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Comment by hjkl | Hacker News Reader

The argument isn't that success is due entirely to luck. It's that you'll never know how much of that success is due to luck. It may be a lot or it may be a little.

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But you do. If you make an iphone app and it's an overnight success, you got lucky (the non-luck part is the years of experience that it took to make the app). However, if you slowly build your user base and continue to add new features for years through many failures/successes, beyond the normal 10% or less luck in every-day life, I wouldn't consider it lucky.

Again, it seems there is this trend on HN to make it seem like anyone remotely successful got "lucky". Even worse is blurring the line between luck and hard-work so you can make it seem like their accomplishments aren't as important.

In the case of an app that grows over time: isn't there an element of luck at play every month in the user base? Maybe you just got lucky 12 months in a row, and then you were successful enough to show up on the front page of the app store.

You can tabulate the odds of experiencing random radical growth 12 months in a row. It will happen to some portion of the population. If everybody is flipping coins, then 1 person out of 4000 will flip 12 heads in a row.

I am not arguing that most success is due to luck, or even half of it. I just think the statistical argument is interesting to explore.

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