To be such an extreme outlier success as Bill Gates took extreme talent, extreme, all-consuming hard work, and extreme privilege and opportunity (luck) all combined in a perfect storm.

He still would have been successful without all of those things together, but not at the same level.

This is approximately the correct breakdown. Its interesting that ⅔ of the combo could be lumped into different kinds of luck.

You can't do much about your inherited or birth situation, but the extremely successful people I know usually have a very fortunate background and also worked hard to expand their future luck surface so that when outrageous opportunity lightning was looking to strike somewhere, they had an outsized chance to be the spot.

Well, offtopic a bit but.. People say you never know what they have to sacrifice for they success.

Listening lately news about Bill and he's circles of friends.. I can honestly say I am not surprised why these certain billionaires are never prosecuted of anything..

What are you trying to imply?

Microsoft paid hefty fines for its monopolistic behavior...

I suspect: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/12/business/jeffrey-epstein-...

GP shouldn't insinuate vaguely, IMO.