Can you find 3626 iPhone owners willing to spend $28 on an icon pack? Sure you can. In fact I bet you can find 3626 Android owners willing to part with $28 too.
The key to this success story is this:
> Then, MKBHD happened.
MKBHD could have picked up something much less refined and it would have been popular, a different designer dabbling with no prior mobile icon interest could have come up with something appealing to others as well.
Being there and getting an influencer is what made this story, and can be repeated by anyone. OP is conflating the rest of it with his own trials and tribulations.
I think MKBHD also has to worry about his reputation, if he promoted something less refined his viewers might get pissed off.
The key to a success of this type is luck. Sure, you can optimize for being on the path of success, but majority will still be missed.
What an odd mentality.
No, the key to success is skill, with effort (grit?) thrown in there as well. Luck can sometimes play a significant factor, all else being equal. But the idea that everyone is equally "good" at things, or put in the same effort, and that it's mere chance that success happens to someone is...pessimistic to say the least.
But your point is entirely correct.
But luck is a huge component in getting wealthy. Plenty of people with equal skills, equal expertise, and equal hard work never succeed because they don't get the magical conjunction of right time at the right place.
That being said, it doesn't mean that one shouldn't hone their skills and try to be successful. It's just that it's not likely that you will have such meteoric success no matter the skill or effort you put in.
Luck doesn't just play a significant factor, luck almost always plays the biggest factor. But being skillful and putting in effort is the only thing you can change and definitely does help too.
It is rare to find someone very lazy or completely talentless among the most successful, so it must be hard work and talent, right? No, because it's easy to find very hard-working and talented people who are not successful. In fact, according to research[0], the most successful are usually not the most talented, but those of mediocre talent and a lot of luck.
He succeeded because his time to market was shorter than anyone else's.
The key to finding those 3626 people willing to shell out $28 was the exposure, with MKBHD being the biggest contributor.
Whatever was the key to getting that exposure in the first place is irrelevant to my point.
And went on to say:
> The market will decide a huge part of what comes after sharing something, so continually increase your odds by building, publishing, then repeating.
All the people here decrying everything he had done up until this point and proclaiming any degree of success is attributable only to luck is amazing. It's not the same as stumbling on a winning lotto ticking on the street (unless you have spent years scouring the streets looking for winning lotto tickets).
It's one of those things that makes me want to scream at Hacker News regularly.
Even if you think it's about "luck", how are you modelling it?
MKBHD did a fair coin toss between all of his options?
Nah, doesn't seem realistic.
Some options are probably more likely than others.
Based on what? Oh well, the quality of the product, the buzz around it (which itself is probably based on the quality of the product, how it matches the zeitgeist's aesthetic (which means good understanding of trends, marketing, psychology, etc.)), the original reputation of the person creating the product, and so on.
Hacker News's take: it's just luck, it could have been any other icon set with the same probability.
Yeah, no.