Dumb luck is winning millions at the lottery. I doubt Bezos, or Zuckerberg, or Musk, or Gates, ever did that.
What they did instead was take calculated risks. Like quitting a job at DE Shaw to start an online bookstore, at a time when online bookstores were not a thing. If you or I are senior executives at one of the most successful hedge funds in history, would we quit for a pie in the sky idea?
Well, he did, and Gates and Zuckerberg quit Harvard, and Musk went all in into rockets until he almost lost it all. The part of the iceberg that's not seen in this picture is the hundreds or thousands of entrepreneurs who risked it all and lost it all. We are on HN here, and from time to time we get a peek into the struggles of founders.
Attributing the success of various founders to "dumb luck" is lazy and disrespectful. I did not take these types of risks in my life, so I'm not rich. But I tip my hat to those who did, and got rich in the end. I could be very well be luck, but absent any evidence, I prefer to extend the benefit of doubt, and to just respect these guys for what they did in life.
Dumb luck is winning millions at the lottery. I doubt Bezos, or Zuckerberg, or Musk, or Gates, ever did that.
What they did instead was take calculated risks. Like quitting a job at DE Shaw to start an online bookstore, at a time when online bookstores were not a thing. If you or I are senior executives at one of the most successful hedge funds in history, would we quit for a pie in the sky idea?
Well, he did, and Gates and Zuckerberg quit Harvard, and Musk went all in into rockets until he almost lost it all. The part of the iceberg that's not seen in this picture is the hundreds or thousands of entrepreneurs who risked it all and lost it all. We are on HN here, and from time to time we get a peek into the struggles of founders.
Attributing the success of various founders to "dumb luck" is lazy and disrespectful. I did not take these types of risks in my life, so I'm not rich. But I tip my hat to those who did, and got rich in the end. I could be very well be luck, but absent any evidence, I prefer to extend the benefit of doubt, and to just respect these guys for what they did in life.