[dntrkv]

You can say that about any successful person/company.

Sure, luck may have played a large role in Facebook's initial success. But that was over 10 years ago. Many companies experience that initial success and then go nowhere, e.g. MySpace. Facebook, on the other hand, has continuously surpassed everyone's expectations. It's not until recently that people have began to accept that Facebook is here to stay. Discounting Facebook's repeated successes as luck is just silly.

Building a $350B company does not happen from luck, it requires a constant stream of good decision making.

[cookiecaper]

I agree that the luck angle needs to be tempered by considering that there are many ways to accidentally destroy a good thing. It should also be recognized that luck is required to prevent other, bigger companies from catching on to you before you're big enough to stand up for yourself.

I don't want to discount merit or work, but we too often seriously discount luck. Luck plays a large part in every success. That's not to say that people are justified in being unsuccessful; it's just to recognize that we're all involved in something larger than ourselves.

As failure doesn't always correlate to incompetence, success doesn't always correlate to competence.

[zouhair]

Of course it is luck. When they decide to do something new they never know if it's gonna work. If it doesn't work out or if it does work out tons of people come afterwards with tales of "they were stupid if they thought that was the answer" or "These people are smart and they surely knew what they were doing".

I am not trying to lessen his feat but just saying that luck is a big part of it.