Comments on: How to get really rich http://blogs.n1zyy.com/mistert/2011/04/09/how-to-get-really-rich/ Random thoughts, half thoughts, and just plain stuff I want to blog about Tue, 28 May 2013 21:57:04 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 By: Matt http://blogs.n1zyy.com/mistert/2011/04/09/how-to-get-really-rich/comment-page-1/#comment-864 Matt Mon, 11 Apr 2011 03:07:57 +0000 http://blogs.n1zyy.com/mistert/2011/04/09/how-to-get-really-rich/#comment-864 I was thinking about the “luck” aspect recently, actually. I think you can be really smart and work really hard building something really great, but at the end of the day, luck is still a big factor in whether it catches on or not.

Mark Zuckerburg could have built Facebook and had no one really care initially, leaving it as a Harvard-only site with a few thousand users. The iPod could have failed to catch on, leaving Apple a tiny little company. Bill Gates definitely has brains and definitely worked hard, but his OS totally could have failed to gain traction early on, leaving Microsoft a tiny little company making an obscure OS.

There are lots of startups and dot-bombs in the past that did really awesome stuff. It could certainly be argued that smarts were lacking in some cases, but I think there were a lot of companies that had the smarts and hard work needed, but not the luck to make it big.

I’m trying to think of examples of dumb people not working hard and accidentally hitting it big. I’m sure there are some, but the examples aren’t coming to mind as readily.

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