[tappio]

There is an interesting bias going on here. I'm wondering how many people upvoting this text has actually built a business, or just want to believe that what was written here is true?

Building a business is messy. Most ideas suck initially. Companies who got the problem right the first time are extremely rare. Just as rare as companies who succeeded with a crappy idea having great execution.

The hero ingredient is luck. Using all the tricks of the non scientific entrepreneurship self-help literature may grant you better odds at getting lucky, or may not.

You know if the problem/idea/execution was good/real after you have customers paying you. And even after that you don't really know was it execution or idea that won the game, only that they were enough good to succeed.

[_Understated_]

> The hero ingredient is luck.

This... 100% this!

I've mentored and worked with dozens of entrepreneurs and small businesses over the last few years and I mention this to all of them but it's not a case of "if I wait around I'll get lucky". You still need to be active and work hard and fix the right problem with the right solution and then, if you get lucky, you'll succeed.

I teach entrepreneurs to pitch and tell them to go to relevant events. Consistently. They may need to go to 200 events and pitch at them because you have no idea what one of those 200 events will give you the break you are looking for. And then at event 124 someone says "hey, I have that problem, let's talk"...

Now, it's not all about pitching at events but I'm trying to get across the story that you need to consistently do something for a while so that when luck strikes at that particular time you are there.

The chances of getting lucky right out the door are very slim.

Also, I make sure they understand this: Love the problem, not the solution!

[ak39]

>>I've mentored and worked with dozens of entrepreneurs and small businesses over the last few years and I mention this to all of them but it's not a case of "if I wait around I'll get lucky". You still need to be active and work hard and fix the right problem with the right solution and then, if you get lucky, you'll succeed.<<

Basically "keep trying and working on whatever until you either get lucky, run out of money or give up hope". (Ultimate failure being the act of giving up and trying something totally different.)

[polote]

I do not really agree with that, how would you explain that founders that have succeed in the past are most likely to succeed again ?

And how do you explain that some people are just able to create several successful companies ?

Luck is not the best thing to create a company and actually it is almost never the case, luck doesn't last.

I'm not saying that we know exactly what works or we know how to transfer this knowledge to other people, but I'm convinced that luck is not the reason. Actually luck is often an explanation of someone's skills when we don't find rational explanations

[ThomPete]

Because they benefit from the previous success which open more doors and make it easier to get press and clients.

[KajMagnus]

It sounds to me as if you think it's luck, and one cannot be good at making an idea happen: Talking with users, UX design, writing software (or hardware/something), marketing, setting a vision, hiring the right people, building teams, talking with the press, etc.

... and thanks to such skills / good judgement, succeed once, and again.

No, it's luck, is the impression I get, when I read what you write. — Maybe that was not what you meant and I'm reading things wrongly.

[ThomPete]

Why are you assuming that a lot of companies that fail don't do that?

[KajMagnus]

I don't assume that, actually. I think that (of course) one can do all those things well and the startup still fails.

I'm thinking we're slightly talking past each other:

1. I had a look at your HN profile, and notice that you've founded First Principle, and "We Start, Help & Fund Fantastic Businesses". This indicates to me that "all day long", you spend time with startups that do close to perfect execution of their startup ideas and businesses.

Still, some of them fail, others don't. And, then, from your perspective — it's mostly luck, who will succeed and who won't. Since everything else is done really well / close to the best possible approach.

2. Then there's my perspective: I was recently in StartupSchool, and the people there and I too, can be pretty clueless about how to build startups. In our cases, I'd think it's often doing-things-in-the-wrong-&-clueless-ways that kills a startup. Or not talking with possible customers, pursuing the wrong ideas, building things no one wants.

\* * *

I'm more used to startups failing because of not-so-good execution.

Whilst you're used to "perfect" execution, and startups instead succeeding / failing because of things they cannot control, Luck.

\* * *

With this in mind, now what you wrote, makes sense to me.

[epiphanitus]

But how would you define luck, anyway? I think it was Oprah who said something along the lines of "luck is when preparation meets opportunity".

[Paddywack]

I believe we make our own "luck", and I think the above quote is elegant!

WRT finding interesting ideas...

We used to talk about "increasing your surface area of luck" by meeting more people, getting exposed to more ideas/ opportunities etc.

If "Innovation happens at the intersection", then the more you come into contact with, the more your chances of finding an interesting (non-obvious) intersection between problem and solution, or two entirely different solution domains.

WRT executin: Gary player = "The more I practice the luckier I get"

[Jack000]

I see this argument a lot on hn, and the problem I have with it is that even if correct, it's not really useful. Good idea and execution doesn't guarantee success, but ascribing everything to luck (and basically absolving yourself of all responsibility for success/failure) does guarantee failure.

Yeah, at a certain level everything depends on luck - even things like talent and intelligence through the birth lottery. I find this argument overly reductive. Luck isn't something you have control over, and focusing on it is counterproductive.

All anyone can do is make the best decisions based on available information. Sometimes you make the right bet and still lose, that doesn't mean it was a bad bet.

[tappio]

I think we actually agree the fundamentals, like most people participating in this thread. I'd say luck is necessary, but is not enough alone. And by maximising the odds you have better chance of winning. By hero ingredient I meant that a steak dish in restaurant needs a good steak, but that does not make the dish alone. There also needs to be other ingredients. Accepting that luck plays a very important role in building something new can help you overcome defeats and surrender yourself to opportunities that appear while working on the initial idea. For me it has not been counterproductive. I guess it matters how we understand "luck" as a concept.

[dreamer7]

Having worked on my startup for the past 2 years I can agree with this - > Building a business is messy

But luck is not the best way to succeed. Being systematic and knowing that any domain will have deficiencies that can be worked on will greatly increase the odds of success.

It is true that we will not hit upon a problem worth solving (in terms of scale, cost etc) on our first try. But the author's suggestion is to focus on iterating over the problem more than the solution, atleast initially.

[throwaway98797]

Seems defeatist to over ascribe luck to success.

The only guarantee is if you don’t try you don’t succeed.

[ThomPete]

No its realistic. There are many well executing companies with great product market fit that wont be successful. Its very obvious once you actually build a company.

[csallen]

I have to disagree, unless you're talking about black swan events, which are different than the conversation at hand: They're instances of bad luck ruining otherwise-certain success, rather than success being created via good luck.

What's an example of a company that had great execution, great product-market fit, and also had solid pricing and distribution strategies, but ultimately failed?

[ThomPete]

MySpace just as one example.

[HeyLaughingBoy]

That begs the question of what definition of "success" do we use. Most would agree that in its heyday, MySpace was definitely successful. However, the market changed and now it's been eclipsed by other social media. No one stays on top forever and perhaps by the definition of its founders, MySpace was wildly successful for what it tried to be.

[ThomPete]

Would Facebook exist if Zuckerberg wasn't asked by the Winklevoss to develop for him?

The bottom line is that luck is a big part of your success whether direct or indirect. Also there is a world of difference between building a successful coffee shop and a software company let alone a consumer software company.

It's not the same. Some is more relying on luck, timing and chance than others. Ignorning that especially in our field is simply not in tune with reality (not saying you are saying that)

[csallen]

It's hard to say MySpace wasn't successful. They grew rapidly, became the largest social network in the world, and sold for $600M within a few years of being founded. That'd be a success for almost every founder.

[ThomPete]

Yes just like other companies will be successful but ultimately fail because whatever was needed to make them become the biggest and most successful wasn't there.

When it comes to digital products especially things with network effects winner normally takes all.

[csallen]

Luck plays a role in all things, but I can't agree with your depiction suggesting that nothing else matters, that the right knowledge may not even increase your odds, and that we can't ever really know anything.

If you're trying to make the next Google or Amazon, sure, you're going to need to get massively lucky, and do so repeatedly. There's no playbook for that.

But if you have the relatively modest goal of making $5-10k/month to supplement or replace your income, and you have some baseline level of skills and resources, I'm quite confident the right knowledge can help you minimize luck to the extreme.

[koonsolo]

> The hero ingredient is luck.

There are different ways to look at things, but personally I'm not a fan of the "luck" apsect. I like "uncertainty" much better.

"Luck" might imply that you might get lucky. Framing your mind into getting lucky is really bad as an entrepreneur (personal opinion).

That is why I like "uncertainty" much better, because whatever you do, there will always be uncertainty whether you will succeed or not. Entrepreneurs operate in complete uncertainty, always.

The failures were just as uncertain as the successes, but if you don't try you will never know. And framing successes as lucky is pretty disrespectful if you look at all the shit that had to be done to get there.

As a special bonus on my "uncertainty" framing: you live in constant uncertainty, yet your customers, employees and investors expect certainty from you. Very hard mentally.

[tobr]

So if luck is the most important ingredient, would it make sense to go for ideas where you can see a lot of very different opportunities? Because that seems to be slightly opposed to the “correct” approach of starting with understanding a problem, then look for a solution. If you do, your solution is going to be extremely tailored to one specific problem, and if that doesn’t work out, it will be hard to do anything else with it. This is what the lock and key metaphor describes: the key only fits one specific lock, and is useless for anything else.

On the other hand, if you start with the solution before the problem, you can make more of a lock picking set... your solution may fit a whole lot of different problems. To continue to stretch the metaphor, you can now manipulate luck simply be opening more doors.

[hef19898]

My five cents, for what it's worth. You are basically playing the odds. And some strategies are increasing the odds while others are not.

So yeah, taking a domain / business that can easily and quickly iterate in big market is increasing the odds. Better even if you can theoretically cover multiple markets with only minor changes. Even then there are no guarantees, so.

The risk with the last approach, at least a risk I face basically daily, is to loose focus. In my case logistics. Everybody moving physical goods from A to B is a potential customer. So I have to maintain focus, because the little differences make all the difference. Also, I bootstrap. So my runway is limited. For now I have a solution for solar modules in Europe for small order sizes and work on one for furniture and other heavy-bulky goods for e-commerce companies. And I hope one of them flies before I have to go looking for a job elsewhere.

[ThomPete]

Success is all about timing - Indian Rainmaker

[HeyLaughingBoy]

And showing up.

[ThomPete]

Well, in this case, it was about dancing when it started to rain (which is why they often danced for days)

[QuantumGood]

The Hero ingredient is combining ideas. Have five ways to succeed, not just one. Don't move forward on single ideas.