[general_failure]

Success and significance is relative and it is important that you see why it is so. I don't know where you are from but opportunity is a big part of the story. A majority of the world does not have the same level of opportunity as the western world. Being in the bay area, being born with the right passport, being around with the right people, right education etc are really big influencers of success and have nothing to do with individual itself.

This is not to take away anything from what many people like PG have done, but it is for you to realize that sometimes lots of energy is spent by other people just trying to achieve basic things which are usually taken for granted.

As an example, I wanted to travel on a business trip to this country. My partner could go immediately because he didn't need a visa. My visa processing is still stuck and it's been a week now. Lost opportunity and no amount of hardwork and perseverance from my side can fix it. yeah, this is part of the reason that I am writing this comment. I feel terrible about my passport :)

[battani]

Jan Koum, founder of WhatsApp, was born in a tiny village in Ukraine, grew up without a father, worked as a cleaner in a grocery, and was almost homeless. Today he is worth $6.3 billion.

You'll find a way if it's important enough to you.

[dllthomas]

That's not well reasoned. A world in which there is always a way available is certainly consistent with the anecdote, but so is one where there generally is not a way except awarded at random to one otherwise hopeless person in ten million. You need to explain why this isn't isomorphic to "just keep buying those lottery tickets".

[notahacker]

I suspect the fact that he was fortunate enough for his mother to choose to migrate to the software capital of the world just before the dotcom boom probably had more outstandingly positive influence on his chances of starting a successful software business than any negative impact a part-time job as a teenager or his father choosing to remain in the Ukraine could manage.

Trust me, as determined as he's undoubtedly been as an adult, a teenage Jan Koum didn't cause the Iron Curtain to fall or the US to be accepting Jewish Ukrainian refugee families at that time and offering them welfare, and the average wannabe immigrant to the USA has absolutely zero chance of repeating that feat