Hard work wins in business (a.k.a. it ain't just about luck)

Sure, and "beating Vegas" is about skill and following a system, too. /s

Nope, plenty of mediocre people doing great based on nothing but virtue of where they were born or their parents. It’s all luck. Don’t believe me? Imagine what your life would be like if you didn’t get the key moments in your life which defined them. Would you fundamentally be doing the same thing? It’s hard for most people to answer this honestly. For poor people who made it: be honest about what gave you the opportunity to work hard or whatever. It’s probably the fact that you had parents or other support structure to uphold you when you were vulnerable.

Many such people who are entrepreneurs etc. right now would be in the service industry if not for their luck. That’s the only difference between most people, simply luck. That said, I have such admiration and respect for those who truly overcome odds to slowly or otherwise make it despite their bad luck. It’s hard to stop lying to each other about ideals of meritocracy or whatever because everyone has a self image and narrative they prefer about themselves or society. But do you really think that someone else who had your life wouldn’t have done the same as or better than you? Why do you think they’d be worse if you do? Cognitive biases are tricky, I wish people would stop lying to each other and themselves as that might perhaps make for a social environment which is optimal for most people’s self determination

I'd summarize it as:

Hard Work + Market Analysis + (Massive Luck OR Large upfront funding OR Large and relevant network of personal connections) + Luck IRT externalities that can impact your business

I wasted my 20's because I didn't understand the formula above. I worked for a small startup and I thought the idea was great. I worked 80 hours a week and churned out massive improvements to the product as they pivoted over and over trying to find a foothold in the market. But now I realize that the failure was because of both a lack of market analysis and a failure in that third term: we had neither luck nor upfront funding nor a network of REAL connections that could make things happen for us. It was a recipe for disaster: for wasted effort and a wasted era of my life before I woke up and realized how unlikely it was that we would turn the ship around.

The unfortunate part is that the third factor - the Luck or funding or connections factor - is mostly only influenceable by how successful you already were before you started the venture. It is the "success begets more success" factor that is unpopular to talk about among people who want to believe that their success came exclusively from the sweat of their brow.