It's called luck
good luck to you then with having as much luck, if all you think it takes is luck...
Timing Lessons
11–20 of 38 posts
Re: Timing Lessons
#12"Timing, perseverance, and ten years of trying will eventually make you look like an overnight success."
Love this.
Re: Timing Lessons
#13It's called luck
There is an element of being at the right place with the right idea when people are ready to embrace it. But certainly there would be plenty of startups where the stars aligned for them in terms of this and they never managed to make it big.
Re: Timing Lessons
#14"Overnight success takes a long time."
Paul Buchheit
http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2009/01/overnight-success-t...
Re: Timing Lessons
#15It's called luck
Interestingly:
RT @ev: @biz also, don't forget LUCK
Re: Timing Lessons
#16It's called luck
True. But skill also. Luck let's you roll a 6 if you need one. Skill makes sure you get to the roll the die 10 times.
Re: Timing Lessons
#17Great post, but as a side note:
"Twitter has 145m users in the same way @MikeTyson has $400m in career earnings."
Re: Timing Lessons
#18It's called luck
Bo Peabody's 'Lucky or Smart?' is relevant here. Good short read, decent synopsis from Bo here:
http://www.inc.com/magazine/20050101/lucky-or-smart_Printer_...
Twitter's emergence from Odeo is pretty similar to Tripod's switch from an advice site to a homepage builder.
Re: Timing Lessons
#19> Surrounding yourself with smart people you like to work with helps immeasurably. I think this is one of the most important pieces of advice ever. Not many people are solo savants - almost everyone who is successful (in business, academia, life) is surrounded by other competent, like-minded people. We're all standing on the shoulders of giants here, and the romantic meme of the lone-wolf superstar maverick needs to…
it makes setbacks tolerable, and day to day toiling a pleasure.
Not just on an emotional level, I think when a bunch of clever people get together a sort of super brain is formed which is greater than each of them.
This is so since the super brain has the combined knowledge but not the combined biases of the individuals. To give an analogue this is like these comment threads where knowledge gets added and incorrect statements promptly and strongly refuted, but on a much much higher resolution when you work with a smart person face to face for a considerable length of time.
Re: Timing Lessons
#20It's good to hear a "Sometimes things take time" point of view. The typical mental model of YC [1] can make one feel less than perfect for not having raised $5M by 19, made multiple angel investments by 22, then traveled around the world for philanthropy during your mid 20s because now, carefully managed, you're set for life.
[1]: How the press likes to portray YC: get unknown kids, accelerate them towards terminal funding velocity, stir for three years, and bam instant millionaires.