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Comment by visarga | Hacker News Reader

Luck and passion. But mostly luck.

Example: how is it possible that Google couldn't make its own successful video streaming service and had to buy YT for billions? They had the expertise and money, but it didn't catch on.

Why did previous tablets fail and iPad succeed? Microsoft was into tablets long before iPad.

Sometimes, no matter how rich or smart you are, or how good your idea is, it's going to flop because it didn't encounter the perfect environment and moment to take roots. Because not even rich players can control the environment, they resort to buying promising startups trying to hitch a ride to success on their wings, or alternatively, the YCombinator model of seeding and grooming startups. How many of YC startups flopped, even with help?

Edit: seems I am not in agreement with the crowd. Instead of downvoting, please argue in replies.

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You're getting downvoted because luck isn't actionable, it's just a post-hoc explanation of events. There's always someone who wants to make themselves feel better about their lack of success by attributing others' to luck.

But here's the thing, we are all continuous actors in our own lives. Successful founders have a healthy vision of what they can control and what they can't, and they try to maneuver their companies into a position to succeed based on the state of the world as they see it at the time. What looks like luck from 30,000 feet was actually the result of a concerted effort day-in and day-out, usually over the course of years, to put themselves in a position to succeed. The fact that there success isn't reproducible, or that they weren't in control of everything does not mean that they succeeded because luck. That's a lullaby that wantrepreneurs tell themselves to protect their egos, but it's poisonous to ones ability to build something successful.

"Successful founders have a healthy vision of what they can control and what they can't, and they try to maneuver their companies into a position to succeed based on the state of the world as they see it at the time. What looks like luck from 30,000 feet was actually the result of a concerted effort day-in and day-out, usually over the course of years, to put themselves in a position to succeed"

...

Isn't calling something a "healthy vision" also a post-hoc explanation of events? I see people putting in "a concerted effort day-in and day-out... to put themselves in a position to succeed" but they generally don't know ahead of time all those factors necessary, so after several years of not succeeding... what did they do wrong?

Each path to 'success' at the level most people think of it, with respect to deca-millionaire levels of wealth - generally doesn't appear to be reproducible at all.

The difference that I'm trying to highlight is that calling something "luck" takes away the responsibility of the actors. This is a dangerous mentality for a founder, because their own actions and decisions are all they have in the pursuit of success.

> I see people putting in "a concerted effort day-in and day-out... to put themselves in a position to succeed" but they generally don't know ahead of time all those factors necessary, so after several years of not succeeding... what did they do wrong?

They took wrong actions in pursuit of their goals. Whether they can pinpoint specific actions is up to the individual, and ultimately it's a guessing game. But to throw your hands up and declare luck is a weak-minded excuse—certainly we must acknowledge that given infinite possibilities, success was possible, they just didn't find the right path.

Luck is a necessary but not sufficient condition. Any success story that does not acknowledge that some level of unforseeable fortune contributed to the success is someone deluding themselves, or trying to mislead you, possibly to sell you a book.

"calling something "luck" takes away the responsibility of the actors. This is a dangerous mentality for a founder, because their own actions and decisions are all they have in the pursuit of success."

On the other hand, I've met plenty of depressed, completely delusional startup founders who were convinced that their business failure meant that they did something wrong, because hey...it's never luck, right?

You're setting up a false dichotomy: it's possible -- essential, really -- too acknowledge that luck plays the most important part in any startup. You still have to maximize your chances of getting lucky, and that's the part you can control.

I'm not sure why calling something "luck" is weak-minded but having "a guessing game" is fine.

Looking forward we should ignore luck, because as you note it's not actionable. But when looking backwards we should take it into account.

For example: don't let "bad luck" prevent you from starting a company, and don't get discouraged by others' "good luck."

But, after failing or succeeding, you should be realistic with yourself and admit luck played a role.

If you've been successful: realize that your success is not 100% the fruit of your efforts -- be a bit humble about how you got where you are.

If you've failed: realize that perhaps you just drew a bad hand and maybe it's not the right environment for your idea -- don't be too down on yourself, and don't be afraid to try again.

hindsight vision is always 20/20. certainly luck isn't all that is required, but despite making the 'right' moves, there's an ocean filled with dead businesses or startups at the bottom. Nobody likes to talk about the fact that these were led by smart people, had everything right going for them until they find themselves in new waters and submerge. It's not at all attractive to write about those that have fallen and that anybody could be next. We don't like talking about it because it is scary. Nobody can predict the waves with 100% certainty. Today's champions maybe tomorrows losers, today's losers maybe tomorrows champions. It's naive to assume that you have complete control over all aspects of your business or life. More often, humanity's greatest innovations have arisen by accident or when they were looking for something and ran into something else. Ask yourself, when was the last time something went exactly as you planned? If you answered 'often', you haven't really tried anything worthwhile.

I've upvoted you because, whilst it may not have been the most useful way of putting it, I agree that luck plays a large part (and I'm a founder myself). As others have pointed out though, there are a lot of things you can do to try to maximize your chances of being 'lucky', and a lot of good advice for founders is essentially this.

For those interested in reading more about the role of luck (amongst other very interesting discussions about how we make decisions), I'd heartily recommend reading "Thinking, Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman (and "The Black Swan" by Nassim Nicholas Taleb too as a nice complement).

Luck (or timing, or circumstance) is a big factor. But we're all responsible for creating circumstances in which we can benefit from luck. I think that's where the "showing up" tendency is so huge. You have to show up everyday, even when shit ain't happening, to benefit from serendipitous events. More rigorously, you have to optimize your payoff function (in the Talebian sense) so that you can benefit from luck for reasons other than pure chance.

If you don't understand the difference between the original Microsoft tablet and the iPad, then it's not surprising that success appears to be all luck.

Details matter.

I play blackjack as a hobby. Blackjack is somewhat unique among casino games in that your skill can have a dramatic impact on your results. What you call luck, professional gamblers call variance. Things can go extremely well or very poorly in the short term regardless of skill, but over the long term, variance ("luck") becomes meaningless and skill becomes the determining factor in the player's results. This applies to any game where skill can affect the outcome even slightly, and certainly includes the startup game.

We see successful people get lucky all over the place but it's the success that they have in common along with passion and most importantly the intellect to back both. To say their success is owed to luck is an unfalsifiable proposition.

Steve Jobs would be insulted if you suggested the iPad was luck, and for good reason. Microsoft's tablets sucked, and even after the iPad they butchered Windows 8 over making it more tablet-like. But this is precisely why the recent trend of devaluing ideas and touting execution is worrisome. If it were true then Microsoft should have won. They shipped first and kept shipping. What Steve had were ideas. Quality ideas that Bill had when he grew Microsoft into a monopoly. And business strategy, marketing, corporate philosophy... They are all ideas! If you don't value what you are executing then honestly you probably are wasting your time.

Look at anyone successful especially entrepreneurs and they are all fountains of ideas. Hard work and execution is the given. What these people do is think harder. Whatever the situation, a good idea can make something work. Luck reverse engineered is always either insight, preperation, or determination. Insight is a fresh idea. Preperation requires having ideas of the future. Determination is knowing your idea works.

To borrow the words of Chomsky, "we don't need more heros, what we we need are good ideas." Or to take it further perhaps heros with ideas. There should be no line between ideas and execution. They are one in the same.

Do you think we would have an Apple if Steve had been raised by his biological parents and not his adoptive ones in Mountain View? Would there be a Microsoft today if young Bill hadn't had access to that GE computer through the ASR terminal purchased by his private school? They were both gifted and worked their asses off, but you can't help but wonder if all that hard work would have paid off if they'd been born on the wrong side of the tracks.

Read about the four kinds of luck. And how to become 'more lucky'.

Luck #1: Pure stochastic luck. Roll of a dice.

Luck #2: Doing enough things that you get lucky. If you don't try, your chance of doing something = 0. If you try 10 things, it's non-zero.

Luck #3: Doing enough things, plus a prepared mind. You had the right background to recognise when luck knocked on your door, and seized it.

Luck #4: The things you did in the past, gave you an angle of attack that no one else saw or thought possible. You did these things, but then seemed lucky.

Now you could say the Paypal guys were lucky to do Paypal, or the Youtube guys were lucky to do Youtube.

But do you then attribute the Paypal mafia, and the Youtube mafia's further successes also to luck?

Go make your own luck!

Ref: http://pmarchive.com/luck_and_the_entrepreneur.html

Luck is important, but not uncontrollable. Successful people manufacture their own luck - they study probabilities and maneuver to become exposed to the best chances, repeatedly.

Yes luck is there, but if you are persistent then you should eventually succeed.

In 10 years one can start ~5 startups. And if after 5 failed startups one does not make it then oh well.. then she/he probably really really does not have any luck (or she/he is an idiot).

Haven't downvoted, I'm too young!

Luck (probability) exists, but I'm of those ones who believe that what you get is a result of what you have done before. Do you really think iPad is selling more than Microsoft because a lack of passion or luck? Same with Google and YT.

I think you are wrong here and most of the times people use the excuse of bad luck, timing, etc. to protect themselves of their bad execution.

YouTube won because it was first-- by the time Google tried to make a go of it, YouTube was pretty rooted in the market-- video creators went where the audience was.

The iPad was a massive step up from previous tablet efforts-- both with touch technology and software experience.

Certainly there is a timing and luck component to both of these.

But "mostly luck" - that's just wrong.

I'm not so sure YouTube was first. There were a LOT of video startups at the same time as YouTube. Honestly I think a lot of YouTbe's early success was due to rampant copyright infringement. Once Google bought them companies like Viacom smelled money and went after them.

Google Video actually beat YouTube to market by about 3 months.

The problem was that Google Video was missing some critical features beyond the video player. It was harder to upload videos. It didn't get embedding until after YouTube, and then its embedded player had a clunkier, less-branded interface than YouTube's. It lacked the "related videos" sidebar that was the crucial feature that made YouTube take off. Google also couldn't put up the copyrighted content that YouTube often turned a blind eye too.

YouTube's actually a really good example of the better product winning. They understood their market and aggressively put out features that their early adopters wanted. It wasn't all that apparent to outsiders that the product was better, because the details don't register for them. (Personally, I didn't see what the big deal with YouTube was until 2007 or so.) But for the key early adopters, it was pretty clear which one was more fun to use.

Tablets previous to the iPad didn't fail...except perhaps the Newton. Tablets were successful in industrial markets. What made the iPad a consumer success was the same thing that made the iPhone successful: a little bit of genesis touch technology and a whole lot of ubiquitous bandwidth backed by billions of bucks of marketing. Pull bandwidth out of the equation and the app store via a cable connection to a desktop connected to Dialup makes touch appear as the incremental improvement on pen that it is. ATT's data plans are what changed mobile from RIM and Exchange to the future we live in.

As an aside. editing a post to complain about Downvotes makes it worse. Please invest the effort in improving the way in which your ideas are communicated instead. The HN guidelines discourage such complaints anyway.

To be successful, you need to put in the work to enable yourself to take maximum advantage of getting lucky.

And luck = right product, right time, right tech, right people, and of course just luck.

that was my conclusion. in fact the article might as well write up on 'How to become President of United States'. The book 'Hard thing about hard things' talk about this. There's no formula to success. However, we have this hero culture where hardship is required to do great. It simply does not guarantee any level of success. Being a complete lazy ass isn't going to help or working 50 hour week or answering email at 4 am isn't going to push the needle at your company. You might tell yourself that, but it doesn't matter because the outcome is binary. You make it or you don't, or it feels like you made it (sitting in expensive chair in your office on investors dime, burning cash, Andreesen talks about this).

one reason that people are downvoting you is because they know it's true and it scares them. imagine if you told them, no matter how much you flail in the water, a large portion of you will be going back home.

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