Increasing Your Luck Surface Area and Yes, the Big Dogs Read Hacker News | Hacker News Reader

Increasing Your Luck Surface Area and Yes, the Big Dogs Read Hacker News

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137 pointsjayro14 comments

Jason Calacanis follows me on twitter, I presume it's through here. I find this absolutely hilarious because I basically only ever use twitter to claim special offers and send shoutouts to pirate radio stations.

I presume he's using some sort of automated marketing tool to follow lots of people who will then follow him back, the sly dog.

Thinking about it it probably means that those social media influence ranking tools give me quite a lot of points. I love how ePenis is now a real, measurable value.

Am I missing something or was the linked post basically about someone of fame adding the author to its G+ circle? Very interesting.

"One of benefits of publishing something on the web is that if it's the right kind of post and if it catches some wind, it can greatly increase your luck surface area."

Nice opening sentence, but the article doesn't really hook you, as I got three paragraphs in, and didn't understand where this 'luck surface area' was going. I got the sense it was just some naval-gazing discussion of getting blog posts to appear on Hacker News, so I just stopped reading.

I read it twice because I thought I missed something. Nope.

The article is short on substance, but I really like the concept of the luck surface area. The author does appear to be the coiner of the term (top hit on Google: http://www.codusoperandi.com/posts/increasing-your-luck-surf...).

The idea of 'luck surface area' is that by making an effort or putting something out there can increase your odds of having a chance encounter with a positive benefit to yourself.

Jason is giving an example about how a blog post he wrote ended up leading to him making a connection with a high-powered financial trader. It is pretty cool to think that you can write 500 words, hit the front page of HN, and suddenly have the attention of someone whom you could never get an audience with normally.

Even though the article covers a lot of other things, I very much agree with the headline.

I am a newcomer to Hacker News, but after spending just short two weeks immersing myself into the community I only wish I have committed HN to my daily routine earlier.

There is definitely lots of benefits to posting your submissions and trying to hit front page to promote yourself and get business for your company... But merely following discussions on the multitude of technical and business problems can really help you find the solutions you have not thought about...

In just two weeks here, I've already made some contacts from the site and incorporated some learnings into our product.

Definitely want to thank the entire community.

Jason, this is too meta. I clicked this because I knew you wrote it based on the title and thought it would be worth my time to read a well-thought content-filled Jason Roberts article. Imagine my suprise when it was a meta-article about another article you wrote and someone adding you on G+. Come on man.

Fair enough. I'll try to do a little better next time. But in all fairness it was just an anecdotal G+ post.

If anyone is interested in more about the Luck Surface Area concept, I believe it was first mentioned on Jason's podcast TechZing.

Ep 59: http://techzinglive.com/page/295/techzing-59-jasonism at the 65minute mark

Oh, there's definitely some prior art here.

Woody Allen (80% of success is showing up) and Pliny the Elder (fortune favors the bold!) come to mind.

You know you've made it when you appear in the same sentence as Woody Allen.

Pliny the Elder will be so happy to hear that!

HN is the new TED

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