Comment by Udo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Udo | Hacker News Reader

An excellent read. Life is rejection. I loved the symmetry between the co-founders' mutual rejection when they first met and then finally their company's rejection at YC.

Cultural matches are important and they drive more decisions than we're all comfortable with. The truth is, we often like to hire, promote, or buy from people who fit a certain stereotype. It's essentially a cargo cult around what successful startup people are expected to look like, and the most uncomfortable thought arising from that is not the number of founders who "wrongly" received funding, but the number of hopefuls who never got the chance.

However, taking the time to really get to know and appreciate a startup person is not something that can reasonably happen a lot when you're in contact with customers, the press, or even your own employees - so the (bad) impression a team makes while interviewing for an incubator or fund raising does tends to follow them around.

People can and do change their appearance to match other people's expectations - and it's a proven, working method of upping your chances. Learning how to interact better with others, while certainly painful, also helps and is more often than not necessary to become successful.

We're often distracted by the Zuckerbergs or Jobs' who are abrasive and embody their own don't-care-for-anything style, but the ugly truth is that those guys got so unbelievably lucky that they never needed to actually work on themselves.

You can create your own luck, too. Not as big s theirs, but enough to open up good opportunities. Its just a matter of spending some time away from the keyboard, talking with the people who have the keys to the doors. Almost all of the time, a simple please will get them to open up the door for you. Just ask.

Talking to people is of course important, but it's also about being in the right place at the right time. You can't just "create your own luck."

That is where the being away from the keyboard part comes into action. You have to actually meet with people to be able to talk them into giving you opportunities.

I don't mean physically being in the right place at the right time. I mean that you happen to be interested in and start a company at the right point in history, where a confluence of technological and societal factors enable you to be that one-in-a-billion person like Jobs or the Zuck. Just running around talking to people isn't going to make you Jobs or the Zuck. It's necessary, but definitely not sufficient.

Of course, that's not to say that you can't be a moderately successful entrepreneur if you "hustle" enough. Just don't expect to have books written and movies made about you. I know plenty of people who have started ventures in important niches and have found moderate success. There's absolutely nothing to be ashamed of if you exit for $10 or 20 million after a couple of years of hard work. But, going in, you have to be aware of the fact that you're almost definitely not going to end up a multi-billionaire.

Depends on how you define "luck" I guess. In a strictly pedantic sense, I agree that you "can't create luck" as there is no such thing. Luck is just a word we apply, in retrospect, to describe what did or didn't happen.

But I would argue very ardently that the expression "the harder I work, the luckier I get" contains a great deal of truth. Work, intent, and focused will can do a lot to shape the world we live in.

I'm reminded of that post that showed up here a year or so back about "how to date a supermodel", which started with something like "move to where supermodels live and go the bars where they go". Yeah, that might not be sufficient, but there's a lot to be said for the "create my own luck" aspect of at least taking the actions that are needed to move you towards your goals.

You should obviously do whatever you can to improve your chances of success. I'm just saying that you shouldn't expect to be the next Facebook or Apple, because that's unrealistic. There's nothing wrong with expecting moderate success.

> I'm reminded of that post that showed up here a year or so back about "how to date a supermodel", which started with something like "move to where supermodels live and go the bars where they go". Yeah, that might not be sufficient, but there's a lot to be said for the "create my own luck" aspect of at least taking the actions that are needed to move you towards your goals.

To follow up on your supermodel analogy, if you were to do that, it would be reasonable to expect that you'll eventually score a date with a supermodel - just don't expect to score a date with $a_top_10_supermodel (whoever that might be).

Agreed.

Yeah, being an average success is great too! I'm average at best, and I have an awesome lifestyle. I dont care about the billions. I just cre about providing a good life for my family.

I wish there was an easier way to find those people with keys.

Sometimes we just need to find our own keys (or even pick the lock). (:

>>We're often distracted by the Zuckerbergs or Jobs' who are abrasive and embody their own don't-care-for-anything style, but the ugly truth is that those guys got so unbelievably lucky that they never needed to actually work on themselves.

[citation needed]

> [citation needed]

This is obviously my opinion. You are free to voice another one or present data that offers another perspective. There is really no "citation needed" for every thesis a person happens to entertain, and that comment alone with no other content accomplishes absolutely nothing besides being rude. Try to reason with me, or if you're lazy, vote me down; though I personally prefer to vote on post quality rather than agreement/disagreement. [citation needed] is not a meaningful interaction in my opinion.

While I agree that "citation needed" is rampant around here, part of the reason is phrasing. You stated an opinion as a fact. A lot of people roll their eyes at this, but if you expect something to be taken as an opinion -- which is totally reasonable -- then you should phrase it that way.

"I get the impression they never had to work on themselves" doesn't beg a citation. It's clearly an opinion and doesn't imply that it's attempting or intended to be anything else.

It may seem pedantic, but when all people have to go on are the words you put in the form, being clear is important.

I think you have a point, but context is important. And I say this as someone who has been repeatedly accused in this forum to make abundant use of "weasel words" just to qualify the boundary between fact and opinion. As a result I don't do it as often anymore, especially when the context of the subject itself already serves as a good indicator that whatever follows will be opinion.

Still, I have to admit that I do believe it to be factual that extremely successful people did not have to work on making themselves pleasant or conformant to the same degree as normal people. I explained the reasoning for this in the sister comment, but the upshot is that I indeed see this as a fact that probably could be supported by biographical evidence.

Meh... I used to feel that way, but over time I've realized that life is too short to stop and waste the time to put "I think" or "I feel" or "in my opinion" in front of everything I write. If I write something, it's implicit that it's my opinion. It may or may not also be a fact. In either case, if somebody disagrees or has a counter-claim or wants to present evidence to the contrary, then let them do it. But bitching because people don't load every paragraph with qualifiers, weasel-words and cop-outs is just silly.

Expecting people to say what they mean has absolutely nothing to do with weasel words or qualifiers. If you can't be bothered to communicate clearly, all you're doing is diluting your message. Hopefully you have nothing important to say, because if you do, everyone loses when you fail to say it clearly.

Right, but adding "in my opinion" and "I think" and "I feel" in front of every opinion has nothing to do with communicating clearly. There are lots of things in communication that are implicit and don't need to be stated explicitly.

vs

Right, but I think that adding "in my opinion" and "I think" and "I feel" in front of every opinion has nothing to do with communicating clearly. In my opinion, there are lots of things in communication that are implicit and don't need to be stated explicitly.

Now, would you really argue that the second version is any more clear, or that anyone's understanding would be changed by adding all those qualifiers? Personally I don't find it to be anything except unnecessarily verbose. shrug

When you say something is "the ugly truth", you're presenting it as fact, not opinion. I don't mean to be rude, but the prevailing attitude on HN of "successful people are successful because they got lucky" is poisonous to say the least.

I'm not asserting that all successful people are that way because of luck, but those two examples are certainly valid in that sense. The citations can be found all over the place, including Wikipedia. That doesn't mean those people didn't have talent. I'm simply stating that they could get by without changing their style because their success predated their need to get along with people.

A lot of extremely successful people got there because of extreme luck. Their extreme luck became an essential component of their success. It's not that they won a planetwide lottery without doing anything for it. It's that they won the lottery and were very competent, and in some cases, hard working. Again, please note that I'm talking about the extremely successful people that we like to iconize.

To be phenomenally successful you typically are extremely young, come from a reasonably affluent background, have enjoyed a very nice education, and your early life is characterized by crossing paths with lots of influential rich people. Contrast that with "normally" successful people, they are just different. They can be any age, come from a variety of backgrounds, and typically they had to deal with (and improve on) a longer streak of rejections.

I don't think it's poisonous to acknowledge luck, it is one of the necessary ingredients of extreme success. And extreme success is usually a necessary ingredient for trend-setting the styles and mannerisms we have come to expect from all successful founders.

It is my opinion that "[citation needed]" can push conversations in a direction that I value, and as such is often a meaningful-to-me interaction.

We can't live in a world where every statement has citations, of course. So in practice, apparently-factual statements often have to stand on the authority of their speaker. As such, it's regrettable when people utter unfounded claims in the language of authority (like "the ugly truth is"). And so it's useful (to me), for people to call out when other people are doing this, in the hopes of eventually raising the conversation. "citation needed" means "This statement is phrased to sound authoritative, but has no evidence, and I think it's wrong, and I'm willing to be persuaded by evidence". I strongly disagree with the claim that it accomplishes nothing but being rude... unless, of course, the recipient (you, in this case) has no interest in discourse.

Why would fearless reason with your unjustified and implausible claim? And why would (s)he downvote your entire comment, just because the last sentence is silly? Upvotes for fearless!

I agree with the sentiment, but I find the actual text of "[citation needed]" too flippant. Instead, I just ask the person to provide a source or an argument.

This is a discussion forum, so the better way to ask for evidence is to present a contrary opinion backed by evidence. That will draw out a meatier response, or if not, still edify the reader. Fearless added absolutely nothing to the conversation in content or in style.

> "This statement is phrased to sound authoritative, but has no evidence, and I think it's wrong, and I'm willing to be persuaded by evidence".

That is just so damned smug. Why doesn't that person have any of these lofty responsibilities about making a perfectly articulated argument? It's acceptable for them to literally type two words as their contribution to the "discourse," and the onus is pushed back onto the person who actually put some effort into it? Discourse does not mean "you will go on at length, and I will offer a simple rejection until I am satisfied with your argument."

> Why would fearless reason with your unjustified and implausible claim?

Because it's a community, it's a two-way street. If he wants to push the conversation that way, he can help it get there with an actual contribution.

edit: On second thought, removed some unnecessary snark. Others have covered my point anyway, just got a bit riled.

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