[sean_patel]

> You also need to know the right people (connections) and be very lucky

Not sure about 'being lucky' but 'knowing the right people' is very true.

After Marissa Mayers took over the reins of Yahoo, she went on a 'buying spree'. Several of her acquisition were questionable, including an app called 'Summly' - a seemingly simple app that "summarized news" that she purchased for Yahoo, by paying 30 MILLION in ALL CASH deal.

Even the algorithm that it used to summarize wasn't his own. He outsourced that work (the core functionality) to http://www.sri.com/

It was later revealed in a Forbes or BI article that this '15 year old teen hacker genius''s family (either mom or dad) and Mayer's husband were buddies at Goldman Sachs or something of that nature.

Related reading:

Yahoo Paid $30 Million in Cash for 18 Months of Young Summly Entrepreneur’s Time => http://allthingsd.com/20130325/yahoo-paid-30-million-in-cash...

Here's What Happened To All 53 of Marissa Mayer's Yahoo Acquisitions => http://gizmodo.com/heres-what-happened-to-all-of-marissa-may...

[raarts]

Luck has a lot to do with it. Marissa knew the people who started Google and that was luck. She may be talented but there are many others just as talented, who weren't at the right place at the right time. The founders who succeed may attribute their success to their hard work and persistence, but many forget they were actually very lucky as well.