25 ms·

A big fact of the entrepreneur world is that it is hugely based on luck. Luck of finding the right idea, the right market, the right timing, the right connectio

A big fact of the entrepreneur world is that it is hugely based on luck. Luck of finding the right idea, the right market, the right timing, the right connections, the right customers, the right employees, the right financing. The basic fact is that most startups and most entrepreneurial dreams fail or get consumed by another for their talent/clients. And as an entrepreneur you fight against all odds. Most will fail and you have to be ok with that for yourself. Even how many times you try. It is ok, it does not make you a failure because you tried. It makes you a brave and daring person you tried. It does not help that the media only celebrates the few lucky ones, and because they were lucky they will propagate all their steps of wonderful execution, but overlooking the fact that they were just with the right timing, market & people. That it was pure luck. There are more journeys in life to be happy than being an entrepreneur. There are more paths towards personal fulfilment.

rogereur 4y ago
"Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect."
vineyardmike 4y ago
> A big fact of the entrepreneur world is that it is hugely based on luck. And for anything with bigger ambitions than a lifestyle business, don’t forget connections. Most founders are still men from Ivies or Stanford. Just look at the “PayPal mafia” to see how inbred tech investing can be. Not that most entrepreneurs need or should expect VC funding, but this is HN, run by a VC. You can totally run a business and be successful without it.
- mensetmanusman 4y ago
  Connections, where you were born, and where you go to school are also luck.
- cies 4y ago
  > Most founders are still men from Ivies or Stanford Is that also true for YC startups? I felt like YC (while still playing the capitalist's game) was providing a more equal opportunity to start-up "luck" by just looking at the numbers :)
  - vineyardmike 4y ago
    No idea but I’d love to see data… Eg - academic breakdown of founders - % founders that already knew a YC grad personally - founders that knew YC investors - etc
  - themoonisachees 4y ago
    Maybe, but to have good numbers to be in YC to begin with having the right connections helps a lot.
- pirate787 4y ago
  I wasted a decade of my life on the notion that you can bootstrap a startup. It is hard mode and the folks that are so dismissive of VC funding should have that disclaimer.
  - onion2k 4y ago
    It's worth noting that investment makes building a business wildly different to bootstrapping. You stop trying to build whatever a successful business looks like to you and have to build something other people believe in. That comes with a lot of compromises, different decisions, and 'selling out'. Some founders find that change in direction very hard to accept. Bootstrapping and investment are different journeys. Neither is easier.
    - 082349872349872 4y ago
      As an example of a possible compromise, recall the risk/return efficient frontier. If you are the principal investor in your venture, you may be willing to leave some potential return on the table, in exchange for dialling down risk to a comfortable level. If funds are the principal investors, they have already dialled down their risk via diversification over the rest of their portfolios, and they will view any risk-adversity on your part as inefficient dead loss. Solid base hit or swing for the bleachers? You may have the option to pick either strategy in the former case, but will not in the latter.
  - jacquesm 4y ago
    You can bootstrap a startup, but not every startup. And woe to you if you are bootstrapped and some VC funded club starts poaching your customers with a product subsidized by their financiers. I wrote about these options long ago: https://jacquesmattheij.com/three-roads-to-the-top-of-the-mountain/ https://jacquesmattheij.com/three-roads-to-the-top-of-the-mo...
    - 082349872349872 4y ago
      > if you get screwed, let it be, revenge is costly, you likely can't afford it "Living well is the best revenge". And if you're someone who has the skills to turn their time into significant value-add, seeking revenge is an opportunity cost that undoubtedly counts as "living poorly". [caveat: I have had to litigate on occasion, but (a) that is something where hours spent are indirect, via counsel, and (b) it's not exactly "living well", either]
- hef19898 4y ago
  Personally, I have a problem with the term lifestyle business. Without plenty of VC money, building and running a business is hard. VC backed up start-ups fit the "lifestyle" business definition a lot better, IMHO. One can play CxO, or chief engineer or whatever fancy title one wants to hold without putting the effort and years in, without actually worrying about those nasty things like profitability, cash flow or actual products. And, with the right connections, if one start-up fails one can still just start a new one.
  - jacquesm 4y ago
    And there is absolutely nothing wrong with a life style business to begin with, the negative stigma is there only because certain VCs feel that you are a horrible person for not cutting them in on the action so they can diversify their portfolios.
    - jwr 4y ago
      This. I really dislike the term "lifestyle business". What's wrong with a stable long-term business that makes founders and customers happy? Why does every business need GROWTH GROWTH GROWTH at all costs, even if the result is a net negative for customers? I sometimes explain to customers that if my business were VC-funded, it would grow and be developed much faster, but in the end there would need to be an exit and there is no exit scenario that is good for the customers. Think about it: there could be an IPO, in which case the business would need to start addressing a huge audience and increase growth (which always hurts existing customers), there could be a strategic acquisition or an acquihire, very few of which go right (this usually results in shutting down the service within 2-3 years), or the VCs could decide to fold the company, stopping the service outright. There is simply no good scenario.
      - jacquesm 4y ago
        I've been more than happy to invest in a few of these 'lifestyle' businesses as angel investor. One of them is quite possibly going to be a breakout success anyway. We're all still amazed by it. Not a dollar of external capital beyond the friends-and-family round.
- copx 4y ago
  >Most founders are still men from Ivies or Stanford. That's the key part of the "entrepreneur" story the OP missed. From Gates over Zuckerberg to Musk, all these people were born rich, into well-connected families. If you do not belong to this ultra-privileged class of people, your chances of doing what they did is practically zero.
  - MikeDelta 4y ago
    Indeed, this has been a topic of many discussions in the past and I do believe that connections and privilege form a more important factor in success than many would like to admit.
    - nprateem 4y ago
      Connections, privilege, but also it's about personal net capital invested. Entrepreneurs with ordinary net worth are underdiversified, with a concentration in their own business. If you have high net worth, you have less exposure so the stakes are lower and you require a lower rate of return to compensate you for the risk (CAPM). There's no way I wanted the pressure to run a business in my 20s. A decade or so later with a cushy job gives me the financial freedom to do this without the high risk of failure, since if it tanks I'll still have other investments. Most entrepreneurs are in their 40s apparently according to research.
    - czbond 4y ago
      If this were true, wouldn't the other side of that statement be true? Since all startups seem to be privileged white males - shouldn't they all succeed and have funding?
      - andrekandre 4y ago
        where did the previous poster say "white males"?
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
ddevault 4y ago
It's true that luck is a big factor. Every time you try something difficult, you're rolling the dice, and most outcomes are failure. However, there is a strategy you can apply to maximize your odds of success: position yourself so you can keep rolling the dice.
_448 4y ago
> A big fact of the entrepreneur world is that it is hugely based on luck. Luck of finding the right idea, the right market, the right timing, the right connections, the right customers, the right employees, the right financing. This is not true! I have seen successful business built from scratch by people who had no connections, no money and no privileged background (and no VC money). And I will say this for sure, it is lots of hard work and hustle. Luck comes to those who do these things first, it is not the other way round.
- fckvc 4y ago
  They were very lucky to succeed then. Entrepreneurship is so heavily weighted towards the wealthy, privileged, well-connected set.
  - _448 4y ago
    > They were very lucky to succeed then. The people I known are serial entrepreneurs, so this certainly is not luck. Yes, some ventures do not succeed, but then the company immediately pivots to things that are actually making money. As I mentioned earlier, it is not easy. It is lot of hard work and hustle.
- sushzbdbehsh 4y ago
  ive seen people that haven't so your point is invalid
  - _448 4y ago
    See my other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34106282 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34106282
- ht85 4y ago
  Completely agree. Am on my 3rd company, all of them have reached profitability fairly easily. If you don't want to rely on luck, you have to work from the bottom. The VC, top down approach is very risky indeed, but a different game exists. Finding people who have problems that could be solved through better software is not hard. Listen to them. Make their life easier. Generalize, improve, start selling to other people who have the same issues. Spot opportunities related to your market, your tech, your customers. There is a ton of demand, especially at small/local scale. If you are efficient, a moderate amount of upfront work can provide ton of value to countless people. They will gladly pay for it, especially if they feel listened to.
kubb 4y ago
One of the privileges people don't often think about is being able to afford to fail. If you don't risk destitution after your startup fails, you can try and fail many times, learn and try again. It's like continuously rolling two dice, and you only need to get double sixes once, and after that it's private jets until you die. One of the many reasons the rich get richer and the poor, well you know how it goes.
- noduerme 4y ago
  The average American watches 4 hours a day of TV. Most startup founders work other jobs while building their project - if they can afford to fail, it's because they have that other job. But they're spending those four hours (and many, many more) on labors of love. Sure, there are some trustfund kids who get to play founder and have the odds stacked in their favor, but that's neither the soul nor the joy of starting your own project. In my experience most of those types are miserable even in success.
  - kubb 4y ago
    The TV numbers are surely skewed by retirees? Who built their billion dollar company while working a day job again?
    - Swizec 4y ago
      Jeff Bezos, for example. Amazon was well on its way to product market fit and full validation that its gonna work by the time he quit his dayjob. Same for Zuckerberg and school. You don’t hit a billion dollars while having a dayjob. You validate the idea and approach work and can get you there. Anthony Bourdain famously quit his job only when it had become absolutely impossible to keep alongside his public persona work because interviewers/journalists kept disrupting restaurant operations at his job.
    - pawelmurias 4y ago
      If you have a billion dollar company there are better sources of entertainment than binge watching tv. I would assume half literate serfs are watching the most tv.
gswdh 4y ago
[dead]
b93rn 4y ago
Luck is winning the lottery.
- cromulent 4y ago
  Warren Buffet calls it "winning the ovarian lottery", yes. https://www.businessinsider.com/warren-buffett-on-the-ovarian-lottery-2013-12?r=US&IR=T https://www.businessinsider.com/warren-buffett-on-the-ovaria...
wgx 4y ago
100% agree. In fact most all of the successful-in-business people I know owe a huge amount of their success to luck. They’re also the often last to acknowledge the part luck played in their story. This, coupled with survivorship bias of startups who win, leads to people thinking it’s more likely to build a successful company in tech than the reality.
mensetmanusman 4y ago
Everything in life is luck, including your comment being top voted. If everything is luck, then it probably isn’t worth saying.
- necovek 4y ago
  Everything in life has different odds of happening, and when lower odds materialize, we call that "luck". There are a number of comments saying very similar things to the top voted one: so it was indeed luck that their comment floated to the top among the many others. Perhaps they were there right when the story was posted (luck, right?) Perhaps they used exactly the trigger words that made others appreciate the comment (luck, right?). The fact that there is a luck element to many things does not mean that those are unworthy pursuits. And it's ok to acknowledge the luck factor when it can dominate the results (i.e. you wouldn't talk about a lottery without considering luck).
- Zanfa 4y ago
  It definitely is. Just because success mostly boils down to luck, doesn’t mean that people realize or acknowledge it, which leads to unhealthy obsession with “being successful” that permeates the society.
  - mensetmanusman 4y ago
    If everything being luck-based is generally acknowledged, I wonder if that generally leads to nihilism since there isn’t anything that could be done.
    - Zanfa 4y ago
      Maybe, but it might also help put things in perspective. Enjoy the things you have and help the ones that are not as lucky.
djaychela 4y ago
Was going to say exactly this. People always discount luck in their own stories, but you can always find it there - even if you look at a societal level and it's just luck that the person in question was born here and now, rather than in Mao-era China or wherever. There's a reason why a lot of businesses fail, and it's not that the people who start them are lazy, stupid or lacking in skills. Obviously some are, but there are a great many people with great ideas that never make it, just like there are brilliant musicians, artists, designers, and anything else you care to name that you'll never hear of but who are very good at what they do.
WesolyKubeczek 4y ago
Luck and connections. And PR, like, tons of it.
croes 4y ago
And if you are lucky you can write books and give talks about how your luck was the result of your superior dexterity, work ethics, intelligence etc.
gohigh54 4y ago
For me I found the harder I worked the luckier I got. There are opportunities everywhere and it takes a long time of trial and error to get it right. It is not for everyone. Very few succeed in a linear or parabolic trajectory. The OP should be proud of their efforts. This was a learning experience that will absolutely help them in the future. Think of this as finishing a super tough college course and passing. On to the next phase.
jcfrei 4y ago
Yes, 100%. Capitalism is like a gigantic genetic algorithm. 100 people try 100 slightly different business models, in slightly different places, with different customers, etc. and some combinations just hit that sweet spot that makes them successful.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
nigamanth 4y ago
The lucky ones also probably failed a couple, but in these lucky ones the real lucky ones are who don't fail in the beginning. Once we gain our most desired possessions, we'll try and do everything not to lose them - and what comes fast goes fast. Keep grinding, I'm sure it won't go to waste.
lr4444lr 4y ago
Identifying the right opportunity/connections/time etc. isn't just luck, like something that dropped out of the sky. It draws on skills, past experience, and calculated risk taking to know who, what, and when to seize on something and ignore what isn't important.
- icoder 4y ago
  As I see it, you're both right, as in: all that you mention finds its relevance through shaping luck / increasing luck surface area.
aizyuval 4y ago
Luck is an excuse. One can choose to try a lot of different things, and another will choose to have a single few shots. One can choose to accept the “truth”, and the other will refuse to do so. We get feedback from the world, and we choose how to analyze it and interact with it. It’s easy to be fooled by the fact that we have only one choice. Or that the feedback reflects the absolute truth.
jacobsimon 4y ago
I think you’re right there is a lot of luck, but as they say, luck is effort plus opportunity. You need to put in the effort and position yourself for unique opportunities. OP: My personal advice is to stick with a part/full-time job and continuing to explore your business ideas on the side until they are generating enough revenue to cover your expenses. Focus on businesses that sell something practical and don’t need lots of marketing or engagement (at first).
itwrangler 4y ago
so true. and luck can be a big factor in any aspect of life..
granshaw 4y ago
What’s unique about entrepreneurship is that, once you earn enough from it, it can fully replace your work. “Hobbies”, relationships, family, etc don’t do that. If you can’t find fulfillment in your 9-5 you’re still stuck grinding through it everyday looking forward to get back to those things. 8 hours every weekday. A HUGE chunk of your life.
noufalibrahim 4y ago
For all the talk of being "data driven", a somewhat solid but underappreciated data point is the super low success rates of startups.
ren_engineer 4y ago
some luck is involved but just paying attention to trends will give you better odds of success and even if you fail you can still benefit. For example, learning to code is a much better time investment for success than learning blacksmithing. Even if your startup fails, you can make 6 figures as a software engineer and live a good life. if you consider anything other than becoming a billionaire "failure" I guess that's a different matter.
locutous 4y ago
Fortune plays a role, for sure. But you don't even get to petition fortune until you have some significant ability to identify and execute on a business. Too many people focus so much on the luck they neglect the required positive talents and labors to even try.

rogereur 4y ago

"Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect."

vineyardmike 4y ago

> A big fact of the entrepreneur world is that it is hugely based on luck. And for anything with bigger ambitions than a lifestyle business, don’t forget connections. Most founders are still men from Ivies or Stanford. Just look at the “PayPal mafia” to see how inbred tech investing can be. Not that most entrepreneurs need or should expect VC funding, but this is HN, run by a VC. You can totally run a business and be successful without it.

mensetmanusman 4y ago
Connections, where you were born, and where you go to school are also luck.
cies 4y ago
> Most founders are still men from Ivies or Stanford Is that also true for YC startups? I felt like YC (while still playing the capitalist's game) was providing a more equal opportunity to start-up "luck" by just looking at the numbers :)
- vineyardmike 4y ago
  No idea but I’d love to see data… Eg - academic breakdown of founders - % founders that already knew a YC grad personally - founders that knew YC investors - etc
- themoonisachees 4y ago
  Maybe, but to have good numbers to be in YC to begin with having the right connections helps a lot.
pirate787 4y ago
I wasted a decade of my life on the notion that you can bootstrap a startup. It is hard mode and the folks that are so dismissive of VC funding should have that disclaimer.
- onion2k 4y ago
  It's worth noting that investment makes building a business wildly different to bootstrapping. You stop trying to build whatever a successful business looks like to you and have to build something other people believe in. That comes with a lot of compromises, different decisions, and 'selling out'. Some founders find that change in direction very hard to accept. Bootstrapping and investment are different journeys. Neither is easier.
  - 082349872349872 4y ago
    As an example of a possible compromise, recall the risk/return efficient frontier. If you are the principal investor in your venture, you may be willing to leave some potential return on the table, in exchange for dialling down risk to a comfortable level. If funds are the principal investors, they have already dialled down their risk via diversification over the rest of their portfolios, and they will view any risk-adversity on your part as inefficient dead loss. Solid base hit or swing for the bleachers? You may have the option to pick either strategy in the former case, but will not in the latter.
- jacquesm 4y ago
  You can bootstrap a startup, but not every startup. And woe to you if you are bootstrapped and some VC funded club starts poaching your customers with a product subsidized by their financiers. I wrote about these options long ago: https://jacquesmattheij.com/three-roads-to-the-top-of-the-mountain/ https://jacquesmattheij.com/three-roads-to-the-top-of-the-mo...
  - 082349872349872 4y ago
    > if you get screwed, let it be, revenge is costly, you likely can't afford it "Living well is the best revenge". And if you're someone who has the skills to turn their time into significant value-add, seeking revenge is an opportunity cost that undoubtedly counts as "living poorly". [caveat: I have had to litigate on occasion, but (a) that is something where hours spent are indirect, via counsel, and (b) it's not exactly "living well", either]
hef19898 4y ago
Personally, I have a problem with the term lifestyle business. Without plenty of VC money, building and running a business is hard. VC backed up start-ups fit the "lifestyle" business definition a lot better, IMHO. One can play CxO, or chief engineer or whatever fancy title one wants to hold without putting the effort and years in, without actually worrying about those nasty things like profitability, cash flow or actual products. And, with the right connections, if one start-up fails one can still just start a new one.
- jacquesm 4y ago
  And there is absolutely nothing wrong with a life style business to begin with, the negative stigma is there only because certain VCs feel that you are a horrible person for not cutting them in on the action so they can diversify their portfolios.
  - jwr 4y ago
    This. I really dislike the term "lifestyle business". What's wrong with a stable long-term business that makes founders and customers happy? Why does every business need GROWTH GROWTH GROWTH at all costs, even if the result is a net negative for customers? I sometimes explain to customers that if my business were VC-funded, it would grow and be developed much faster, but in the end there would need to be an exit and there is no exit scenario that is good for the customers. Think about it: there could be an IPO, in which case the business would need to start addressing a huge audience and increase growth (which always hurts existing customers), there could be a strategic acquisition or an acquihire, very few of which go right (this usually results in shutting down the service within 2-3 years), or the VCs could decide to fold the company, stopping the service outright. There is simply no good scenario.
    - jacquesm 4y ago
      I've been more than happy to invest in a few of these 'lifestyle' businesses as angel investor. One of them is quite possibly going to be a breakout success anyway. We're all still amazed by it. Not a dollar of external capital beyond the friends-and-family round.
copx 4y ago
>Most founders are still men from Ivies or Stanford. That's the key part of the "entrepreneur" story the OP missed. From Gates over Zuckerberg to Musk, all these people were born rich, into well-connected families. If you do not belong to this ultra-privileged class of people, your chances of doing what they did is practically zero.
- MikeDelta 4y ago
  Indeed, this has been a topic of many discussions in the past and I do believe that connections and privilege form a more important factor in success than many would like to admit.
  - nprateem 4y ago
    Connections, privilege, but also it's about personal net capital invested. Entrepreneurs with ordinary net worth are underdiversified, with a concentration in their own business. If you have high net worth, you have less exposure so the stakes are lower and you require a lower rate of return to compensate you for the risk (CAPM). There's no way I wanted the pressure to run a business in my 20s. A decade or so later with a cushy job gives me the financial freedom to do this without the high risk of failure, since if it tanks I'll still have other investments. Most entrepreneurs are in their 40s apparently according to research.
  - czbond 4y ago
    If this were true, wouldn't the other side of that statement be true? Since all startups seem to be privileged white males - shouldn't they all succeed and have funding?
    - andrekandre 4y ago
      where did the previous poster say "white males"?
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]

ddevault 4y ago

It's true that luck is a big factor. Every time you try something difficult, you're rolling the dice, and most outcomes are failure. However, there is a strategy you can apply to maximize your odds of success: position yourself so you can keep rolling the dice.

_448 4y ago

> A big fact of the entrepreneur world is that it is hugely based on luck. Luck of finding the right idea, the right market, the right timing, the right connections, the right customers, the right employees, the right financing. This is not true! I have seen successful business built from scratch by people who had no connections, no money and no privileged background (and no VC money). And I will say this for sure, it is lots of hard work and hustle. Luck comes to those who do these things first, it is not the other way round.

fckvc 4y ago
They were very lucky to succeed then. Entrepreneurship is so heavily weighted towards the wealthy, privileged, well-connected set.
- _448 4y ago
  > They were very lucky to succeed then. The people I known are serial entrepreneurs, so this certainly is not luck. Yes, some ventures do not succeed, but then the company immediately pivots to things that are actually making money. As I mentioned earlier, it is not easy. It is lot of hard work and hustle.
sushzbdbehsh 4y ago
ive seen people that haven't so your point is invalid
- _448 4y ago
  See my other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34106282 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34106282
ht85 4y ago
Completely agree. Am on my 3rd company, all of them have reached profitability fairly easily. If you don't want to rely on luck, you have to work from the bottom. The VC, top down approach is very risky indeed, but a different game exists. Finding people who have problems that could be solved through better software is not hard. Listen to them. Make their life easier. Generalize, improve, start selling to other people who have the same issues. Spot opportunities related to your market, your tech, your customers. There is a ton of demand, especially at small/local scale. If you are efficient, a moderate amount of upfront work can provide ton of value to countless people. They will gladly pay for it, especially if they feel listened to.

kubb 4y ago

One of the privileges people don't often think about is being able to afford to fail. If you don't risk destitution after your startup fails, you can try and fail many times, learn and try again. It's like continuously rolling two dice, and you only need to get double sixes once, and after that it's private jets until you die. One of the many reasons the rich get richer and the poor, well you know how it goes.

noduerme 4y ago
The average American watches 4 hours a day of TV. Most startup founders work other jobs while building their project - if they can afford to fail, it's because they have that other job. But they're spending those four hours (and many, many more) on labors of love. Sure, there are some trustfund kids who get to play founder and have the odds stacked in their favor, but that's neither the soul nor the joy of starting your own project. In my experience most of those types are miserable even in success.
- kubb 4y ago
  The TV numbers are surely skewed by retirees? Who built their billion dollar company while working a day job again?
  - Swizec 4y ago
    Jeff Bezos, for example. Amazon was well on its way to product market fit and full validation that its gonna work by the time he quit his dayjob. Same for Zuckerberg and school. You don’t hit a billion dollars while having a dayjob. You validate the idea and approach work and can get you there. Anthony Bourdain famously quit his job only when it had become absolutely impossible to keep alongside his public persona work because interviewers/journalists kept disrupting restaurant operations at his job.
  - pawelmurias 4y ago
    If you have a billion dollar company there are better sources of entertainment than binge watching tv. I would assume half literate serfs are watching the most tv.

gswdh 4y ago

[dead]

b93rn 4y ago

Luck is winning the lottery.

cromulent 4y ago
Warren Buffet calls it "winning the ovarian lottery", yes. https://www.businessinsider.com/warren-buffett-on-the-ovarian-lottery-2013-12?r=US&IR=T https://www.businessinsider.com/warren-buffett-on-the-ovaria...

wgx 4y ago

100% agree. In fact most all of the successful-in-business people I know owe a huge amount of their success to luck. They’re also the often last to acknowledge the part luck played in their story. This, coupled with survivorship bias of startups who win, leads to people thinking it’s more likely to build a successful company in tech than the reality.

mensetmanusman 4y ago

Everything in life is luck, including your comment being top voted. If everything is luck, then it probably isn’t worth saying.

necovek 4y ago
Everything in life has different odds of happening, and when lower odds materialize, we call that "luck". There are a number of comments saying very similar things to the top voted one: so it was indeed luck that their comment floated to the top among the many others. Perhaps they were there right when the story was posted (luck, right?) Perhaps they used exactly the trigger words that made others appreciate the comment (luck, right?). The fact that there is a luck element to many things does not mean that those are unworthy pursuits. And it's ok to acknowledge the luck factor when it can dominate the results (i.e. you wouldn't talk about a lottery without considering luck).
Zanfa 4y ago
It definitely is. Just because success mostly boils down to luck, doesn’t mean that people realize or acknowledge it, which leads to unhealthy obsession with “being successful” that permeates the society.
- mensetmanusman 4y ago
  If everything being luck-based is generally acknowledged, I wonder if that generally leads to nihilism since there isn’t anything that could be done.
  - Zanfa 4y ago
    Maybe, but it might also help put things in perspective. Enjoy the things you have and help the ones that are not as lucky.

djaychela 4y ago

Was going to say exactly this. People always discount luck in their own stories, but you can always find it there - even if you look at a societal level and it's just luck that the person in question was born here and now, rather than in Mao-era China or wherever. There's a reason why a lot of businesses fail, and it's not that the people who start them are lazy, stupid or lacking in skills. Obviously some are, but there are a great many people with great ideas that never make it, just like there are brilliant musicians, artists, designers, and anything else you care to name that you'll never hear of but who are very good at what they do.

WesolyKubeczek 4y ago

Luck and connections. And PR, like, tons of it.

croes 4y ago

And if you are lucky you can write books and give talks about how your luck was the result of your superior dexterity, work ethics, intelligence etc.

gohigh54 4y ago

For me I found the harder I worked the luckier I got. There are opportunities everywhere and it takes a long time of trial and error to get it right. It is not for everyone. Very few succeed in a linear or parabolic trajectory. The OP should be proud of their efforts. This was a learning experience that will absolutely help them in the future. Think of this as finishing a super tough college course and passing. On to the next phase.

jcfrei 4y ago

Yes, 100%. Capitalism is like a gigantic genetic algorithm. 100 people try 100 slightly different business models, in slightly different places, with different customers, etc. and some combinations just hit that sweet spot that makes them successful.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

nigamanth 4y ago

The lucky ones also probably failed a couple, but in these lucky ones the real lucky ones are who don't fail in the beginning. Once we gain our most desired possessions, we'll try and do everything not to lose them - and what comes fast goes fast. Keep grinding, I'm sure it won't go to waste.

lr4444lr 4y ago

Identifying the right opportunity/connections/time etc. isn't just luck, like something that dropped out of the sky. It draws on skills, past experience, and calculated risk taking to know who, what, and when to seize on something and ignore what isn't important.

icoder 4y ago
As I see it, you're both right, as in: all that you mention finds its relevance through shaping luck / increasing luck surface area.

aizyuval 4y ago

Luck is an excuse. One can choose to try a lot of different things, and another will choose to have a single few shots. One can choose to accept the “truth”, and the other will refuse to do so. We get feedback from the world, and we choose how to analyze it and interact with it. It’s easy to be fooled by the fact that we have only one choice. Or that the feedback reflects the absolute truth.

jacobsimon 4y ago

I think you’re right there is a lot of luck, but as they say, luck is effort plus opportunity. You need to put in the effort and position yourself for unique opportunities. OP: My personal advice is to stick with a part/full-time job and continuing to explore your business ideas on the side until they are generating enough revenue to cover your expenses. Focus on businesses that sell something practical and don’t need lots of marketing or engagement (at first).

itwrangler 4y ago

so true. and luck can be a big factor in any aspect of life..

granshaw 4y ago

What’s unique about entrepreneurship is that, once you earn enough from it, it can fully replace your work. “Hobbies”, relationships, family, etc don’t do that. If you can’t find fulfillment in your 9-5 you’re still stuck grinding through it everyday looking forward to get back to those things. 8 hours every weekday. A HUGE chunk of your life.

noufalibrahim 4y ago

For all the talk of being "data driven", a somewhat solid but underappreciated data point is the super low success rates of startups.

ren_engineer 4y ago

some luck is involved but just paying attention to trends will give you better odds of success and even if you fail you can still benefit. For example, learning to code is a much better time investment for success than learning blacksmithing. Even if your startup fails, you can make 6 figures as a software engineer and live a good life. if you consider anything other than becoming a billionaire "failure" I guess that's a different matter.

locutous 4y ago

Fortune plays a role, for sure. But you don't even get to petition fortune until you have some significant ability to identify and execute on a business. Too many people focus so much on the luck they neglect the required positive talents and labors to even try.