Having read pg's book (ANSI Common Lisp) and all of his articles; I liked this question and the answers pg has given.
I agree with forgotusername's opinion about the luck plays a good part in life, but as long as the Viaweb's concerned, the luck had its minimal share because I still remember in one of pg's articles he was talking about how frequently they have written their code base in order to serve a user experience better than the competition. That's hardly got anything to do with luck.
And if you've ever read all his articles, you might have spotted sections talking about when and how the luck has been playing really impressive role; and there you got it: In the case of Bill Gate's Microsoft. How it suddenly became a multi billion dollar company almost overnight is plain luck.
Also when you consider for how much Viaweb was sold, which was about $50M, and compare it to other sales most of them as high as ~$1B, again there is no luck to be talked about.
I agree with forgotusername's opinion about the luck plays a good part in life, but as long as the Viaweb's concerned, the luck had its minimal share because I still remember in one of pg's articles he was talking about how frequently they have written their code base in order to serve a user experience better than the competition. That's hardly got anything to do with luck.
And if you've ever read all his articles, you might have spotted sections talking about when and how the luck has been playing really impressive role; and there you got it: In the case of Bill Gate's Microsoft. How it suddenly became a multi billion dollar company almost overnight is plain luck.
Also when you consider for how much Viaweb was sold, which was about $50M, and compare it to other sales most of them as high as ~$1B, again there is no luck to be talked about.