
How Did the World's Rich Get That Way? Luck (2013) - pmiller2
http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2013-04-22/how-did-the-worlds-rich-get-that-way-luck
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ChuckMcM
NB: The Vikings would call a king who was victorious in battle and on sea
voyages as "lucky".

That said, there is "luck" and there is "luck". In one version you do
something stupid and get a huge reward, in the other version you take a risk
and manage to succeed.

Julie Leach, who just won $310M on the PowerBall lottery[1], that was the
first kind, its dumb to spend cash on lottery tickets, but its awesome when
they make you a millionaire.

Larry and Sergey had the second kind, they took a risk that they could make a
functional business model out of Search and they managed to do so, so they
reaped a huge reward.

In my experience I've met "luck blind" people who can see no difference
between what Julie did and what Larry and Sergey did, and people who can
differentiate between the two forms. I've also observed that it is
statistically more likely for someone who is NOT luck blind to become wealthy
than it is for someone who is luck blind.

[1] [http://money.cnn.com/2015/10/06/news/michigan-powerball-
lott...](http://money.cnn.com/2015/10/06/news/michigan-powerball-lottery-
winner/)

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theworstshill
They got that way through creativity AND ability to embody that creativity in
digital or physical goods/services that can be sold. Very little of it had to
do with luck, although successful people often talk about "luck" to minimize
the effect of their success and appear more humble.

~~~
mreiland
There's a luck aspect, but luck in itself isn't enough.

There's also the ability to recognize an opportunity, and having the
resources, or the ability to gather the resources, to take advantage of the
opportunity.

But oftentimes the opportunity itself _can_ be 'lucky', for some definition of
the word.

