Luck: The Secret Sauce of Successful Startups

What if successful startups are just lucky?

That was the question that Vianney Lecroart, a programmer and entrepreneur from Paris, asked in his essay a few months ago. It started an interesting and heated discussion in Hacker News and Reddit.

Lecroart argued that, since there are too many variables that goes into building a successful startup worth $10 million+, even if it’s not random, it’s too complex to be controlled.

Most entrepreneurs’ reaction after reading that essay was probably this:

Troy from Community looking shocked

One things I consistently see in a lot of successful entrepreneurs is that they have this powerful and contagious belief that they are in control of their own destiny and success.

It’s like Steve Job’s reality distortion field. Steve Jobs had this uncanny ability to convince himself and others to believe almost anything with a mix of charm, charisma, bravado, hyperbole, marketing, appeasement and persistence

Then along comes “Lean Startup.” Entrepreneurs and innovators saw it incorrectly as the excalibur sword that will slay any dragons that stood in their way of Google-like success.

But, applying the lean startup principles to new ventures doesn’t guarantee success. Sure, you can de-risk as much as possible. But in the end, there are way too many moving parts to predict success.

So what’s luck to do with it?

Here’s what I believe:

Be Heroic in Behavior

Heroes are heroes because they are heroic in behavior, not because they’ve won or lost.

That’s what Nassim Nicholas Taleb said in his book, Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets.

In other words, luck is earned.

‘Fuck “Good luck.” Earn. That. Luck.’

- Jimmy Thong Tran

Kabir Shahani, CEO of Appature, which was acquired by IMS Health last year, noted the importance of luck.

As an entrepreneur, you have to rely on luck. Honestly, being an entrepreneur, in my opinion, is 95 percent luck; four percent knowing when to recognize it; and one percent hard work. I mean, that’s the equation.

Luck is the secret sauce of successful people whether in startups or not.

As I write this in the ‘dungeon’ at Boost Accelerator here in Silicon Valley, I’m still shell-shocked how I got here.

If Joy from Lean Startup Machine Toronto didn’t see my tweet, if I didn’t get invited to speak at Lean Startup Machine, if my application to speak at Lean Startup conference was rejected, if I didn’t write that essay about landing pages, I wouldn’t be here.

The stars aligned. There’s no other way to put it.

Put yourself out there. Be heroic in behavior. Earn. That. Luck.

success

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Lean startup advocate, startup generalist, speaker and startup mentor based in Toronto, Canada. Ready to help you at http://sohelpful.com/ramlijohn.

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  • http://www.smallhq.com/ Matt Goldman

    No way, man. Sure luck plays a role on some level, but I can tell you I spent seven plus years trying to get apps off the ground. And it wasn’t until I started putting in the hard work that things began to turn around. Plain and simple. Drop the excuses!

    :-)

  • Lin Ti-Wen

    I think one of the key point in this argument is how you define luck? if you extend far enough, everything can be explained by being lucky.

  • Hal

    The problem with this is that when people hear “it’s 95% luck”, they tend to use that as an excuse to not work. And it’s not even true. Hard work isn’t 1%. It’s a multiplier. You can’t do zero work and still get 95% lucky in business. If you do zero work, you have zero business, no matter how lucky you are.

    • Vianney Lecroart

      You right about the first sentence and it’s exactly where we have to start education. Explain them that yes it’s luck but you must control it for example by being always aware and learn to see the opportunities behind everything.

    • Fabricio Buzeto

      I think you’re right, if you only get luck is like winning the lottery and being unable to carry all the money with you. Even worse, is like winning and forgetting to check the numbers (and never knowing that you’ve won).

  • Vianney Lecroart

    Hi Ramli, I wrote the article you talk about. I cannot be more agree with what you say :-)

    I just wonder, what would be Steve Jobs if his neighbor wasn’t Steve Wozniak? Pure luck. Steve Jobs is very good at seeing how his future could be and convince everybody it’ll be like he think. He is also very good as seeing opportunities everywhere.

  • Universal_Mind

    People don’t need 90% of the products out there.The other 10% are needed .
    Needed products = luck ?

  • Mike Kirkup

    I think that this cartoon says it all. Great post Ramli and good luck down at Boost.

    http://tinypic.com/r/11qgzcz/5

    • http://RamliJohn.com/about-me Ramli John

      Thanks Mike! I like the new Velocity brand. See ya January 21 for Velocity Rez Dinner

  • Fabricio Buzeto

    Great post, but remember that, when we do a good job we increase our “luck points”. So at each step of your history that you expose yourself to new people, opportunities and experiences you make your possibilities of finding this one of the pots of gold even higher.

  • http://thinkfuture.com/ Chris Kalaboukis

    It is 99% luck – if you do nothing about promoting yourself and your product or service. The more you promote your startup – the more people know about YOU (I’ve always said its not who you know its who knows you) the more you can increase the odds. You can code the most awesome product but if no ones knows about it – your chances of success are 1%. Case in point: I developed a Q&A site back in the early 2000s which did OK but was not super successful – mostly due to lack of promotion. I’m not going to make the same mistake again with the “remastered” version I just soft launched.

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