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Well, then, like anything else, you maximize your chances of success and having a few lucky breaks by: (a) having a long time horizon, developing expertise, and sticking with it, (b) simply going up to bat more and taking more and more chances (e.g. "You miss 100% of the shots you don't take"), and (c) learning from failure/mistakes and rebounding from it.

At first glance, his post reads like he had one lucky break after another after another, but I'm sure the road felt very shaky and uncertain along the way, and he doesn't mention any of his mistakes/failures and I'm sure he made several (it just wasn't the point of the post).

Max Levchin endured 3 failures early on, and then he had this chance encounter with Peter Thiel before founding PayPal: http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=1022



I'd like to add to this. One thing Jack Dorsey said (paraphrasing here) in his interview with Kevin Rose (in Foundation series), is that he wishes he is fortunate to realise an opportunity when it presents itself.

To me that means 2 things: seeking out and creating opportunities. Build stuff, meet people, take risks and chances. This increases the chances of opportunities (luck) happening: Meeting that perfect co-founder, stumbling onto a brilliant idea, finding the right investors, etc.

Then secondly, you have to practice to be open-minded enough to realise that when an opportunity actually arrives, you know it is one! You might seek and create opportunities as much you want, as most of it ends up being luck, but if you don't realise that luck, you've missed the boat.




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