[zeemonkee]

I'm not saying his success was due purely to luck, but that luck was a major factor.

Being the right place and right time is a huge part of it. He was the right age, in the right environment, when the right technology reached the right tipping point and critical mass.

I'm not disparaging Zuckerberg's ability or hard work. However many with greater ability and who have worked harder have failed because of circumstances beyond their control.

[dasil003]

But isn't it just a platitude you tell yourself to feel better that you will never be that successful? How can you be sure Zuck isn't better than those who failed? And how can you be sure those who failed didn't do something wrong? You see how pointless this is?

[ecaradec]

Luck plays a role in building a billion dollars company, otherwise billg, stevej, would be building billion dollars company every 10 years which is not happening.

Building a million dollars company is hard work (I mean 10 million at least ), but still billion dollars company are mostly about being lucky and exploiting it. I doubt that billionnaire entrepreneurs seriously worked much more, or much smarter than millionnaires. Billionaire companies landed there because they exploited ideas inherently more monopolistic, more able to spread.

If you take the sivers multiplier http://sivers.org/multiply, ideas still have some potential : a x20 multiplier is a huge boost.

[dasil003]

sigh thank you for totally missing the point. This is all mental masturbation. You're just using luck as a synonym for circumstance, which is not a good attitude for an aspiring entrepreneur to take.