[brico]

Yes, but this one was pure luck.

They didn't plan on building games for android and iOS. I remember them for being a 100% flash-site that offered a mediocre tetris-clone until they were sued by the tetris-copyright-holders.

"Draw Something" was an extremely fortunate product: a) they finally had a hugely popular game which took everyone by surprise and b) they made so much money that Zynga decided to just buy them instead of spending weeks/months on copying them and losing money every day they didn't have an alternative to "Draw Something"

[inovica]

Many successes are based around 'luck' - or more accurately capitalising on it when it comes your way. I know my business has continuously evolved over the years and people have often used the term 'lucky' for me. I find it irritating when people say that someones success is purely down to luck - I'm sure that there were a lot of decisions that were made that contributed to their success here, as that's what it is

[brico]

sorry for not being clear: not the people running OMGPOP were lucky, the investors were, they just couldn't have known how things turned out to be. When they invested in the initial round my guess is that the idea behind the startup and the business ideas were completely different from what the company represents now

[inovica]

OK, appreciate you coming back on it. I still think the same thing goes - the investors invest in people they believe are winners - whether its YC or Sequoia. Anyway, my take on it is that luck happens (both bad and good) and its what you do about it that counts. You can grab the good luck and run with it or you can fight back as hard as you can when bad luck strikes, or... you can take it and blame 'bad luck' for your failure

[mdonahoe]

Yc invests in people.

[brico]

if you are an investor and you don't have a look at the team behind an ambitious and promising idea you will soon run out of money, this is nothing Yc-specific.

edit: ok, another try, people don't like the word "luck" so let's call it a hail mary pass :)

[mdonahoe]

They iterated this drawing game several times in different formats and platforms. I would say it was more than blind luck. They had faith in their product and kept tuning an tweaking it.