As you note, the "luck" debate often bogs down into a false dichotomy of extremes when the reality is usually in-between and complicated. In my experience, most

As you note, the "luck" debate often bogs down into a false dichotomy of extremes when the reality is usually in-between and complicated. In my experience, most people (and companies) have the opportunity to encounter approximately similar amounts of "good" and "bad" luck, when averaged over the long run. However... * This is gated by the ability to recognize those opportunities when they appear, willingness to act decisively to maximize the probability of positive outcomes and the preparedness to exploit such advantages. This tends to require mental preparedness, emotional maturity and a willingness to invest scarce resources and/or time - in advance - toward maintaining situational awareness and some excess reserve resources. Doing this is hard but these traits are learnable. * Similarly, a portion of available conscious effort and scarce resources must be continuously expended toward being resilient to bad luck when it inevitably strikes. The net impact of misfortune can vary substantially depending on mitigation steps taken in advance. This requires accurate awareness of ambient risk factors and careful balancing of where you choose to place your limited 'air bags' and 'ounces of prevention.' Most of these things are at least somewhat within your ability to influence, with the exception of initial conditions. At the "opening deal" of life some people are dealt better cards and some people are dealt worse cards. This is not fair, but it is what it is. The silver-lining is that, after the initial cards are dealt, it can still be a long game with many rounds. How you choose to play the cards you have in each of those rounds can lead to substantially different outcomes. Because it's a game like poker with randomness, hidden variables, subtle cues and second-order probabilities - it's easy to conclude it's almost all luck. This is unfortunate because not understanding the 'meta' of the game, or even knowing there is a meta, does make it mostly luck for some. I think NVidia's 'good fortune' is the cumulative result of playing the meta-game effectively for a long-time and thus leading to them having the capability to maximize their outcomes when eventually finding themselves in a high-opportunity environment (aka "lucky").