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What if successful startups are just lucky?

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Re: What if successful startups are just lucky?

#51

Post by tomasien »

gruseom wrote: post #31
evanspa wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm unable to find a definitive reference, but Gary Player (golfing legend) is also attributed with the quote: "The harder I practice, the luckier I get." Perhaps that's why it was on ESPN. Pretty sure George Simmons has this quote of Player's on one of the chapter pages in his "Precalculus Mathematics in a Nutshell" book.

Quote Investigator has tackled this one: http://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/07/14/luck/ The upshot is that its origin is unknown, but goes back at least to a Walter Winchell column from 1949. Gary Player used it and became associated with it. The attribution to Jefferson is nonsense, of course.

Jefferson and Einstein, never trust a quote attributed to them!

Re: What if successful startups are just lucky?

#52

Post by boldpanda »

The only startups that are "lucky" are those that never validate before development and still find traction.

I define validating as getting 3 paying customers before building a viable app.

You could have built an abridged or simpler version of your game and asked people to pay you to play it. If that posed problems, you could have pivoted to a different premise for the game.

Re: What if successful startups are just lucky?

#53

Post by craigyk »

jxf wrote: post #4

"I am a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it." -- Thomas Jefferson (apocryphal; see [0]) [0]: http://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/i-am...

It takes both. luck is a constant that can range between 0 -> inf, and work is the multiplier 0 -> 1.

Re: What if successful startups are just lucky?

#55

Post by TDL »

HNJohnC wrote: post #37
sz4kerto wrote: post #14

Well, according to statistics (see Kahneman) CEO 'performance' has very low correlation with perceived CEO performance. Also, past success has low correlation with future success. In other words, there isn't really a 'CEO skill', or a 'successful manager' skill. In other words, company success is not repeatable given the same set of people. In other words, yes, luck is extremely important. There is no moral of the st…

Yes, we (should) all know that but somehow we are still deluged with books and blog posts from these lucky few telling the rest of us how to do it. Worse yet too many are taking it as gospel when they really should just do it their own way.

We are deluged by these narratives because they are easy to understand. Same thing with a lot of money is synonymous with success; money is easy to quantify.

When we start talking about randomness and luck, my sense is, that people begin to feel uncomfortable because it makes the world a much more less understandable place.

Re: What if successful startups are just lucky?

#56

Post by georgeecollins »

JonFish85 wrote: post #33

I know it's not the point of the article, specifically, but it's very difficult to draw any startup conclusions based on a game company. Games are notoriously difficult to make into successful products, even more-so than your average startup. That said, I do think the author has a lot of good points. Surely there is a portion of "randomness"/luck, but there's also a healthy dose of focus & determination that make thi…

The game industry is a special case because it is at an intersection between technology and entertainment. Success is very difficult to predict or repeat. You can't just fill a need in a niche because any other game, really any other form of entertainment, is a substitute for your product.

Re: What if successful startups are just lucky?

#57

Post by agilord »

sz4kerto wrote: post #14

Well, according to statistics (see Kahneman) CEO 'performance' has very low correlation with perceived CEO performance. Also, past success has low correlation with future success. In other words, there isn't really a 'CEO skill', or a 'successful manager' skill. In other words, company success is not repeatable given the same set of people. In other words, yes, luck is extremely important. There is no moral of the st…

Care to provide pointers on the correlations (research paper, whatever)?

Re: What if successful startups are just lucky?

#58

Post by _xhok »

It seems weird to be shocked that success in a startup depends on luck. Of course it does; we already know that from seeing how widely the returns fluctuate. But that doesn't mean successful startup founders aren't smart. A good way to put it would be that, while your chances of success are random, if you're smart and determined your chances are higher. If you aren't smart or determined, you don't qualify for the lottery at all.

Re: What if successful startups are just lucky?

#59

Post by dreamdu5t »

This argument compares apples to oranges. Your game was not the same as World of Warcraft. It had completely different graphics, different marketing, distribution, gameplay, etc. Facebook is not Google+. Windows is not OS X.

Lottery tickets are apples to apples. Yes, the problem domains for these start-ups may overlap, but these are not apples to apples. Your MMO was not the same as WoW.

The differentiating factor between your MMO and WoW was not just luck. They're different games.

Re: What if successful startups are just lucky?

#60

Post by DanielBMarkham »

To put a little finer point on it, what if successful startups have enough randomly-uncontrolled and untracked things happen to them to make them successful as to be not reproducible?

So you do all the right things, and you still only have a 1-in-20 chance. Or the other guy does all the wrong things, and he sells out in two years for 20 Million. A third guy does some good things and some really bad things, still manages to grow and flip, then he writes a book on "How to have a successful startup" that claims to know the answers.

As far as I can tell, this is pretty close to the state of things, and that's okay. It just means 1) you can't give up, and 2) you need to choose your strategy based on this state of affairs.

What you don't want to do is to acknowledge there is randomness, then throw in the towel. Or to go on some jag where you hero worship Zuckerberg or some other rich schmuck simply because the startup lottery hit for them. The truth is much more complicated -- and involves a lot of hard work.

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