"Successful founders have a healthy vision of what they can control and what they can't, and they try to maneuver their companies into a position to succeed based on the state of the world as they see it at the time. What looks like luck from 30,000 feet was actually the result of a concerted effort day-in and day-out, usually over the course of years, to put themselves in a position to succeed"

...

Isn't calling something a "healthy vision" also a post-hoc explanation of events? I see people putting in "a concerted effort day-in and day-out... to put themselves in a position to succeed" but they generally don't know ahead of time all those factors necessary, so after several years of not succeeding... what did they do wrong?

Each path to 'success' at the level most people think of it, with respect to deca-millionaire levels of wealth - generally doesn't appear to be reproducible at all.