Malcom Gladwell's book "Outliers" is an interesting look into this idea of how successful people come to be successful. I highly suggest it to anyone intrigued by this idea, it's a very interesting read.

The opening portion of the book focuses on Bill Gates and all the unique things in his life from early childhood and beyond that all fell into place (along with his intelligence and drive of course) to make him extremely well-equipped to be successful as a tech industry leader. namely very good timing in the tech landscape at the time and a lot of access to computer programming experience very early on which, at the time, was incredibly rare.