Comment by bostik | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bostik | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

> But in real life luck (or "chance" , if you prefer) plays a part, sometimes a significant part.

This reminds me of a story I heard nearly 20 years ago. (Told by a UCLA staff member.)

In the early 2000's, a UCLA professor invited a successful entrepreneur to give a guest lecture on one of their business courses. During the lecture he was asked what made him the success and the fortune - and the answer was distilled to less than seven words: "Get lucky. Then stack the deck." He went on to explain that the best way to maintain a competitive edge was to make it as hard as possible for anyone else to try to follow his steps or to circumvent his position. But first you had to get lucky enough to afford it.

He was not invited again. Too honest and demoralising for the students.

The Dean of UVA business school was heard saying “Don’t compete unless you have an unfair advantage.”

That's hilarious and absolutely true. I think he omitted a few shadier things too.

Maybe the professor didn't like the "sabotage competition" part. I know I didn't.

I do believe luck/chance is the most important ingredient.

It may not be sabotage necessarily. I’ve talked to MIT professors and they said one of the things they do at Sloan is emphasize gaining and holding a monopoly. Patents, trade secrets, etc. It’s the ‘moat’ that Warren Buffet and value investors look for in investments. If you do the work figuring out supports, methods, regulatory compliance, you’re not under any obligation to provide that information to anyone else. That could be construed as ‘stacking the deck’. I had a coworker that ran a firearms training company on the side and he had to let go one of his administrators because he was talking with his competition and casually telling them what sort of insurance they carried, what small business programs they had applied for, unexpected regulations they found that they had to comply with. All these things are publicly available but took a lot of time to research and money on lawyers etc. No point in helping your completion start on first or second base.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com