...and Wozniak was also lucky he met Jobs. So I'm not sure what the point is. The subtext sounds like you're bitter that it's hard to become a billionaire on the the basis of engineering skills alone, and that you don't value certain qualities in other people unless you perceive yourself as also having those qualities. I mean, it's not really subtext even, it's practically dripping from your words.

You're reading way too much into what people are writing.

Why would I be bitter I am doing just fine thank you. But yes of course Wozniak was also lucky he met Jobs. That doesn't change anything about my point. It actually just proves it even more.

>Steve Jobs was lucky he met Wozniak

Luck here seems to be the lazy way of explaining events.

Rather, Steve Jobs likely felt the need to pair with a very smart engineer in order to do what he wanted, and came upon Wozniak.

> ... and came upon Wozniak

There was only one Wozniak in the world at that time, remember that very few people had that knowledge, time (being very young) and hands-on experience on electronics.

Since I am replying deep on this thread, I just want to say that Steve Jobs had also some rare skills but they were very lucky to meet in the world. I don't know of any other country, beyond UK (ARM/BBC/Acorn/Sinclair/Amstrad), where you can have this early access to computers and electronic components.

It's not nearly as much as an ordered process as you imply; the fact Woz was in his immediate environment was the reason they teamed. Jobs didn't go on a process of finding a technical cofounder.

This is known to be false. Wozniak and Jobs just happened to meet socially, and Jobs didn't know what was possible in computing until after he and Wozniak had already collaborated on other projects.

That is one point of view, but dare I say your understanding of luck is too all encompassing. Luck is really more of a probability, which can be explained mostly through an understanding of statistics. Steve Jobs wasn't lucky that he met Woz any more than Bill Gates was lucky for buying DOS for peanuts and then reselling it to IBM for many times more. Statistically, Steve would have met the right person if he tried hard enough, it just so happens he met Woz. Like I said previously, grit is one of the most common things (not the only) thing you'll find in successful people. If you get "lucky" that will certainly help, but it all comes down to intellect and drive (which we will call grit for this conversation). How many lottery winners or sportsball superstars end up broke 10 years later? They were lucky, what happened to them? They were idiots :)

Yes it's probatilistic just like success.

You are confusing what you would like to be the case (that you can predict success purely by human factors) with what is the case (that success is also probatilistic.

To claim that it's to encompassing makes no sense. If you want to truly understand instead of chanting some simplistic catchprases we entrepreneurs like to tell us self then it cant be encompassing enough.

Life is mostly probatilistic and we have much less control of our lifes than we would like to tell ourselves and each other.