Luck: The Secret Sauce of Successful Startups
ramlijohn.com
ramlijohn.com
I'm -guessing- the thrust is intended to be "If you don't try you can't ever succeed, but trying is no guarantee of success either; you have to get lucky, too, so keep trying until that happens", but I honestly don't know from reading it.
"Luck favors the prepared mind"
They just happened to be at the right place and at the right time. That is luck.
And on that note, unless one is superstitious, "luck" is just another way of saying "random or unpredictable variables favorably aligning with your goals". If it's coin-flip-like random, then there's nothing you can do to foresee it or influence it. But in technology and business, many things are not like that. The fact that you cannot predict something usually means you have insufficient information (even for a coin flip, if you knew the exact force vector your thumb imparted on the coin, you can in fact predict the outcome). Or, more likely in the case of startups, the information is already available, but you fail to recognize its significance because it's buried in an avalanche of information.
I agree that 'Hard work' is necessary but not sufficient.
Is it that the combination 'Hard work + Luck' is both necessary AND sufficient? And if so, are there other elements that can replace Luck in that combination - which would negate the hypothesis as Luck would therefore not be necessary?
My personal belief - at this time - is that Luck is necessary, but my definition of luck includes creating multiple opportunities for it to occur. If your definition is only deus ex machina type fortune befalling you, then you may categorise what I consider luck as simply an extension of Hard work. Which would negate the hypothesis.
[Edit] pg has the top comment on the original post, where he says "All successful startups are lucky, but they're never just lucky". Which would seem to affirm that he agrees with this hypothesis and views Luck as necessary (all successful startups are) but not sufficient (never just lucky). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6794612
Find an unsuccessful business isn't a guarantee of one day finding a successful one, it's a bet of not throwing a bunch of time and money away on a bad business.
In other words, luck is earned.
At some point, this probably reduces to quibbling about the exact definition of "luck", but I generally agree with this statement, given the way I view luck.
Personally, I believe - as other have already quoted - that
"luck favors the prepared mind"
and
"luck is when preparation meets opportunity"
I'll go back to a post from a year or two ago, about "how to date a supermodel". The gist was, "if you want to date a supermodel, start by moving to where lots of supermodels live". There ya go... call it "earn that luck" or "luck is when preparation meets opportunity" or "fortune favors the bold" or whatever, the essence is the same to me.
Honestly, this recent "success is luck meme" strikes me as a fabrication concocted by people who don't believe in hard-work, as a way to denigrate the people who have put in the hard-work and gained success, and to provide themselves with a "ready built" excuse for failing.
I feel like there's a crowd out there waiting to go:
"Oh noes, I failed. Oh, no biggie, I just wasn't lucky".
versus the folks who say
"Oh noes, I failed. Shit, well, let me dust myself off, climb back up to my feet, suck my gut in, and try again, and work even harder this time".
Anyway, for the "hard work" crowd, here's a little something inspirational:
Of course, the flip side of the coin is that you don't get to choose your hand. You can only choose how to play it. And accept that no matter what you do, you're still probably going to fail if you pick high-risk options.
Imho it's more like:
20% is the idea your startup is founded on, 30% stubornness, 30% hard work, and the last 20% is probably a mix of other minor factors including luck.
I again saw under the sun that the race is not to the swift and the battle is not to the warriors, and neither is bread to the wise nor wealth to the discerning nor favor to men of ability; for time and chance overtake them all.
Objective considerations of contemporary phenomena compel the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account.
The problem, under free exchange of information, is that for each of him, there are 49 equivalently smart, articulate people who had more average outcomes. And in the startup world, average == failure.
Many people listed in the Top 100 for Hacker News have been put on slowban and rankban, and I bet this is why. The worst thing that can happen for the startup world is for people to see people like me who are also smart and didn't make millions in the VC-funded startup game before 30. Even though my life's pretty good now, that's after I seceded (probably permanently; I doubt I'm fundable with the shit I said) from VC-istan.
put another way, if founders believe that luck plays a large part in their success, then there is less incentive for hard work at such low prices because their expected future return is lower.
hopefully I explained this clearly. if not, ask and I shall attempt to clarify.
I'm not sure it's necessary. Optimistic bias is well-entrenched in humans.
I think the thing that you're missing is that success breeds success. PG was able to be successful with YC because there were a few successes from the first batch, which built the reputation. That lead to more applications, which meant more people to choose from. Being smart in the choices is part of it, but there are a LOT of successful businesses that weren't part of YC, and a lot who were part of YC and not successful.
Then comes the network effect which further builds on previous successes. A YC start-up needs a hand, PG's network is best able to provide it.
The '49 equivelantly smart, articulate people who had more average outcomes' sadly, didn't have the first success, which lead to more.
This isn't only a factor with YC. Lots of YC companies have built on the success of just getting into YC. Do one thing really well, and people take notice. They offer you the opportunity to do other things really well, and your reputation grows. It's an exponential effect.
Doesn't this strengthen the argument that luck matters? Consider the careers of hollywood actors. They tend to be jump started by the "big break", rather than being a smooth linear promotion.
But LA is stuffed to the gills with actors who never got that big break. The entire city is notoriously oversupplied with good looking waitstaff.
I'm not suggesting that luck has no role, but I don't think it is lucky break after lucky break.
With respect to LA actors, my brother is a director, and he says there is a massive difference between the successful and unsuccessful actors. I thought it was luck, he thinks they work harder than the rest and are better at there craft.
Similar to exceptional coders and product managers, how many of those who are successful in those professions would you say are 'lucky'?
So are entrepreneurs any different?
Slowban i'm not sure, but maybe just rate limiting the comments that they can post?