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Comment by benjaminsuch | Hacker News Reader

Extremely lucky? How do you know they were extremely lucky and that they were in the right place in the right time?

> Luck and timing does not take away from success, but it can't be ignored either. Why are you focussing so much on luck? Have you ever considered the amount of work they put in?

Sure they started with a rediciulous idea, but what they made out of it, has nothing to do with luck and is a result of thousands of little decision made from that start.

Your posts in this thread look very ignorant.

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It's ignorant to think that their success "has nothing to do with luck".

I didn't say it had nothing to do with luck, I said that the effort plays a larger role than "extreme luck".

What is the ratio of Internet startups in total vs. the ratio of the ones that had multi-billion dollar exits?

I will grant you that I did not say "hard work" in my original post and should have. You are right, they worked hard. That was my bad.

And again their hard work and success is _not_ diminished by the fact that they were extremely lucky, but plenty of people work just as hard if not harder and do not find the success that the Twitch founders did. So I 100% disagree that the hard work plays a bigger role than the luck.

If it was more about the hard work, then everyone could get rich, and we know that's just not true.

I know it's not a great part of the "I made it" narrative, but luck is always a factor, and in the "acquired by a FAANG" lottery, it's extreme luck by any measure.

Lastly: next time leave the "ignorant" comments at the door please? We can disagree without insulting each other I would hope.

You can't just look at the ratio of multi-billion dollar exits.

Hard work is a requirement and not a guarantee of success. And what Emmet Shear tweeted are things that one should do, to increase the chance of success.

Most luck is created by hard work. Recognizing and taking advantage of it.

A lot of startup founder do startup just very wrong and thus fail and thus make the ratio worse.

The way I see it, it's 75% hard work, 25% luck. Calling things luck is easy, but who are we that we can say so? Just by the ratio of successful startups? I don't think thats fair.

Regarding the "ignorant" comment: It wasn't meant to be an insult, but more of an observation.

I think it's unfair against every person who tries hard and works hard to call his/her success luck.

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