I don’t know much about Notch so I have no comment on them specifically, but “building the company and brand for years” can still count as “luck once”. Once you strike gold and make it big, you have a lot of leeway for mistakes, it becomes harder to fail. Case in point, Zuckerberg.

The game being successful wasn't luck but it being as successful as it was definately was. Block based games had existed for years before minecraft, I don't think there was any reason to believe that this one in particular was going to explode in 2010.

Instagram and WhatsApp were far from bets. Both were growing exponentially. Both were serious threats to Facebook's money machine.

Facebook used their lucky cash cow money to eliminate the threat, by offering way more than any reasonable market value. Absolutely crazy money. An offer they couldn't resist, especially the investors.

No bet, just an ice cold rational calculation. Anyone wealthy and crazy enough could have done the same. No skills needed, no risks involved. It's like betting tomorrow will be another day.

There's a level of talent necessary to be a one-hit-wonder, yes. But I think what makes someone a one-hit-wonder and not a career star is that their success was driven by luck more than by talent. In this case "luck" is being in the right place at the right time: that nexus where cultural and technological timing is perfect for a phenomenon to appear and take hold.

It really doesn't. We teach kids how to program basic games like minecraft. The real appeal was and always has been the fully destructible Lego-like world bundled with good-enough online multiplayer. I was there when it started and he posted his questions/progress on the forums I frequented back then. Those posts where the starting ramp and testing ground that got him his first few users which then snowballed.

There is neither knowledge nor talent here, he stumbled into it, and that's fine.