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“Here's the number I used to win the lottery“ –Entrepreneurs giving advice

353 points by ohjeez 4y ago

fennecfoxy 4y ago
Apart from a few lucky people, it all comes down to generational wealth, basically. In the UK the leadership pretty much all come from the same stock on both sides of the fence, private schools etc, to be in high business/politics you're pretty much raised for your job.
sva_ 4y ago
Cynical take, but probably popular in today's social media. I don't think it's right to say building a company is only based on random chance. It clearly also involves at least some skill.
- enkid 4y ago
  Saying it's only based on luck is clearly wrong. Saying no luck is involved is clearly wrong.
  - d23 4y ago
    Thank you. How is this so hard to grasp?
  - sva_ 4y ago
    You have just repeated what I said.
    - enkid 4y ago
      I was agreeing with you.
- parpfish 4y ago
  Is the OP trying to make a point about success being random or about how you shouldn’t mindlessly copying somebody else’s path to success?
- seb1204 4y ago
  Yes indeed, there are some more nuanced takes on it in this thread that I thought were good. I feel in corporate land this translates to the Peter principle in some cases where the manager made a random decision that turned out great.
- giantrobot 4y ago
  Skill, and luck have a geometric relationship. Your ability to "catch" success is the surface area formed by multiplying those together. The more of each you have the more likely you are to succeed. Skill is reproducible. A successful entrepreneur can tell you what skills they have found useful in their successes. You can look at a bunch of businesses and figure out what skills are necessary. Luck is not reproducible. Far too many entrepreneurs discount their luck or lack the ability to recognize and analyze it.
dvt 4y ago
Absolute cope in the twitter comments, and it's weird seeing this on HN, which (at least historically) was a pretty entrepreneur-friendly forum. Yes, we get it, Zuck and Gates and Jobs were "lucky." But that doesn't mean starting a business is like going to the race track, and this extreme oversimplification reminds me of equally-reductive positions (solipsism, nihilism, etc.) where zero knowledge is imparted, and therefore zero knowledge is gained.
- SahAssar 4y ago
  I think the point is more that most people don't know why they succeeded or fail.
  - superkuh 4y ago
    The most predictive reason for failure or success is the commonly referenced https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15659076 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15659076 >Entrepreneurship is like one of those carnival games where you throw darts or something. >Middle class kids can afford one throw. Most miss. A few hit the target and get a small prize. A very few hit the center bullseye and get a bigger prize. Rags to riches! The American Dream lives on. >Rich kids can afford many throws. If they want to, they can try over and over and over again until they hit something and feel good about themselves. Some keep going until they hit the center bullseye, then they give speeches or write blog posts about "meritocracy" and the salutary effects of hard work. >Poor kids aren't visiting the carnival. They're the ones working it.
    - dvt 4y ago
      Imo, this is completely false in the realm of software where anyone can launch a new app/project basically every other weekend and feel out what sticks & has traction.
      - thfuran 4y ago
        Did you know that some people spend their weekend working to make rent rather than launching apps that they hope might work?
technothrasher 4y ago
I only ever found one foolproof system to win the lottery, and it allowed me to win on every single ticket. I owned a retail store that sold lottery tickets. The retailer gets a small commission on every sale, and one on any ticket cashed in at the store.
- pdq 4y ago
  This is basically the same as the VC fund model. They get annual carry (ie percentage) on every fund, and then get a percentage of the gains for every exit. Often this is "two and twenty" (aka 2% annual carry, plus 20% of the gains). Pretty awesome skimming.
  - meetingthrower 4y ago
    Carry is the 20 (carried interest) and 2 is the management fee.
  - vidarh 4y ago
    A shocking number of VC's still fail to make much money. The amount of effort to source and manage investments eats up a whole lot of those management fees, and the 20% carry is often after preferential returns up to a certain level and a lot of funds never reach that level. (I worked for a VC until end of last year; still years of waiting to see if the carry I vested will pay out anything at all)
- berniedurfee 4y ago
  Sell the picks and the shovels
dingusdew 4y ago
[dead]
pilarphosol 4y ago
It works first and second order. First order, every number is equally (un)likely and there is no harm in choosing yesterday’s number, because it is nevertheless no more unlikely today than any other. Second order, you want to avoid split pots, so doing what others are doing reduces EV… your number should be as random as you can make it… and any lottery that actually produced the same numbers twice in a short period of time would be subject to increased scrutiny, which must also be factored in (you might get no prize if it is discovered, even if the conclusion were untrue, that the lottery were rigged) so yesterday’s numbers actually are objectively bad choices. Either way, the metaphor stands quite well.
labrador 4y ago
I'm going to comment in a different direction: As someone who achieved great success at a young age (under 30) it is almost impossible for it not to go your head, mostly because everyone treats you like you are a genius. Unfortunately for me, I lived the adage that "pride goeth before the fall"
- tnel77 4y ago
  If I may ask, what happened?
  - labrador 4y ago
    I was part of a small startup that was purchased by a big company, making me a worth a couple of million. It became a Tony Hsieh situation for me, with too much money and a large ego that told me I knew better than anyone. It wasn't until I surrendered and started doing what people told me to do to get better that I recovered. I had to be broke before that happened. It was quite a ride. I lived and survived all in one piece so I'm not complaining! Zappos Founder Tony Hsieh Surrounded by Drugs and Nitrous Oxide Cartridges in Fatal Fire https://www.thewrap.com/zappos-founder-tony-hsieh-surrounded-by-drugs-and-nitrous-oxide-cartridges-in-fatal-fire/ https://www.thewrap.com/zappos-founder-tony-hsieh-surrounded... Edit: I journaled about it recently, which I'll share in case in helps anyone: I wasn't awake when I was younger. Like in the 80's when I suddenly made a lot of money. I didn't go to the beach and sit on a bench on a pier to think about it. What does this mean? How is this going to change my life? What do I have to do to manage a lot of money? What are my responsibilities to family that are still be struggling? That's what I mean when I say I was asleep. I was asleep in the ignorance of my youth. I did not have situational awareness. My self-awareness was low. Bottom line: I grew up without much money. Since I was successful I thought I was smart enough to figure out how to handle a lot of money. Turns out, managing money is a skill that I don't have and wasn't going to figure out because it didn't interest me, so you know the saying "A fool and his money are soon parted"
    - tnel77 4y ago
      Your reply makes me think of a blog post I read (I believe it was this one: https://collabfund.com/blog/the-art-and-science-of-spending-money/ https://collabfund.com/blog/the-art-and-science-of-spending-...) that talked about how there’s a big difference between the mindset needed to make money, and the mindset needed to save money. Many are good at one, but few are good at both.
renewiltord 4y ago
I don’t actually get why people come to a tech startup forum and post this. Like, I get why this guy posts on Twitter (his audience likes this stuff), but why come to HN and do this? I get it. /r/workreform, the managers are taking all the money and only make tps reports. But surely not every place needs to be like this.
- smohare 4y ago
  [dead]
flappyeagle 4y ago
Pretty disappointing to see this on HN. it’s the weekend so quality is generally low but seriously this is what moderation is for. r/latestagecapitalism exists. Maybe take this trash over there.
yuliyp 4y ago
Exactly. Taking the low probability play with a high payoff is, well, unlikely to succeed. But talking to people who had a high payoff will lead you to think that it is guaranteed to succeed. Survivorship bias exists.
riskneutral 4y ago
That's funny
angarg12 4y ago
My general take on successful people giving advice is to ask yourself "how reproducible is this?". When the advice hinges on a unique set of circumstances that you can't reproduce, then they are likely giving you their lottery ticket. Otherwise you might want to listen more closely.
- nordsieck 4y ago
  > My general take on successful people giving advice is to ask yourself "how reproducible is this?". When the advice hinges on a unique set of circumstances that you can't reproduce, then they are likely giving you their lottery ticket. Otherwise you might want to listen more closely. I think this is tricky - advice can be reproducible within a limited environment, but still be fragile. For example, extremely risky real estate investing can work within a market cycle. But if you try to bridge cycles without consolidation, you're going to be in for a bad time.
- baobabKoodaa 4y ago
  > When the advice hinges on a unique set of circumstances that you can't reproduce, then they are likely giving you their lottery ticket. People typically don't explain their success with "just after I opened the pickaxe shop, the gold rush started". Even if that is a major factor in their success, they will explain their success coming from other factors, like waking up at 5 am to listed to podcasts while running on the treadmill. (The advice that you should wake up at 5 am and listen to podcasts on the treadmill is reproducible, but timing the pickaxe shop opening with the gold rush is not reproducible. You hear one as the advice, not the other. This makes it difficult to follow your advice "When the advice hinges on a unique set of circumstances that you can't reproduce, then they are likely giving you their lottery ticket. Otherwise you might want to listen more closely.")
  - wallace_g 4y ago
    [dead]
adontz 4y ago
I think it's somewhat valid argument. Reduced to absurd for sure, but not absurd. It's not only about randomness, but also uniqueness of situation. You cannot become someone else. You cannot be where someone else was, when someone else was. And even if you can, it may not be the right place and the right time for you, as much as it was for someone else. Success cannot be copied. I really hate these "12 steps to becoming successful" recipes. It's well know phenomena that people tend to unrealistically attribute success to their personal traits and not luck. Success needs skills and knowledge, but also some luck. I doubt successful people really know why are they specifically are successful unlike hundreds of their competitors. This does not mean best practices do not exist. They do and they work. Only they work statistically. You may follow all best practices in the world and still fail miserably.
jollofricepeas 4y ago
This is stupid. Any of us who have had at least two “successful” businesses will tell you that this quote is ridiculous. What’s your ideal of being successful? If it’s exiting at a billion, then sorry. But you can use a lot of this entrepreneur advice to find some level of success. The problem is that non-entrepreneur or first timers always try to skip the small stuff. 1. have a good team and hire right. you need just three roles: sales, operation and product. 2. TAM is real and will determine the size you can grow your business. 3. focus on sales first literally. as a founder you should do your own selling. take care of your customers!!! 4. don’t be a crook 5. manage your money right; be cheap. 6. grow where you’re planted. dig deep in areas you know or that your personal networks know. 7. be lucky - this is about timing and also putting yourself in a place to have information first or at least know the value of certain information first. 8. know you’re going to get it wrong sometime and fail; when that happens take a small break and then spin up another I’ve bootstrapped two companies to success in my eyes which has changed me and my families life. The first was in the 2000s out of college (~$500k annual) it eventually petered out then in the 2010s (~$5m annual). Now I’m going to do another and I hope to create a $5-10m company all off the advice of other entrepreneurs. I’ve also failed miserably and had 5-7 business go under or never even really get off the ground.
- altdataseller 4y ago
  What was the revenue of the 2nd bootstrapped success?
  - mkl 4y ago
    I think they mean it was $5 million. The same sentence seems to be talking about both of them, but would be clearer broken into two before "then". I'm interpreting it as "The first was in the 2000s out of college (~$500k annual); it eventually petered out. Then [the second was] in the 2010s (~$5m annual)."
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- rhaway84773 4y ago
ldjkfkdsjnv 4y ago
Pretty clear to me after meeting a number of very successful people in NYC/SF that some people "just have it". Meaning, they can identify opportunities that have a high probability of success and execute on those opportunities. There are absolutely personality types/genetic backgrounds where stumbling into 100M based on thinking of an idea is a real thing. Also, if someone went to a school like Stanford, its common for them to raise 5M in funding with nothing. From there, they can try for a few years with a decent chance at coming up with something, raising more money, pulling money off the table in round B, and then basically getting rich with no innovation at all. There are all these payoffs that exist from being in a certain class of prestige
- talentedcoin 4y ago
  Sorry, but I don’t think you know anything about “genetic background” if you think it correlates with making money.
  - ldjkfkdsjnv 4y ago
    I'm sorry you believe the propaganda that states otherwise. Its a radical opinion to believe "talent" doesnt exist.
    - dmitriid 4y ago
      Having disposable income and connections means much much more than genetics. This comment has the relevant quote: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35024721 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35024721
      - ldjkfkdsjnv 4y ago
        Of course it does, the second paragraph in my original response states just that. This doesnt negate the fact that some people are exponentially better at business than others. Its the same in math, chess, basketball, football, writing, and every other human endeavor
ecommerceguy 4y ago
Got to play the lottery to win it.
furyofantares 4y ago
Entrepreneurs make tons of decisions and lots of creative work that meaningfully impact their chances of success. Maybe the chances are still quite low if you do everything really well, and maybe an entrepreneur giving advice is likely to massively overestimate that, driving the sentiment behind this tweet. But they're certainly higher than if you do everything really poorly.
psvv 4y ago
I'm surprised I don't see a reference yet to Darius Kazemi's iconic 2014[1] talk, which is basically riffing on this joke for 10 minutes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_F9jxsfGCw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_F9jxsfGCw A key takeaway I've kept with me this whole time is the idea of there being two kinds of creative advice: (1) how to buy more lottery tickets, and (2) how to win the lottery. The former is useful, the latter not so much. [1] Wait, 9 years ago? That can't be right.
didntreadarticl 4y ago
Darius Kazemi - "How I Won the Lottery" - a talk at XOXO Festival (2014) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_F9jxsfGCw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_F9jxsfGCw brutally hilarious
phendrenad2 4y ago
Bad analogy. Founding a startup is not entirely a gamble. There are some things you can do to increase your chances of success. However, that doesn't mean you should do everything a successful startup founder mentions in their retrospectives. Founding a successful startup does not equate to having a flawless perspective into what caused your success. It's the job of VC firms to study startups and figure out what works and what doesn't, not founders.
paxys 4y ago
"VCs giving advice" would be a better fit
jp57 4y ago
I think the take home message is that successful entrepreneurs can tell you everything that’s necessary for success and it still may not be sufficient. Some luck is still required.
twawaaay 4y ago
I work with some pretty successful people who started their companies. I can tell you, the sentence is pure BS. Successful people may not know why exactly they got successful. Or they may not understand how much what they do contributed to the outcome. But they certainly tend to be sharp people putting a lot of hard, HONEST work and doing a lot of things right. Even if you could say it was luck, think in terms of being the kind of person that creates a lot of chances for luck and prepares so that when they get lucky they do most out of it. It is a bit like a person who never bought a lottery ticket complaining the other one won. After playing it every day. Don't be salty. Try to understand what successful people do that makes them successful. Just because they can't explain it well doesn't mean there isn't wisdom to be had.
- deely3 4y ago
  > Try to understand what successful people do that makes them successful. Just because they can't explain it well doesn't mean there isn't wisdom to be had. Luck?
  - twawaaay 4y ago
    Why even try if success is blind luck? Why go to school? Why learn things? Telling people that the success is just blind luck is offensive, IMO. Not that successful people care.
szundi 4y ago
As a successfully exited entrepreneur I can tell you that a lot of stuff I considered important in my success later I started to consider optional. Or more precisely: there are kind of combinations of strategies/behaviors that strengthen each other, and that's why it is 1) too complex to write recipies like i see here at the top, 2) different clientale, context and the industry itself makes different kind of these work more or less. Basically I think it is a bit arrogant to "know" it, but also it is quite pessimistic not to think and talk about these as successful serial-entrepreneurs have a lot to say that has merit.
fsckboy 4y ago
> ”Here's the number I used to win the lottery“ – Entrepreneurs giving advice this is a funny quip, and it is completely recognizable as a quip. Feeling the need to defend entrepreneurs against this quip is a defect in you. Feeling the need to analyze what %age of the time this quip would need to be true in order for it to be acceptable marks you as a complete nerd who misses the forest for the trees. Wanting to burden this quip with extra words so as to make it quantifiably good advice is misunderstanding what makes something funny. have a laugh, go on about your day, this quip was never meant to be flypaper for humorless gadflies.
- docandrew 4y ago
  There’s definitely some truth to it, and it’s exposing humorless gadflies on both sides - those who feel the need to argue against it to justify their success, and those who can use it to feel better about their lack of success.
delegate 4y ago
Consider that luck starts at birth. The genes you get, the health, the level of energy, stubbornness, personality, who you meet in life, etc .. these are all dice rolls. It does take skill to build something, but having the ability to learn that skill is a 'chance', which is in the realm of luck. Neither being lucky nor skilled is enough for success, it's the combination of both. And here I leave 'success' as loosely defined. You can't get lucky at the lottery unless you participate in it. Skill is due to luck and subsequent luck in some area is due to skill. I just mentioned above - luck comes first, skill is the ability to get lucky at something.
- 8note 4y ago
  Being born ultra-wealthy is quite highly correlated with being ultra-wealthy, mind you. Enough luck negates the need for skill
wnevets 4y ago
You also have those who were born on third base going through life convinced they hit a triple telling everyone else why they're special.
ApolloFortyNine 4y ago
I don't know why the "you didn't build that, you just got lucky/born wealthy/born in the US/born with good connections" argument has picked up recently. Just a lot of people wanting to justify why they're not also wealthy business owners? Most without ever trying in the first place? Every idea for a business isn't equal. A good idea, combined with good leadership, and good execution, will 'beat the odds' the majority of the time. Honestly, that this is all there is to the post, and that it was a tweet, just adds to the rediculous of the statement. Just spewing unfounded opinions with no evidence onto a platform that encourages short easily digestible posts.
JadeNB 4y ago
Since the Twitter post itself uses straight quotes, where did those mangled quotes in the title come from?
m3kw9 4y ago
If someone say there is no luck involved they are saying they every position they take is 100% winning. 100% success rate in all decisions, sort of like a risk free investment, really no such thing. The people you hire, there is no sure thing they can build it properly. The marketing effort, no sure shot. Absolutely every decision you make involves some luck
Varqu 4y ago
Since when do we consider single viral Tweets to be worth HN main page?
- zimpenfish 4y ago
  It's generated a lot of illuminating commentary and that's surely worthy?
IAmGraydon 4y ago
Making a half witted quip like this is far easier than actually trying to build a business. You just convince yourself that success is out of your personal control. Easy…no hit to the ego.
- chasely 4y ago
  The author of the tweet is also a very successful entrepreneur; he owns 70% of a ~$700M CAD business [0]. Though I do think he is somewhat anti-VC culture. I only give the context in case people think the author is some bitter, failed startup founder. [0] https://seekingalpha.com/news/3926662-wecommerce-agrees-to-combine-with-tiny-in-an-all-share-deal https://seekingalpha.com/news/3926662-wecommerce-agrees-to-c...
api 4y ago
It’s not just a random lottery, but this is not totally wrong. There is no formula, no one way of doing it. If there was there would be no entrepreneurs. Banks and large companies would just do the “thing” that always works and reliably produce successes over and over again. All the chaos and trial and error of entrepreneurship exists because every market “hole” is a unique bit of problem domain that can only be filled by a unique solution. When an entrepreneur tells you how they did it, their advice may not be transferable to anything other than their niche. It’d be like a fish giving advice to a mountain goat.
hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
My favorite example of this is when there were all these books and articles in the 00s that were like "Google's Business Secrets" and "The Google Way". And then I remember a Google employee being interviewed and saying something along the lines of "To understand 'The Google Secret', pretend you have a giant basement full of money, and then whenever you pull bags of money out of that basement (to hire the best people, afford great perks, spend on the latest hardware, etc.), the basement magically fills up with money again. That's 'the Google Secret', and if your company doesn't have a massive revenue stream like that, a lot of their advice won't work for you"
pharrington 4y ago
Individual entrepreneurship is not a scalable or reliable way to ensure a decent standard of living for large populations.
mvkel 4y ago
As most commenters here say, this is a dumb take, all due respect to Andrew. Entrepreneurship is 80% an emotional journey. Getting advice from other entrepreneurs about the emotions of starting and running a company is incredibly helpful. Nobody else -could- give that advice.
timoth3y 4y ago
That was an overly simplistic and silly take. But there is a kernel of truth to it that has always bothered me a little. I've started four startups with two exists and two failures. In every cases there were deals that, if they had come through, would have have pushed the startups to huge success. There were were also deals that, if they had not happened, would have killed that startup. If you are skilled, you prepare. You plan contingencies. You are ready to take advantage of any opportunity that comes, but after that, a lot is outside of your control and comes down to luck. The line between success and failure is often razor thin, but the world does not see it that way. If you are an inch over the line you are a success; a role model. You are expected to share the secret to your success. If you are an inch behind the line, well maybe you had better go work for someone else and let the successful people talk. Many successful founders give terrible advice, and many failed founders have fantastic insights.

353 points by ohjeez 4y ago

Apart from a few lucky people, it all comes down to generational wealth, basically. In the UK the leadership pretty much all come from the same stock on both sides of the fence, private schools etc, to be in high business/politics you're pretty much raised for your job.

sva_ 4y ago

Cynical take, but probably popular in today's social media. I don't think it's right to say building a company is only based on random chance. It clearly also involves at least some skill.

enkid 4y ago
Saying it's only based on luck is clearly wrong. Saying no luck is involved is clearly wrong.
- d23 4y ago
  Thank you. How is this so hard to grasp?
- sva_ 4y ago
  You have just repeated what I said.
  - enkid 4y ago
    I was agreeing with you.
parpfish 4y ago
Is the OP trying to make a point about success being random or about how you shouldn’t mindlessly copying somebody else’s path to success?
seb1204 4y ago
Yes indeed, there are some more nuanced takes on it in this thread that I thought were good. I feel in corporate land this translates to the Peter principle in some cases where the manager made a random decision that turned out great.
giantrobot 4y ago
Skill, and luck have a geometric relationship. Your ability to "catch" success is the surface area formed by multiplying those together. The more of each you have the more likely you are to succeed. Skill is reproducible. A successful entrepreneur can tell you what skills they have found useful in their successes. You can look at a bunch of businesses and figure out what skills are necessary. Luck is not reproducible. Far too many entrepreneurs discount their luck or lack the ability to recognize and analyze it.

dvt 4y ago

Absolute cope in the twitter comments, and it's weird seeing this on HN, which (at least historically) was a pretty entrepreneur-friendly forum. Yes, we get it, Zuck and Gates and Jobs were "lucky." But that doesn't mean starting a business is like going to the race track, and this extreme oversimplification reminds me of equally-reductive positions (solipsism, nihilism, etc.) where zero knowledge is imparted, and therefore zero knowledge is gained.

SahAssar 4y ago
I think the point is more that most people don't know why they succeeded or fail.
- superkuh 4y ago
  The most predictive reason for failure or success is the commonly referenced https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15659076 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15659076 >Entrepreneurship is like one of those carnival games where you throw darts or something. >Middle class kids can afford one throw. Most miss. A few hit the target and get a small prize. A very few hit the center bullseye and get a bigger prize. Rags to riches! The American Dream lives on. >Rich kids can afford many throws. If they want to, they can try over and over and over again until they hit something and feel good about themselves. Some keep going until they hit the center bullseye, then they give speeches or write blog posts about "meritocracy" and the salutary effects of hard work. >Poor kids aren't visiting the carnival. They're the ones working it.
  - dvt 4y ago
    Imo, this is completely false in the realm of software where anyone can launch a new app/project basically every other weekend and feel out what sticks & has traction.
    - thfuran 4y ago
      Did you know that some people spend their weekend working to make rent rather than launching apps that they hope might work?

technothrasher 4y ago

I only ever found one foolproof system to win the lottery, and it allowed me to win on every single ticket. I owned a retail store that sold lottery tickets. The retailer gets a small commission on every sale, and one on any ticket cashed in at the store.

pdq 4y ago
This is basically the same as the VC fund model. They get annual carry (ie percentage) on every fund, and then get a percentage of the gains for every exit. Often this is "two and twenty" (aka 2% annual carry, plus 20% of the gains). Pretty awesome skimming.
- meetingthrower 4y ago
  Carry is the 20 (carried interest) and 2 is the management fee.
- vidarh 4y ago
  A shocking number of VC's still fail to make much money. The amount of effort to source and manage investments eats up a whole lot of those management fees, and the 20% carry is often after preferential returns up to a certain level and a lot of funds never reach that level. (I worked for a VC until end of last year; still years of waiting to see if the carry I vested will pay out anything at all)
berniedurfee 4y ago
Sell the picks and the shovels

dingusdew 4y ago

[dead]

pilarphosol 4y ago

It works first and second order. First order, every number is equally (un)likely and there is no harm in choosing yesterday’s number, because it is nevertheless no more unlikely today than any other. Second order, you want to avoid split pots, so doing what others are doing reduces EV… your number should be as random as you can make it… and any lottery that actually produced the same numbers twice in a short period of time would be subject to increased scrutiny, which must also be factored in (you might get no prize if it is discovered, even if the conclusion were untrue, that the lottery were rigged) so yesterday’s numbers actually are objectively bad choices. Either way, the metaphor stands quite well.

labrador 4y ago

I'm going to comment in a different direction: As someone who achieved great success at a young age (under 30) it is almost impossible for it not to go your head, mostly because everyone treats you like you are a genius. Unfortunately for me, I lived the adage that "pride goeth before the fall"

tnel77 4y ago
If I may ask, what happened?
- labrador 4y ago
  I was part of a small startup that was purchased by a big company, making me a worth a couple of million. It became a Tony Hsieh situation for me, with too much money and a large ego that told me I knew better than anyone. It wasn't until I surrendered and started doing what people told me to do to get better that I recovered. I had to be broke before that happened. It was quite a ride. I lived and survived all in one piece so I'm not complaining! Zappos Founder Tony Hsieh Surrounded by Drugs and Nitrous Oxide Cartridges in Fatal Fire https://www.thewrap.com/zappos-founder-tony-hsieh-surrounded-by-drugs-and-nitrous-oxide-cartridges-in-fatal-fire/ https://www.thewrap.com/zappos-founder-tony-hsieh-surrounded... Edit: I journaled about it recently, which I'll share in case in helps anyone: I wasn't awake when I was younger. Like in the 80's when I suddenly made a lot of money. I didn't go to the beach and sit on a bench on a pier to think about it. What does this mean? How is this going to change my life? What do I have to do to manage a lot of money? What are my responsibilities to family that are still be struggling? That's what I mean when I say I was asleep. I was asleep in the ignorance of my youth. I did not have situational awareness. My self-awareness was low. Bottom line: I grew up without much money. Since I was successful I thought I was smart enough to figure out how to handle a lot of money. Turns out, managing money is a skill that I don't have and wasn't going to figure out because it didn't interest me, so you know the saying "A fool and his money are soon parted"
  - tnel77 4y ago
    Your reply makes me think of a blog post I read (I believe it was this one: https://collabfund.com/blog/the-art-and-science-of-spending-money/ https://collabfund.com/blog/the-art-and-science-of-spending-...) that talked about how there’s a big difference between the mindset needed to make money, and the mindset needed to save money. Many are good at one, but few are good at both.

renewiltord 4y ago

I don’t actually get why people come to a tech startup forum and post this. Like, I get why this guy posts on Twitter (his audience likes this stuff), but why come to HN and do this? I get it. /r/workreform, the managers are taking all the money and only make tps reports. But surely not every place needs to be like this.

smohare 4y ago
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flappyeagle 4y ago

Pretty disappointing to see this on HN. it’s the weekend so quality is generally low but seriously this is what moderation is for. r/latestagecapitalism exists. Maybe take this trash over there.

yuliyp 4y ago

Exactly. Taking the low probability play with a high payoff is, well, unlikely to succeed. But talking to people who had a high payoff will lead you to think that it is guaranteed to succeed. Survivorship bias exists.

riskneutral 4y ago

That's funny

angarg12 4y ago

My general take on successful people giving advice is to ask yourself "how reproducible is this?". When the advice hinges on a unique set of circumstances that you can't reproduce, then they are likely giving you their lottery ticket. Otherwise you might want to listen more closely.

nordsieck 4y ago
> My general take on successful people giving advice is to ask yourself "how reproducible is this?". When the advice hinges on a unique set of circumstances that you can't reproduce, then they are likely giving you their lottery ticket. Otherwise you might want to listen more closely. I think this is tricky - advice can be reproducible within a limited environment, but still be fragile. For example, extremely risky real estate investing can work within a market cycle. But if you try to bridge cycles without consolidation, you're going to be in for a bad time.
baobabKoodaa 4y ago
> When the advice hinges on a unique set of circumstances that you can't reproduce, then they are likely giving you their lottery ticket. People typically don't explain their success with "just after I opened the pickaxe shop, the gold rush started". Even if that is a major factor in their success, they will explain their success coming from other factors, like waking up at 5 am to listed to podcasts while running on the treadmill. (The advice that you should wake up at 5 am and listen to podcasts on the treadmill is reproducible, but timing the pickaxe shop opening with the gold rush is not reproducible. You hear one as the advice, not the other. This makes it difficult to follow your advice "When the advice hinges on a unique set of circumstances that you can't reproduce, then they are likely giving you their lottery ticket. Otherwise you might want to listen more closely.")
- wallace_g 4y ago
  [dead]

adontz 4y ago

I think it's somewhat valid argument. Reduced to absurd for sure, but not absurd. It's not only about randomness, but also uniqueness of situation. You cannot become someone else. You cannot be where someone else was, when someone else was. And even if you can, it may not be the right place and the right time for you, as much as it was for someone else. Success cannot be copied. I really hate these "12 steps to becoming successful" recipes. It's well know phenomena that people tend to unrealistically attribute success to their personal traits and not luck. Success needs skills and knowledge, but also some luck. I doubt successful people really know why are they specifically are successful unlike hundreds of their competitors. This does not mean best practices do not exist. They do and they work. Only they work statistically. You may follow all best practices in the world and still fail miserably.

jollofricepeas 4y ago

This is stupid. Any of us who have had at least two “successful” businesses will tell you that this quote is ridiculous. What’s your ideal of being successful? If it’s exiting at a billion, then sorry. But you can use a lot of this entrepreneur advice to find some level of success. The problem is that non-entrepreneur or first timers always try to skip the small stuff. 1. have a good team and hire right. you need just three roles: sales, operation and product. 2. TAM is real and will determine the size you can grow your business. 3. focus on sales first literally. as a founder you should do your own selling. take care of your customers!!! 4. don’t be a crook 5. manage your money right; be cheap. 6. grow where you’re planted. dig deep in areas you know or that your personal networks know. 7. be lucky - this is about timing and also putting yourself in a place to have information first or at least know the value of certain information first. 8. know you’re going to get it wrong sometime and fail; when that happens take a small break and then spin up another I’ve bootstrapped two companies to success in my eyes which has changed me and my families life. The first was in the 2000s out of college (~$500k annual) it eventually petered out then in the 2010s (~$5m annual). Now I’m going to do another and I hope to create a $5-10m company all off the advice of other entrepreneurs. I’ve also failed miserably and had 5-7 business go under or never even really get off the ground.

altdataseller 4y ago
What was the revenue of the 2nd bootstrapped success?
- mkl 4y ago
  I think they mean it was $5 million. The same sentence seems to be talking about both of them, but would be clearer broken into two before "then". I'm interpreting it as "The first was in the 2000s out of college (~$500k annual); it eventually petered out. Then [the second was] in the 2010s (~$5m annual)."
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rhaway84773 4y ago

ldjkfkdsjnv 4y ago

Pretty clear to me after meeting a number of very successful people in NYC/SF that some people "just have it". Meaning, they can identify opportunities that have a high probability of success and execute on those opportunities. There are absolutely personality types/genetic backgrounds where stumbling into 100M based on thinking of an idea is a real thing. Also, if someone went to a school like Stanford, its common for them to raise 5M in funding with nothing. From there, they can try for a few years with a decent chance at coming up with something, raising more money, pulling money off the table in round B, and then basically getting rich with no innovation at all. There are all these payoffs that exist from being in a certain class of prestige

talentedcoin 4y ago
Sorry, but I don’t think you know anything about “genetic background” if you think it correlates with making money.
- ldjkfkdsjnv 4y ago
  I'm sorry you believe the propaganda that states otherwise. Its a radical opinion to believe "talent" doesnt exist.
  - dmitriid 4y ago
    Having disposable income and connections means much much more than genetics. This comment has the relevant quote: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35024721 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35024721
    - ldjkfkdsjnv 4y ago
      Of course it does, the second paragraph in my original response states just that. This doesnt negate the fact that some people are exponentially better at business than others. Its the same in math, chess, basketball, football, writing, and every other human endeavor

ecommerceguy 4y ago

Got to play the lottery to win it.

furyofantares 4y ago

Entrepreneurs make tons of decisions and lots of creative work that meaningfully impact their chances of success. Maybe the chances are still quite low if you do everything really well, and maybe an entrepreneur giving advice is likely to massively overestimate that, driving the sentiment behind this tweet. But they're certainly higher than if you do everything really poorly.

psvv 4y ago

I'm surprised I don't see a reference yet to Darius Kazemi's iconic 2014[1] talk, which is basically riffing on this joke for 10 minutes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_F9jxsfGCw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_F9jxsfGCw A key takeaway I've kept with me this whole time is the idea of there being two kinds of creative advice: (1) how to buy more lottery tickets, and (2) how to win the lottery. The former is useful, the latter not so much. [1] Wait, 9 years ago? That can't be right.

didntreadarticl 4y ago

Darius Kazemi - "How I Won the Lottery" - a talk at XOXO Festival (2014) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_F9jxsfGCw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_F9jxsfGCw brutally hilarious

phendrenad2 4y ago

Bad analogy. Founding a startup is not entirely a gamble. There are some things you can do to increase your chances of success. However, that doesn't mean you should do everything a successful startup founder mentions in their retrospectives. Founding a successful startup does not equate to having a flawless perspective into what caused your success. It's the job of VC firms to study startups and figure out what works and what doesn't, not founders.

paxys 4y ago

"VCs giving advice" would be a better fit

jp57 4y ago

I think the take home message is that successful entrepreneurs can tell you everything that’s necessary for success and it still may not be sufficient. Some luck is still required.

twawaaay 4y ago

I work with some pretty successful people who started their companies. I can tell you, the sentence is pure BS. Successful people may not know why exactly they got successful. Or they may not understand how much what they do contributed to the outcome. But they certainly tend to be sharp people putting a lot of hard, HONEST work and doing a lot of things right. Even if you could say it was luck, think in terms of being the kind of person that creates a lot of chances for luck and prepares so that when they get lucky they do most out of it. It is a bit like a person who never bought a lottery ticket complaining the other one won. After playing it every day. Don't be salty. Try to understand what successful people do that makes them successful. Just because they can't explain it well doesn't mean there isn't wisdom to be had.

deely3 4y ago
> Try to understand what successful people do that makes them successful. Just because they can't explain it well doesn't mean there isn't wisdom to be had. Luck?
- twawaaay 4y ago
  Why even try if success is blind luck? Why go to school? Why learn things? Telling people that the success is just blind luck is offensive, IMO. Not that successful people care.

szundi 4y ago

As a successfully exited entrepreneur I can tell you that a lot of stuff I considered important in my success later I started to consider optional. Or more precisely: there are kind of combinations of strategies/behaviors that strengthen each other, and that's why it is 1) too complex to write recipies like i see here at the top, 2) different clientale, context and the industry itself makes different kind of these work more or less. Basically I think it is a bit arrogant to "know" it, but also it is quite pessimistic not to think and talk about these as successful serial-entrepreneurs have a lot to say that has merit.

fsckboy 4y ago

> ”Here's the number I used to win the lottery“ – Entrepreneurs giving advice this is a funny quip, and it is completely recognizable as a quip. Feeling the need to defend entrepreneurs against this quip is a defect in you. Feeling the need to analyze what %age of the time this quip would need to be true in order for it to be acceptable marks you as a complete nerd who misses the forest for the trees. Wanting to burden this quip with extra words so as to make it quantifiably good advice is misunderstanding what makes something funny. have a laugh, go on about your day, this quip was never meant to be flypaper for humorless gadflies.

docandrew 4y ago
There’s definitely some truth to it, and it’s exposing humorless gadflies on both sides - those who feel the need to argue against it to justify their success, and those who can use it to feel better about their lack of success.

delegate 4y ago

Consider that luck starts at birth. The genes you get, the health, the level of energy, stubbornness, personality, who you meet in life, etc .. these are all dice rolls. It does take skill to build something, but having the ability to learn that skill is a 'chance', which is in the realm of luck. Neither being lucky nor skilled is enough for success, it's the combination of both. And here I leave 'success' as loosely defined. You can't get lucky at the lottery unless you participate in it. Skill is due to luck and subsequent luck in some area is due to skill. I just mentioned above - luck comes first, skill is the ability to get lucky at something.

8note 4y ago
Being born ultra-wealthy is quite highly correlated with being ultra-wealthy, mind you. Enough luck negates the need for skill

wnevets 4y ago

You also have those who were born on third base going through life convinced they hit a triple telling everyone else why they're special.

ApolloFortyNine 4y ago

I don't know why the "you didn't build that, you just got lucky/born wealthy/born in the US/born with good connections" argument has picked up recently. Just a lot of people wanting to justify why they're not also wealthy business owners? Most without ever trying in the first place? Every idea for a business isn't equal. A good idea, combined with good leadership, and good execution, will 'beat the odds' the majority of the time. Honestly, that this is all there is to the post, and that it was a tweet, just adds to the rediculous of the statement. Just spewing unfounded opinions with no evidence onto a platform that encourages short easily digestible posts.

JadeNB 4y ago

Since the Twitter post itself uses straight quotes, where did those mangled quotes in the title come from?

m3kw9 4y ago

If someone say there is no luck involved they are saying they every position they take is 100% winning. 100% success rate in all decisions, sort of like a risk free investment, really no such thing. The people you hire, there is no sure thing they can build it properly. The marketing effort, no sure shot. Absolutely every decision you make involves some luck

Varqu 4y ago

Since when do we consider single viral Tweets to be worth HN main page?

zimpenfish 4y ago
It's generated a lot of illuminating commentary and that's surely worthy?

IAmGraydon 4y ago

Making a half witted quip like this is far easier than actually trying to build a business. You just convince yourself that success is out of your personal control. Easy…no hit to the ego.

chasely 4y ago
The author of the tweet is also a very successful entrepreneur; he owns 70% of a ~$700M CAD business [0]. Though I do think he is somewhat anti-VC culture. I only give the context in case people think the author is some bitter, failed startup founder. [0] https://seekingalpha.com/news/3926662-wecommerce-agrees-to-combine-with-tiny-in-an-all-share-deal https://seekingalpha.com/news/3926662-wecommerce-agrees-to-c...

api 4y ago

It’s not just a random lottery, but this is not totally wrong. There is no formula, no one way of doing it. If there was there would be no entrepreneurs. Banks and large companies would just do the “thing” that always works and reliably produce successes over and over again. All the chaos and trial and error of entrepreneurship exists because every market “hole” is a unique bit of problem domain that can only be filled by a unique solution. When an entrepreneur tells you how they did it, their advice may not be transferable to anything other than their niche. It’d be like a fish giving advice to a mountain goat.

hn_throwaway_99 4y ago

My favorite example of this is when there were all these books and articles in the 00s that were like "Google's Business Secrets" and "The Google Way". And then I remember a Google employee being interviewed and saying something along the lines of "To understand 'The Google Secret', pretend you have a giant basement full of money, and then whenever you pull bags of money out of that basement (to hire the best people, afford great perks, spend on the latest hardware, etc.), the basement magically fills up with money again. That's 'the Google Secret', and if your company doesn't have a massive revenue stream like that, a lot of their advice won't work for you"

pharrington 4y ago

Individual entrepreneurship is not a scalable or reliable way to ensure a decent standard of living for large populations.

mvkel 4y ago

As most commenters here say, this is a dumb take, all due respect to Andrew. Entrepreneurship is 80% an emotional journey. Getting advice from other entrepreneurs about the emotions of starting and running a company is incredibly helpful. Nobody else -could- give that advice.

timoth3y 4y ago

That was an overly simplistic and silly take. But there is a kernel of truth to it that has always bothered me a little. I've started four startups with two exists and two failures. In every cases there were deals that, if they had come through, would have have pushed the startups to huge success. There were were also deals that, if they had not happened, would have killed that startup. If you are skilled, you prepare. You plan contingencies. You are ready to take advantage of any opportunity that comes, but after that, a lot is outside of your control and comes down to luck. The line between success and failure is often razor thin, but the world does not see it that way. If you are an inch over the line you are a success; a role model. You are expected to share the secret to your success. If you are an inch behind the line, well maybe you had better go work for someone else and let the successful people talk. Many successful founders give terrible advice, and many failed founders have fantastic insights.