Not just luck. Amazon started in '94, but they didn't have to charge sales taxes in most US states, giving them a regulatory loophole advantage that lasted well past 2010. Plus their survival in the early days also had to do with the millions in venture capital propping them up for a decade until they finally became profitable in 2004.

why are you quoting luck? I didn't say it, but somehow you conjecture that bezos won the lottery. Absolutely false: he is the _right_ person to execute, among a pool of a lot of other people capable of executing at the same level as him. To have 5-10 years of running a business without competition (AWS) is almost unheard of. He wouldn't have been able to do it pre commoditization of virtualization technology.

edit: Bah to a certain extent you're right, plenty of tech is before its time and me saying being at the right place at the right time is a hind-sight 20-20 sort of comment. What I'm trying to say is I think lots of people have the same vision. Some people have it too early, some have it too late, and some have it at the time where the stars align: customers get it, VC gets it, and your company gets and and has the ability to execute on it.

long story short I hope we can agree that while the ability to execute is a requirement it simply isn't enough.

"right place at right time" implies luck was the direct result of Amazon rather than any kind of underlying skill. I'm certainly not suggesting luck didn't play a role, but I'm happily suggesting that you're implication was that luck was the primary factor. I disagree.