Luck’s Role in a Startup

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Luck plays an important role in successful startups. Whether it’s serendipitous interactions, amazing market timing, or coincidences that are just too good to be true, luck influences things more than people would like to admit. I was reminded of this today when reading Allen Nance’s excellent post titled Startup Grind: Allen Nance @ATLTechVillage. Near the end of the post Allen delivers an excellent line:

Luck doesn’t see an opportunity, luck doesn’t build a team, luck doesn’t deliver value to a customer, and luck has never taken a risk: people do.

Well said. Luck is critical, but without taking a risk, there’s no luck.

What else? What are your thoughts on luck’s role in a startup?

Comments

6 responses to “Luck’s Role in a Startup”

November 25, 2013

Justin

The harder you work, the luckier you get.

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November 25, 2013

teefus

God is in charge of outcomes. Not luck. People are one of God’s instruments to do his will and to glorify him. And we glorify him by seizing opportunity, building teams, delivering value and taking risk. Such purpose-driven work offers freedom.

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November 25, 2013

Mark Gavagan

Luck isn’t worth counting on or worrying about – better to be thankful for what we have and inspired to make great strides forward.

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November 26, 2013

keyalchemy

Working hard, and recognizing opportunity when it presents itself.

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November 26, 2013

Irv Grossman

You create your own luck.

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November 26, 2013

Mike Lewis (@MikePLewis)

In terms of creating your own luck, there’s a famous soccer player who said, “it’s not about being in the right place at the right time. I’m in the right place EVERY time.” That’s when you can capitalize on good luck, when you put yourself in a position for success. Quitting your job and gathering a team to work on some crazy idea puts yourself in a position for that idea and business to become lucky.

At both Qloud and Kapost we were lucky to find ourselves in a great market. Kapost is a platform for content marketing. That market didn’t exist 5 years ago. People have said that we’re lucky that this new trend came around. I like to remind them that when we started and raised money, we were focused on media companies and their publishing process. For 2 years, We built a product for them. So, when content marketing became a thing and we had a product that directly addressed it, we were indeed lucky, but had to do a lot of work to put ourselves in that position.

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