How to increase your luck as a founder: part
1
Luck has a tremendous impact on founders. The good news is that you can increase your luck. Here are thoughts on how to do that.
Pieter Levels, one of the most successful bootstrapped founders in the world, created over 70 projects.
Only four of them made any money and grew.
That's a 5% success rate.
Just think about it: One of the smartest and most talented indie founders in the world had a 95% failure rate with their projects.
Luck is something that has a tremendous impact on us as founders:
Mark Zuckerberg said that "success like mine only happens with luck."
Julia, the co-founder of Kapwing, one of the most successful SaaS companies recently, also admitted that you need luck to succeed.
The good news is that you can increase your luck. But before we do that, let's learn more about luck.
What is (good) luck?
When we say that someone got lucky, we usually mean that he or she received a disproportionately large reward with minimal effort (or no effort at all).
Examples:
Winning the lottery (the effort: buying a ticket)
Got an enterprise customer (the effort: none; someone referred them to the founder)
Got a job offer from a major company (the effort: got an interview, got rejected, then was contacted months later as a suitable candidate)
The dictionary definition of luck is "success or failure apparently brought by chance rather than through one's own actions.".
Luck matters more than we realize
Seemingly trivial factors that are outside of our control influence our success in profound ways:
About half of the differences in income across people worldwide are explained by their country of residence and by the income distribution within that country,
There's a birthday bias where most people who get drafted for a particular sport are born close to the draft date.
Two Italian physicists did a simulation in which they simulated the evolution of careers over 40 years. The conclusion? Luck plays a far greater role in life success than we realize (books like Fooled by Randomness demonstrate several other points that confirm this).
Life (and entrepreneurship) is not just about luck
After reading how much luck matters in life, many people fall into the trap of thinking that success is only about luck.
This is wrong. One VC on HackerNews said something about this, which caught my attention: All successful startups are lucky, but they're never just lucky. If they were, we could save ourselves a lot of work by reading applications and doing interviews.
Luck is important, but not the whole factor: Skills matter. Talent matter. The way you think matters. When it comes to having a successful business, at least, there are a whole range of things within your control that you can do to increase your probability of success.
My problem is that many people in this (indie hackers) space ignore the importance of luck. Some only acknowledge its importance without digging deeper into the topic.
I've spent over 10 hours researching luck
I focused on overall luck and luck as a founder. I watched close to 100 videos, browsed 3–4 major books about the topic, and read pretty much every post and news story on Hacker News about luck/getting lucky.
If you want to learn more about how to get luckier as a founder, this is probably the best series on the internet to get started.
Types of luck
When most people think about luck, they mean blind luck. You walk down the street and see a $100 bill. You hang out with a friend, and you get an extra drink with your owner.
Sure, these are all things that are cool to experience.
When I talk about luck, however, I mean about a type of luck that's far more powerful. This is a type of luck where you have to buy a ticket to get a chance to win:
To win the lottery, you need to get a ticket
To write a successful book, you need to invest in your education (learn to read, learn to write, learn to construct sentences, etc.)
To create successful software, you need to know how to code (or have enough money to hire someone else to do it for you).
The "ticket" you "buy" to get a chance to win and get lucky often comes in the form of education, hard work, etc. Ever heard of the quote "Chance favors the prepared mind"? If you didn't understand that quote, this should make it clearer.
I've read posts from Marc Andressen and Naval on luck. In general, they say there are 4 types of luck:
Blind luck: We've talked about this type of luck before. You can't influence it and it's totally random.
Hustle luck: Ever heard of the quote: "90% of success in life is showing up?" This is 'luck' that happens as a result of something you do: For eg. you tweet 2000 times and nothing happens, but your next tweet goes viral and you get thousands of new followers. You've hustled your way to this luck.
"Discover" luck: This is when you're sensitive to chances that others miss. You have deep knowledge in an area, and you start seeing opportunities that not many people can see. Example: Thousands of people saw ana pple fall from a tree. It was Newton who turned this into a big scientific discovery.
Here are a few other examples of "discover" luck:
Alexander Fleming and penicillin: Fleming noticed that mold had contaminated his petri dishes and killed the bacteria he was studying. His deep knowledge of microbiology allowed him to recognize this as a significant discovery, leading to the development of antibiotics.
Percy Spencer and the microwave oven: While working on radar technology, Spencer noticed that a chocolate bar in his pocket had melted. His expertise in electronics enabled him to connect this observation to the potential for cooking food using microwaves.
Many pivots came from "discover" luck as well:
YouTube's evolution from video dating: YouTube initially started as a video dating site called "Tune In Hook Up." The founders noticed users were uploading all sorts of videos, not just dating profiles. This observation led them to pivot to a general video-sharing platform.
Twitch.tv's evolution: Justin Kan started with a 24/7 livestream of his life (Justin.tv). Noticing the popularity of gaming content, the team created a dedicated gaming section. This observation led to Twitch, which became a major platform for game streaming.
Some people call this "timing luck". Bill Gross, an ultra-successful entrepreneur, did a small analysis of which factors contributed the most to startup success. The results:
Timing - 42%
Team/execution - 32%
Idea - 28%
Business model - 24%
Funding - 14%
Why did "business model" and "funding" matter so little? Well, you can create your business model later if customers are demanding what you're creating. And if you're underfunded and getting traction, it's not that hard to get funding if you're in that situation.
"Attraction" luck. At this stage, luck comes to you. You have a personal brand and/or are known by people as an expert in a field. Say you're the world's best person at deep sea level dividing. Someone discovers fortune at the deep sea level, and you're one of the rare people who can dig that fortune. So they come to you.
Part 2 of this series will focus on how to improve the 3 types of luck we mentioned above. You'll learn how to get better at "hustle luck," how to be more attuned to the world around you, and how to get more "attraction" luck.
Highly recommended for anyone eager to harness the subtle yet powerful elements of chance in their entrepreneurial journey.
Well, luck or more formally speaking, randomization, is unpredictable by nature. But fortunately, we also have central limit theorem/law of large numbers so we can try many times by averaging the mean and make less variance, and eventually see a predictable pattern over the long game. You can try and fail many times, but you only have to win once.
This is one of the greatest post I have ever found on the internet which explains the luck factor in this much practical and relatable sense. Thanks a lot for sharing this insightful post and waiting for Part 2.
Life moves forward by rolling the dice. Thanks a lot!
thanks for the post.
How to differentiate between a lack of luck and a need for skill improvement when a project fails?
just doing it is also a way to ensure more luck towards yourself
I second this thing. Luck is definitely necessary for reaching higher levels. Your hardwork can only take you up to a certain level. From there, luck picks you up!
Well, more inspiring words, Each topic is so beginner-friendly. waiting for part 2
I have the same mindset as this post. Been on my way to construct luck for my future-self.
Waiting for the next episode.
This is an incredibly insightful post! The exploration of luck as not just a random occurrence but something that can be influenced by preparation, persistence, and expertise is a refreshing perspective. It's fascinating to see how even successful founders like Pieter Levels experience such a high "failure" rate, emphasizing that luck plays a critical role, but isn't the only factor in success. The breakdown of the different types of luck—blind, hustle, discover, and attraction—provides a practical framework for founders to think about how they can increase their odds of success. Looking forward to Part 2 and learning more about how to harness these forms of luck!
Great post! For me the phrase "Luck is when opportunity meets preparedness" comes to mind!
In other words, I think luck takes hard work to generate, and also while the idea of "casting the net wide" (e.g. trying ~70 different projects) is good to see what gets traction, the downside is you're spread thin trying to build a quality product and get momentum / traction.
So like anything else, I think it's a balance! And important not to over-index on the universe gifting you with good luck and being willing to push on in a project if you have conviction it will eventually lead to good things :)
Truly an informative, sensational, and inspirational story indeed. I particularly like how you framed it as 'luck' :)
Eagerly waiting for part 2!
Yeah, kind of. I was always dedicated to IT stuff and liked it. It was fortunate for me to be able to work in the IT field because it paid well. So, luck matters.
A thought-provoking article that balances the role of luck and effort in entrepreneurial success. The breakdown of different types of luck, especially "discover luck," is insightful. It reminds entrepreneurs that while we can't control blind luck, we can position ourselves to recognize opportunities.