[_delirium]

> A successful business takes about 1%-5% luck. The rest is skill and/or intelligence.

I'd put it considerably higher than that, especially in markets that have strong dynamical-system type effects (winner-take-all markets, strong dependence on feedback factors like visibility/brand, etc.), where small differences early on that are nearly impossible to predict can magnify arbitrarily to large differences later on. If I had to put a number on it, probably 60-70% luck, once you pass a baseline level of competence.

Even in my own personal endeavors, it's really surprising, and---even in hindsight!---seemingly random what stuff succeeds and what doesn't, and which factors turn out to matter. Especially true of any sort of online commerce, where the difference between successful and unsuccessful websites is in part the quality of the content or product, but also strongly dependent on the vicissitudes of information flow, "virality", etc. Nonlinear dynamical systems have complex dynamics, and they don't always correlate very strongly with anything except the system's internal dynamics...