[seiji]

It's not random in the sense that "anybody who tries has an equal chance at success." The prior you're missing is a person's ability, current mind, and biological mental capacity. Some people are just waaaaaaaaay smarter than other people. "All people are created equal" is a fantasy when you reach extremes (sport abilities, mental abilities, creative abilities).

Now, once you have a baseline genius startup mind, no success is guaranteed anyway. Twitter would be nothing without an Internet-famous founder and techcrunch hyping it up constantly its first few years of existence.

That's not saying you can't be rich. Anybody can always get dumb success (especially these days) with things like advertising or affiliates or ebooks.

The money doesn't enable your happiness — the freedom money provides enables your happiness. You can substitute being rich with having a job/life you don't hate plus a good salary.

[avenger123]

"That's not saying you can't be rich. Anybody can always get dumb success (especially these days) with things like advertising or affiliates or ebooks."

People that are doing this should speakup but I don't believe "anybody" can do the above. Your statement is general to a certain extent and could apply to many areas but I don't think successful people in these areas are any less smart, hardworking, determined than startup founders.

[seiji]

I know people who write really low quality populist fiction on the Amazon Kindle store and bring in over $3k/month. Over time, the old books still sell, so you have recurring revenue that gets compounded as time goes on.

There are other examples, but that's the easiest to understand.