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Comment by doggodaddo78 | Hacker News Reader

Absolutely conflating apples and oranges. Elon seems to have been luckier by being part of the PayPal Mafia, similar, in a sense, to the w00w00 group. He may have absolutely no idea how or why he got where he did by the choices, beliefs, and circumstances he encountered. Felix Dennis OTOH was a wise, old hippie who had an appreciation for honest introspection.

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Compeletley agree.

Elon was lucky to be born in a rich family. Made his first 100k before 18.

Felix was lucky to be born in time to ride that hippie wave.

Just like some people were lucky to throw money on bitcoin in 2010~2015.

Still more should be a credited to chanse and luck.

> Felix was lucky to be born in time to ride that hippie wave.

"In 1969, Dennis wrote a world exclusive for OZ, the first ever review of Led Zeppelin's debut album." - talk about right place, right time. From there, he gets promoted to co-editor, gets hugely famous through a court case, which lets him start his own publishing company, and the rest is history.

(I'd say there was a lot of luck involved but he also seems to have reasonably good judgement and foresight to take advantage of it.)

Dennis didn’t get rich off the Oz trial. In fact, he was pretty penniless for a good two years after the trial, and he did not have the kind of fame that he could capitalize on (the judge in the trial had infamously called him a dim-witted young man). What started his road to vast riches was noticing that Bruce Lee films were popular, and starting a new magazine called Kung Fu Monthly that, even though it was a pretty primitive rag, managed to cash in on the fad.

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