I think a bunch of things that people often classify as "luck" should really be looked at as timing issues.

Part of building a business is understanding market conditions and competition. I get that things can come completely out of left field, but there are different degrees to which you can monitor competition and how receptive people will be to your product or service. It's dangerous (and potentially fatal) to be head down building your product and ignoring looming threats.

> I think a bunch of things that people often classify as "luck" should really be looked at as timing issues.

I think there's some Venn Diagramming to be done here. Luck doesn't mean that something is impossible to react to; it simply means that you're not the instigating agent of the event. There's a very large set of categories that are luck, and some of those are timing issues.

I had the misfortune of starting work on a travel startup a week before 9-11. Oh well.

Too bad, but probably better than a year before 9-11. At least you got to fail fast rather than slow.

> Marc Andreessen, an investor in TipMobile, summed up our situation this way: “There’s very little difference between being early, late, or just plain wrong.” While that may sound harsh, I think there is some wisdom encoded into that view of the world. Markets can be fickle, after all, and so if a market shifts on you and leaves your current product out of fit, then it’s your responsibility as an entrepreneur to adapt to the new conditions and tailor your company to survive in whatever environment you find yourself in.

Yes, yes, yes. I can't emphasize this enough. Too often we glorify these startup "unicorns" for their apparent innate "ability" to time the market. The latter part of this statement is the secret sauce.

I think timing is a better word for "luck" typically, even in the examples given here. Sometimes you can control that, usually you can't...