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Comment by jolux | Hacker News Reader

Many successful people overrate their personal characteristics and underrate the degree to which they were merely in the right place at the right time and such. Fortune favors the prepared, of course, but I personally believe there are far more people in the world who are adequately prepared for success who do not succeed because they are under-resourced or poorly connected.

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only when the tide turns, you get to see who was swimming naked.

luck plays an important part, but not everyone realizes it or admits it.

And yet... those who stay in the game and who try new things regularly get “lucky” while those who quit, don’t develop and learn from a process, and who try the same methods over and over don’t get lucky.

It is far too simple to say that it is only luck. Persistence and good processes often lead to “luck”.

Hence why I said fortune favors the prepared. If you’re not ready for the opportunity you’re going to miss it when it hits.

We have a saying in one of the Bulgarian towns:

"Luck doesn't come to you, you go to it".

Which is to say you are right: if you keep showing up at stuff you will eventually get lucky. Luck can only happen to those who try and get lucky. Our real world resembles an MMORPG game -- you need a team for 98% of everything -- then I'd say both you and your parent poster are correct.

> which they were merely in the right place at the right time and such.

If you are successful several times against the odds it's probably not just mere coincidence anymore. You know, stats.

Unless you have VCs betting on the same horse... Accrual of advantage, etc etc.

You also likely have funds to float you for longer.

You also likely have a network to leverage/exploit.

These external things all can stem from a lucky first go.

Hard to say. There are knock-on effects from being highly successful. If you win the lottery and subsequently become a highly successful investor, for example, there’s a clear element of chance. You may have the latent abilities of an investor and the skills to fully realize them, but without the opportunity afforded by a windfall you would never find out.

If someone lucky to be in area/time of great development or inherited a lot of money, or have a good connections...

Then following your advise in less lucky situation is likely to fail.

With sufficiently large population, someone will randomly win against unlikely odds. For example, if there is a 1% chance your startup will succeed, but one million people try it, statistically one of them will have 3 successful startups in a row even without being better than average.

Though, realistically, the chance should increase for the following attempts, because you can reuse some resources and contacts you gained with the first success. The first startup is like "I need to succeed within three years, or return to a regular job to pay my bills". But if it succeeds, the second startup is like "I can keep trying as long as I want to, no pressure".

> because they are under-resourced or poorly connected

This is soluble.

Often not by the people in that situation but as a society yes it absolutely should be soluble.

Then how did the first people in that situation do it?

Said differently, who invented the first bootstraps and how did they do it without bootstraps?

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