luck plays an important part, but not everyone realizes it or admits it.
It is far too simple to say that it is only luck. Persistence and good processes often lead to “luck”.
"Luck doesn't come to you, you go to it".
Which is to say you are right: if you keep showing up at stuff you will eventually get lucky. Luck can only happen to those who try and get lucky. Our real world resembles an MMORPG game -- you need a team for 98% of everything -- then I'd say both you and your parent poster are correct.
If you are successful several times against the odds it's probably not just mere coincidence anymore. You know, stats.
You also likely have funds to float you for longer.
You also likely have a network to leverage/exploit.
These external things all can stem from a lucky first go.
Then following your advise in less lucky situation is likely to fail.
Though, realistically, the chance should increase for the following attempts, because you can reuse some resources and contacts you gained with the first success. The first startup is like "I need to succeed within three years, or return to a regular job to pay my bills". But if it succeeds, the second startup is like "I can keep trying as long as I want to, no pressure".
This is soluble.
Said differently, who invented the first bootstraps and how did they do it without bootstraps?
He writes about his admiration for a successful pro tennis athlete, her intensity and dedication to her sport, and her strangely vacuous response to the question "How do you do it Tracy?" - which she answers with some vague platitudes. His point is: very successful people are so busy being successful, they're so deeply immersed in their craft, that they don't seem to even have the conscious introspective wherewithal to articulate what it is they're doing. Everything they know about their craft and their life is just so tacit to them. They've either never taken the time to really introspect, again because they're so caught up in just winning and getting things done, or they're just genuinely incapable of gleaning any wisdom from what it is that they do. So maybe it's not particularly useful to take advice from these people after all.
Now, this is probably the case for most such people, but there is a very small minority that do eventually cultivate the ability to articulate their internalized understanding and wisdom of their success to others. Maybe PG is one of them. Maybe not.
The first was mentioned by someone else in the thread whose response i can't find again due to opening this in a different device: why is it more valuable to hear advice from winners than, say, a failure from their mother's basement as you put it? In relation to the article's key point, that's very conventional (hence the irony) :)
The second thing I noticed was the assumption that a successful person knows their success or could explain it to anyone -- I haven't found this to be true and can personally attest that I can rarely explain my own to someone else. But there are definitely other reasons I can't, not least I'm just a poor explainer.
I found the article intriguing for a lot of reasons, not least of which is I always see a bit of myself in nerd content like it. I found myself thinking of all the conventions I absorb and recall when I realized I'd absorbed them. On the other hand, I'm renown in my family and among friends as completely unconventional and am generally The Weirdo. The resolution of that tension is intensely interesting to me. How I see all the conventions in myself, but near no one else seems to see it that way at all.
More to the point: given the option, I'll read the advice of a failure in a heartbeat and ponder it for days. I've never found advice from "pros" or success stories to be nearly as interesting. If you can, explain why opinions from winners is more interesting to you. Genuinely intrigued and curious to hear a different perspective.
But someone who almost succeeded, and then failed because of X... if you want to try the same thing, you probably want to know about X. You probably want to know about X regardless, because it may generalize to other situations.
You know, learn from mistakes of others.
> On the other hand, you are just a random guy from the internet, and offering advice with no data at all.
So do you listen to Sam Altman?
You're throwing half of the information away. You need to know not just what to do, but also what not to do. Losers can teach you about mistakes, injuries etc.
On the other hand, you are just a random guy from the internet, and offering advice with no data at all.
You might be broke and posting from your mom's basement, or from the top of a penthouse that you bought from building successful companies/startups.
We don't know, so your advice will be treated like: just another opinion, from a internet rando/keyboard warrior, and everyone has opinions.
I listen to PG as he has been more right then wrong, also he was very successful, multiple times, and is single handedly a major contributer to many products I use.