4 ms·

Luck is required to achieve a certain level of mega-success. For example, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs just happened to be at the right point in time for a whole

by mattm 13y ago

Luck is required to achieve a certain level of mega-success. For example, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs just happened to be at the right point in time for a whole new industry to be born. If they were college-aged today, could they develop a successful business? Absolutely. Would it grow into one of the biggest and most well-known companies in the world? Doubtful. They just happened to be at the right place and at the right time. That is luck.

michaelochurch 13y ago
This is why I think the mid-risk / mid-growth segment (that VCs don't like, because their career needs demand being early in the next Facebook) is a better match for top talent. We can grow things at 30% per year reliably up to a fairly respectable scale. (Certainly, the value of a programmer's skill set, with dedicated effort, can grow that fast-- whether salary will grow at that rate is another matter.) But no one can call the Facebooks or Googles reliably. That talent just doesn't exist.
dalek_cannes 13y ago
It takes luck to be in the right place at the right time, but it takes something else to recognize the fact and exploit it. A lot of other people with a similar level of education were in the same right place / right time situation as Gates and Jobs were back in the day, but many of them (particularly in large corporations) failed to recognize the opportunity even when it was poking them in the eye. And on that note, unless one is superstitious, "luck" is just another way of saying "random or unpredictable variables favorably aligning with your goals". If it's coin-flip-like random, then there's nothing you can do to foresee it or influence it. But in technology and business, many things are not like that. The fact that you cannot predict something usually means you have insufficient information (even for a coin flip, if you knew the exact force vector your thumb imparted on the coin, you can in fact predict the outcome). Or, more likely in the case of startups, the information is already available, but you fail to recognize its significance because it's buried in an avalanche of information.

by mattm 13y ago

michaelochurch 13y ago

This is why I think the mid-risk / mid-growth segment (that VCs don't like, because their career needs demand being early in the next Facebook) is a better match for top talent. We can grow things at 30% per year reliably up to a fairly respectable scale. (Certainly, the value of a programmer's skill set, with dedicated effort, can grow that fast-- whether salary will grow at that rate is another matter.) But no one can call the Facebooks or Googles reliably. That talent just doesn't exist.

dalek_cannes 13y ago

It takes luck to be in the right place at the right time, but it takes something else to recognize the fact and exploit it. A lot of other people with a similar level of education were in the same right place / right time situation as Gates and Jobs were back in the day, but many of them (particularly in large corporations) failed to recognize the opportunity even when it was poking them in the eye. And on that note, unless one is superstitious, "luck" is just another way of saying "random or unpredictable variables favorably aligning with your goals". If it's coin-flip-like random, then there's nothing you can do to foresee it or influence it. But in technology and business, many things are not like that. The fact that you cannot predict something usually means you have insufficient information (even for a coin flip, if you knew the exact force vector your thumb imparted on the coin, you can in fact predict the outcome). Or, more likely in the case of startups, the information is already available, but you fail to recognize its significance because it's buried in an avalanche of information.