Luck isn’t the only factor, but it’s one of the only factors that is requisite. Hard work and competence help but aren’t required. Luck is always required.
For what it’s worth, luck isn’t rabbit’s feet and horseshoes. When folks talk about luck in the context of entrepreneurship, it’s the chaotic, complex, unmeasurable, unquantifiable, uncontrollable, and often imperceptible factors that can lead to wildly different outcomes for the same idea and quality of execution from two different individuals.
For example, you’re not the first to think “If we could empower doctors with AI, we could save billions and improve patient outcomes”. There are probably 10,000 or more people who have already pitched or are actively in the process of preparing VC pitches for what are essentially all just variations on the same idea. Luck is the fact that your former college roommate raised a series A from Sequoia last year and is willing to vouch for you to their contacts. And further, that those contacts feel like it’s the right time to expose themselves to this part of the market. And that you had no traffic on your way to the pitch, that your IBS didn’t act up mid pitch, and that this is the first day in a week that the VC you’re pitching to isn’t hung over. Luck is them deciding, before you ever step in the room, that as long as you don’t fuck up that they are feeling ready to fund exactly a medical AI venture, and you’re the first in line since they developed that resolve.
Luck is something that can be influenced, to a degree. It’s stochastic. You roll a d20 once and you’re probably not getting a nat 20. If you keep rolling though, one of those is likely going to pan out. Luck is also having the background to keep rolling though. It’s the difference between being able to take 3-months off work and spending all of your life savings because you’re a paramedic making $45k/year with a great idea and ambition, vs being comfortable taking 1-2 years off to perfect your pitch and build a compelling product because you used to work for Google and even if this doesn’t land you’re not going to have a hard time getting hired at Facebook for $100k/year more than you used to make. In this sense, luck is the difference between your Plan B potentially breaking you completely, or leaving you on a lower cloud among the 1%.