You only have to be right once | Hacker News Reader

You only have to be right once

blogmaverick.com

29 pointsiamyoohoo16 comments

Then everyone can tell you how lucky you are.

He was lucky though. Broadcast.com was the most bogus of all Bubble acquisitions. Cuban got the highest payoff per dollar of value created in the history of start-ups.

The fact that he worked hard for 20 years before that doesn't mean he didn't get lucky. Randomness strikes everyone equally.

Still, I think the point is that you only have to get lucky once. Sure, his last company was lucky. But if you start 10 companies, how lucky is it that one succeeds? Much less so than if you only started 1.

my definition of luck is at the intersection of preparation and opportunity. Therefore, a better thing to say is "He was prepared". He had actually put himself in a position, through starting MicroWhatever to reap more through Broadcast.

Would a buying a lottery ticket be an intersection of preparation and opportunity?

That is not your definition of luck. It is Darrell Royal's definition of luck.

Probably Shakespeare's too.

I think its an insult to successful people, when others go around branding their achievements as "luck".

The fact that we were born in North America and not into a war torn anarchy based country like Somalia, we should all consider ourselves lucky. From that point on what you choose to do with your time and the results of that time spent ain't got nothin to do with luck.

You should give The Black Swan a read sometime. Lots of people are smart, well prepared, work hard, but few get the phenomenal returns that Mr. Cuban has. That's luck.

One example is doctors: they are people who work hard to achieve, do an important job, and certainly earn well, but they don't seem to get these stratospheric startup paybacks, just a good, steady high return on their investment in learning and practice.

To me "luck" is like the word "love", the moment you start using it to describe things, you stop thinking about it. Perhaps in the case of love thats a good thing, but when trying to be succesful at something, going around calling things luck instead of trying to find the source does not do you any good.

I don't think broadcast.com even exists anymore. Yahoo spent almost 6 billion dollars for a company/website that doesn't exist less than 10 years later (if I remember my facts right).

So I'm sure not everyone agrees with his definition of "right".

Luck is a topic that really deserves more attention, especially in business schools. Almost any successful person will tell you that luck played a major part in their success.

Being right in math is not luck; it's usually the result of deduction. It's deducing two manifestations of the same thing are indeed the same.

Being right in business doesn't mean the same thing as it does in math. I think that's where people get "being right" confused. Being right in business can mean lots of different things, but most of the time, it means some idea can generate profit. It's more similar to chess, where you can position yourself the best you can, but are still totally dependent on other factors (in chess, your opponent; in business, many many factors). Luck definitely plays a major part in this scenario, no matter how ingenious you are. It's not an insult to say one got lucky in business, as saying "you got lucky" here is basically the same as saying "other variables did not impede your plan". The appropriate response should be "that's pretty obvious".

In poker we have a saying about tournaments, which is that they are a lottery and the best players get a few extra tickets. The business world seems much the same. Luckily just like in poker, if you keep getting a disproportionately large number of tickets, and keep drawing over and over, your chances of winning approach 1.

Mark's entire "Success and Motivation" series is awesome!!

http://www.google.com/search?q=site:www.blogmaverick.com+%22...

Mark has his "I told you so" moment that we all dream of. Good stuff.

Business should be just like basketball, doing what you love. Then again if the world was already perfect how could anyone get lucky?

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