you still may need to recognize and seize it), and will be in a much better position than someone whose mental energy was on the things outside of their control.