Luck: The Secret Sauce of Successful Startups
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Luck: The Secret Sauce of Successful Startups
1–10 of 31 posts
Re: Luck: The Secret Sauce of Successful Startups
#2No way, man. Sure luck plays a role on some level, but I can tell you I spent seven plus years trying to get apps off the ground. And it wasn't until I started putting in the hard work that things began to turn around. Plain and simple. Drop the excuses!
Re: Luck: The Secret Sauce of Successful Startups
#3No way, man. Sure luck plays a role on some level, but I can tell you I spent seven plus years trying to get apps off the ground. And it wasn't until I started putting in the hard work that things began to turn around. Plain and simple. Drop the excuses!
I think you guys are in agreement. Of course luck plays a role, but you have to put yourself out there to give yourself a chance to get lucky. The best entrepreneurs recognize lucky opportunities when they are presented - but they had to work to get to that position in the first place.
Re: Luck: The Secret Sauce of Successful Startups
#4No way, man. Sure luck plays a role on some level, but I can tell you I spent seven plus years trying to get apps off the ground. And it wasn't until I started putting in the hard work that things began to turn around. Plain and simple. Drop the excuses!
I think you guys are in agreement. Of course luck plays a role, but you have to put yourself out there to give yourself a chance to get lucky. The best entrepreneurs recognize lucky opportunities when they are presented - but they had to work to get to that position in the first place.
Great point. I wrote a post about this quite a long time ago: http://www.geekceo.com/entry/fooled-by-aquisition. I just reread it and other than the fact I make a few blanket blaming statements, I think my primary message still holds: success is enhanced by working hard and taking advantage of luck when it happens. More or less what you just said! :)
Re: Luck: The Secret Sauce of Successful Startups
#5No way, man. Sure luck plays a role on some level, but I can tell you I spent seven plus years trying to get apps off the ground. And it wasn't until I started putting in the hard work that things began to turn around. Plain and simple. Drop the excuses!
All you did was increase your luck.
Re: Luck: The Secret Sauce of Successful Startups
#6What's the message in this? From the title I'd think "Success = luck", but then "Earn that luck", so maybe it's not luck, it's effort, but then "The stars aligned" so luck again, but then "Be heroic in behavior" so effort...
I'm -guessing- the thrust is intended to be "If you don't try you can't ever succeed, but trying is no guarantee of success either; you have to get lucky, too, so keep trying until that happens", but I honestly don't know from reading it.
Re: Luck: The Secret Sauce of Successful Startups
#7No way, man. Sure luck plays a role on some level, but I can tell you I spent seven plus years trying to get apps off the ground. And it wasn't until I started putting in the hard work that things began to turn around. Plain and simple. Drop the excuses!
Agreed, no way the equation is 95% luck and 1% hard work - as the article suggests (or as the article quotes a CEO saying).
Imho it's more like:
20% is the idea your startup is founded on, 30% stubornness, 30% hard work, and the last 20% is probably a mix of other minor factors including luck.
Re: Luck: The Secret Sauce of Successful Startups
#8No way, man. Sure luck plays a role on some level, but I can tell you I spent seven plus years trying to get apps off the ground. And it wasn't until I started putting in the hard work that things began to turn around. Plain and simple. Drop the excuses!
All you did was increase your luck.
No, he increased his chance of success by working hard. Luck != success.
Re: Luck: The Secret Sauce of Successful Startups
#9I think Randy Pausch said it best: "Luck is where Preparation meets Opportunity."
Re: Luck: The Secret Sauce of Successful Startups
#10I think this is why PG hits so many top posters (including myself) with rankban and slowban. PG gives us the story we want to believe: that highly intelligent people (I'm no PG fan, but the man wrote On Lisp; he's fucking sharp) succeed in the startup world.
The problem, under free exchange of information, is that for each of him, there are 49 equivalently smart, articulate people who had more average outcomes. And in the startup world, average == failure.
Many people listed in the Top 100 for Hacker News have been put on slowban and rankban, and I bet this is why. The worst thing that can happen for the startup world is for people to see people like me who are also smart and didn't make millions in the VC-funded startup game before 30. Even though my life's pretty good now, that's after I seceded (probably permanently; I doubt I'm fundable with the shit I said) from VC-istan.