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