"You don’t obtain connections by being lucky, for instance, you obtain them because you want them and work hard at it."- I have to disagree. You have little control who comes into your life outside your 1st and maybe 2nd degree of separation. You have almost no control over who will be assigned your freshman dormmate, your instructors, or even your boss. You can't work hard to be put in the same dorm as mark zuckerberg. That is just plain flat out luck. However, smart people are attracted to other smart people and that is why smart people tend to "Create" their own luck. They dont posses any special ability, per say, other than a desirable trait that others like them want to exalt.

The luck really starts with your parents and grandparents, as their financial status generally determines your early social network. http://philip.greenspun.com/bg/ discussed some of Gates' early advantages, like having a trust fund to fall back on if risks don't pan out.

And that excludes even more countless examples of those who work hard and fail.

There are vastly more of the latter than the former.

Work - if it’s the right kind of work - can only ever increase your odds. It can never guarantee success.

What’s needed is hard data about the relative influence of market fit, hours worked, personality, network and wealth of origin, and so on.

Analysis paralysis is arguably as dangerous as survivorship bias.

Of course winning the genetic lottery bestows tremendous advantage. And of course luck is a huge variable.

But the intersection of luck, preparation, and willingness is serendipity. And every successful entrepreneur has that in spades in the end, regardless of where they started.

Sure that sounds like another empty platitude, but the fact of the matter is there is no formula or one simple trick.

I fear that winning the genetic lottery is more than just a simple advantage. In the case of being born into a wealthy family, it turns the situation from "it's all up to you to succeed" into "all you have to do is not fuck up." Since tremendous luck, good or bad, is relatively rare the condition from generation to generation just doesn't change much - regardless of hard work - except in so much as society itself grows wealthier.

>You have little control who comes into your life outside your 1st and maybe 2nd degree of separation.

I have not found this to be true, personally. I've established my own network over 30 years by having an attitude entirely opposite to that which you profess is the natural order of things - if you work hard to network, you can make contact with a great deal many people, and luck has nothing to do with it.

We're not all pushed around by the fates. Some of us, push the rock hard. There really are a different set of results in both spheres.

For someone like myself who is still young, what would you say are the keys to becoming a better networker?

1. The less judgemental you are the more people you'll allow yourself to talk to.

2. Lots of people want to be talked to but they don't want to take the risk of approaching and getting rejected. Master the art of gracefully accepting rejection and you'll feel confident in approaching people.

I totally agree with you - prejudice is the #1 enemy of the positive networker.

I would add this: Learn to experience things from the perspective of the other person with whom you are attempting to network without giving up too much of your own personal identity in the process, and you will go very far.

The counterargument to this is that enterprise sales is a job. If you've worked alongside these people you watch them do it.

They go to events, identify useful people, create a relationship with or without introductions, use them to access decision makers...

The fact is, people make a career out of creating connections from nothing and using them to land buisness. A lot of people.

Yea that's a valid point. The thing about sales that always bothered me is that the psychology often borders on sociopathy. How can you love your fellow man while simultaneously seeking to get the better of him?

You're not seeking to get the better of them, you're seeking to get a fair trade and for startups one that will save them a significant amount of money.

> You have almost no control over who will be assigned your freshman dormmate, your instructors, or even your boss

You can, however, randomly go up to people and say “hi”. Most people don’t do this. (Which is why it works.)

Randomly... First of all, it's rarely really random -- you will approach people based on your internal biases, whether you're aware of them or not. And second, even if you did manage to do it truly randomly, that just proves the GP's point.

Young people usually don't look for "secure" though. But I would say if you don't have rich parents it is even the quickest way with the most success. Even the chance to a successful startup increases if one follows a stable career path in the beginning. Everyone who succeeded without it, like Bill Gates, actually succeeded because they had a secret joker through the success of their parents.

I myself had to become 30+ before I understood this, though.

Agree 100%. Reminds me of what they say in Wall Street, to be successful dont try to time the market, put time in the market.

When I dropped out of school I thought the odds on the outcome of staying and graduating were worse than leaving. The bad outcome having been getting an average salary at a job I was unhappy with. I dropped out with a tiny income from my business, and the extra free time made a massive difference within 12 months.

The biggest lesson I’ve learned was to think through problems myself. There are a lot of degrees and dimensions to success. If you live in a first world country, are physically healthy, and everything is working with your brain, you are 90% of the way there. Exceptionalism is not a requirement to success.

That in itself sounds exceptional.