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by aierou 1310 days ago
I would estimate maybe 1 in ~7 billion odds

(statistical liberties taken)

1 comments

Jobs was highly successful 3 times (Apple I, Pixar, and his return to Apple). Once could be luck, twice is highly unlikely to be luck, and 3 times? fuggeddabootit
> Jobs was highly successful 3 times (Apple I, Pixar, and his return to Apple). Once could be luck, twice is highly unlikely to be luck, and 3 times? fuggeddabootit

So someone who flips a coin an gets heads 10 times in row isn't lucky, they must be good at flipping coins? Jobs certainly had certain talents, but luck was definitely the bigger contributor to his successes. However, lots of people lose sight of that, and almost join a cargo cult centered on him.

The odds are zero for even one head if you never flip a coin.
> The odds are zero for even one head if you never flip a coin.

And that proves what, exactly? If lotto tickets were free, I'd buy a billion.

But why would you buy them if they were free? Steve Jobs would have just taken the entire lot.
Jobs has his share of failure too, but his initial success allowed him a serious financial and PR buffer.

If he failed early, then nobody would know of it or him.

The sequence of events are linked. NeXT was hugely successful as it became the foundation of OS X and without it he'd never have returned. The individual product lines were a multiple amounts of luck too (Mac, iPod, iPhone, etc).
> The sequence of events are linked

Not really. Look at Jobs' second coming to Apple. He replaced a sequence of CEOs that all failed to turn Apple around. Jobs turned a near-bankrupt company into the biggest company in the world, with the same crew and technology of the near-bankrupt company.

Pixar enormous success was Jobs' doing. Nobody else believed in Pixar.

NeXT was a failure, but Jobs found a way to salvage it.

> NeXT was a failure, but Jobs found a way to salvage it.

He sold that failure for $429m.

NeXT only sold 50,000 computers, which is considered a failure.

Likely the $400m was really to buy Jobs.

What about Elon Musk then? Paypal, Tesla, then SpaceX
He was tossed from X.com then because he tried to turn the company into vehicle for his ego.

Tesla was made by two other guys, Musk contributed PR, marketing and government money.

SpaceX is a lot of public money.

If Musk is good at anything, it is taking other people's money and building a cult of personality.

> If Musk is good at anything, it is taking other people's money and building a cult of personality.

That doesn't sound too hard. Why is Elon the only one good at it?!