If HN taught me anything, it's precisely that I am not an entrepreneur. That's not to be sneezed at... it's saved me a lot of pain and headache!
(While I'm happy where I am, I could be a pretty good "very early engineering" hire.)
The math is pretty clear that 75% of the time, you will fail.
> There is recent research by Harvard University’s Shikhar Ghosh that three out of every four venture-backed firms fail, which was newsworthy because the failure rate was higher than normally cited by the venture capital industry.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/wp/2014/01/...
The math is way worse than that: http://venturebeat.com/2014/04/19/heres-a-look-inside-a-typi...
If you manage to get VC funding, you're still going to fail three times out of four. But, that assumes you're one of the 8.3% of companies reviewed by a VC firm that gets funding.
What percentage of nascent companies don't even get so far as a warm intro to a VC?
> The good news: Because few meaningful statistics exist about small, privately held companies, the astronomical business-failure rates that we hear quoted so often tend to be misleading. For instance, a survey done by the U.S. Commerce Dept. says that of every 10 small businesses, 7 will survive their first year, 3 will still be going after 3 years, and only 2 will remain after 5 years.
> Most of us know through experience, however, that a lot of independent businesses do indeed close their doors quickly -- with certain industries more prone to see startups fold than others. Figures compiled by the National Restaurant Assn., for example, show that 80% of independently owned eateries fail within their first two years, for instance.
It doesn't seem to be much worse/different for non-VC. Just smaller scales.
Doing it just for money doesn't make sense. There are easier ways to get rich.
I suppose this depends on the definition of luck. Unfair, no. Lebron James was born with talents ~nobody else has been born with. Was he lucky? Yes, in that he didn't have a say in the matter. Did he work hard? Yes.
You're asking a very complicated question, which as it turns out, is a very fun thought experiment.