"It's not that people who do great things don't have an interesting story because to them it's just a normal day and they're so awesome they don't recognize it.

"It's not that people who do great things don't have an interesting story because to them it's just a normal day and they're so awesome they don't recognize it." "Great" things also depends on your timing and what the competition is doing. (Remember Job's Newton?) Bad timing could be having the right product at the wrong time. Good timing a little earlier than the competition in some cases. As well as luck. And also honesty and how you deal with people you work with, suppliers. And this only scratches the surface. I mean even with respect to sports the winner in any given year is dependent on the quality of the other teams or individuals playing, right? The second fastest man would be the fastest if the fastest didn't run that race. "It's that greatness comes from doing. The more you do the more chances for greatness." And in a sense the key to the VC business. If you put your money behind enough possibilities (with some reasonable vetting) some of those ideas will succeed. I mean if they could predict better the ideas that would hit (even assuming the timing was right and there was nobody else trying the same idea) they would have a much better success rate than what the currently have, right? The success rate is not great actually. "I certainly would like to know tips that would make it more likely that the things I ship, write, create will be well received and popular" One of the problems with reading to much about what others say (on HN or elsewhere) is that you get a watered down version of the world since there are always different points of view. (Horse by committee is a camel?) No single vision directing things. To many points of view. Something that I am able to achieve given my skills, knowledge the way I was raised and a million other variables might not be the right approach for you. Just like you may be able to walk up to a random woman in a bar and pick her up with a line and an approach that wouldn't work for me. Just like Jobs could make people do things by his words and his presence, his looks, his voice that (insert smart but dull person here) can't.