[confluence]

Michael Lewis meet Quora; Quora meet Michael Lewis: http://www.quora.com/Wealthy-People-and-Families/Why-dont-so...

The question I want answered is:

How do you optimise for luck?

I've come to the conclusion that one most work very hard on something with a scalable market value for a long period of time.

You continue to do this (repeatedly if need be), until you either, in order of likelihood:

  a) Quit

  b) Die

  c) Get lucky

How does one optimise for luck? How can one work "luckier" - not smarter (which is necessary but not sufficient for success)?

Bill Gates is a very smart man, I'm sure, but I highly doubt that he was the smartest, or the hardest working at the time he founded Microsoft (many people that run/found companies are very hard working/intelligent - but most fail).

If I recall correctly the founder of Digital Research and the creator of the CP/M operating system Gary Kildall (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Kildall) could've become Bill Gates.

Apparently Bill Gates bought a clone of CP/M for ~$50K and sold it back to IBM with a blanket license for ~$100K, whilst holding onto the rights to exclusively sell to other manufacturers without IBM's permission.

The IBM PC blew up all the sales records, and quickly became the dominant PC platform.

The market was soon flooded with reverse engineered copies created by manufacturers hoping to ride the IBM wave by producing clones that were cheaper.

Every single one of them required an operating system that was compatible with IBM.

And who had the exclusive license to sell them the software IBM used?

  Microsoft

I just want to know how does one get lucky, if that isn't such a stupid question to ask.

I have the feeling that anything up to some arbitrary limit (60K-150K a year) you can state that skill may probably have been a major component. But anything above that, and I'm pretty sure you are in very lucky territory. Does this make sense, or is everything mostly luck, and just a teensy bit of skill?

[intellegacy]

You have some facts about Bill Gates wrong. Not only is he smarter than other smart people but he's also harder working than most other hard-working people. It was generally accepted among his classmates that he was the smartest in his class at Lakeview and one of the smartest at Harvard.

Also, you could say that Bill Gates got lucky with the CP/M OS deal, but he was shrewd enough to give himself the advantage in the majority of the contracts he made with others. Luck did play a huge role in Microsoft's success but their success was multiplied by Bill's intelligence, hard work, cunning, and competitiveness.

[confluence]

You could rephrase that sentence:

Bill's intelligence, hard work, cunning, and competitiveness played a huge role in Microsoft's early success, and this success was multiplied manifold later on by extraordinary luck.

Once again I never said it wasn't necessary - the intelligence or the hard work. I merely indicated that it isn't sufficient for success above a certain level.

Your first statement is unverified, and probabilistically wrong. I heard a similar story that he dropped out because he couldn't take the advanced math classes, and that he was no longer the smartest person in the class. See everyone can do this!

Smartest at Harvard or Lakeview does not equal smartest at starting a company (also unverified - I'm sure there were people that were smarter/more hard working).

It's a sad realisation that in many areas in life (outside of pure competition such as sports), it's not about what people did, it's more about who they were, who they knew, and where they lived.

Liberating for some, but depressing nonetheless.

[intellegacy]

I agree that intelligence, after a certain upper limit, isn't required for success, and in fact an abundance of it at the upper levels may actually work against success.

Bill Gates stopped pursuing math because he realized at Harvard that he wouldn't be the best at it. He was actually taking graduate level math courses in his undergrad sophomore year.

source: http://askville.amazon.com/read-Bill-Gates-toughest-math-cou...

Anyways, I agree that smartest doesn't mean best at starting a company. Intelligence + Hard Work + Competitiveness + Connections + Luck all play a role. Bill Gates had all of them. Most people are lucky to have 1 or 2.

edit:: I guess the reason I'm replying to you is I get the sense that you think luck played a significant role in Gates' success. It may have, but if you read up on Gates you will learn how significantly better equipped he is for success: high intelligence (i'd guess in the top 10% in his class at Harvard if not higher), ridiculous work ethic, ridiculous competitiveness.

Luck plays a role in all success stories but I submit that Gates would be very successful even without it.

[confluence]

Agree. Luck is very important, always has been, always will be. I just want people to acknowledge that. Have no worries, I do work extremely hard, I just wondered if there was a way to optimise for luck. Work is like the kernel of truth that you put out there, which needs to be really very good, and it is then multiplied by the society around you. But just understand that luck is and always will be the defining factor in people's lives. Randomness is constant, relentless and universal - don't forget that!

[rudiger]

Mary Gates, Bill Gates' mother, was on the same board as John Opel, the president, chairman and CEO of I.B.M. They discussed her son's company and Mr. Opel mentioned Mrs. Gates to other I.B.M. executives. A few weeks later, I.B.M. took a chance by hiring Microsoft, then a small software company, to develop an operating system for its first personal computer.

So a discussion Mary Gates had with John Opel while they were both serving on the board of United Way of America resulted in an IBM contract being placed with her son Bill's company Microsoft to create an operating system for IBM's first personal computer.

[confluence]

So that's a no then :D.

Reminds me how ludicrous the development of intelligent life was (evolution is the Bill Gates of science theories - mostly luck, lots of time, and a bit of skill haha!).

You need the right planet, with the right sun, lots of water, an atmosphere, a moon, a stable surface, an iron core, plate tectonics, snow ball earth -> oxygen/ozone, organic molecules from the oort cloud, and that meteor that killed the dinosaurs (with no subsequent extinction events since).

Sounds like the beginning of a bad sci-fi series!

I'm sure I missed things out, but it was a series of ridiculously unlikely events. Reminds me of a Simpson's episode on time travel - kill a mosquito, end the world :D.

Que sera, sera!

[kamaal]

Other way to look at it is, He had to build a company first.

How would Mary Gates be of any help to him if he hadn't built the company?

Her influence was a multiplier and not the only reason for his success.

[confluence]

Correct.

But it was the main reason you or I even discuss him right now, which implies that it was one hell of a multiplier.

My problem is that the ratios are very distorted: 1% work vs. 99% luck. Work is necessary but not sufficient is all I'm saying.

Hence how would one optimise the multiplier (whilst obviously working on being just plain good), if that is at all possible.

[kamaal]

I don't deny this at all. There might be a lot of people who are as hardworking and ready with something to give them a multiplier. But they might have somebody like Mary Gates as their mother.

My problem is people taking that as a reason to not do the base work at the first place.

I know of people who hunt 'luck' stories whole day to prove why they being lazy is OK. And not just that, now they expect to get equally 'lucky'. And when they don't they call it 'injustice', 'unfair' and things like that.

[rudiger]

Here's what Paul Graham has to say in How to Make Wealth: Millions, Not Billions (http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html):

> If $3 million a year seems high to some people, it will seem low to others. Three million? How do I get to be a billionaire, like Bill Gates?

> So let's get Bill Gates out of the way right now. It's not a good idea to use famous rich people as examples, because the press only write about the very richest, and these tend to be outliers. Bill Gates is a smart, determined, and hardworking man, but you need more than that to make as much money as he has. You also need to be very lucky.

> There is a large random factor in the success of any company. So the guys you end up reading about in the papers are the ones who are very smart, totally dedicated, and win the lottery. Certainly Bill is smart and dedicated, but Microsoft also happens to have been the beneficiary of one of the most spectacular blunders in the history of business: the licensing deal for DOS. No doubt Bill did everything he could to steer IBM into making that blunder, and he has done an excellent job of exploiting it, but if there had been one person with a brain on IBM's side, Microsoft's future would have been very different. Microsoft at that stage had little leverage over IBM. They were effectively a component supplier. If IBM had required an exclusive license, as they should have, Microsoft would still have signed the deal. It would still have meant a lot of money for them, and IBM could easily have gotten an operating system elsewhere.

> Instead IBM ended up using all its power in the market to give Microsoft control of the PC standard. From that point, all Microsoft had to do was execute. They never had to bet the company on a bold decision. All they had to do was play hardball with licensees and copy more innovative products reasonably promptly.

> If IBM hadn't made this mistake, Microsoft would still have been a successful company, but it could not have grown so big so fast. Bill Gates would be rich, but he'd be somewhere near the bottom of the Forbes 400 with the other guys his age.

So "luck" largely took Bill Gates from millions to billions, a 100x to 1000x multiplier.

[kamaal]

>>So "luck" largely took Bill Gates from millions to billions, a 100x to 1000x multiplier.

I never denied that. I am just saying you have to first make to those millions.

And making millions is not easy.