Some 137,000 companies are started every day. In the next decade, about 90% will fail. Starting any new venture then seems like it takes more than skill, hard work, and intelligence to make it—you’ll need a bit of luck.
While most people assume that luck is beyond your control, my research suggests otherwise. You actually can take steps to get lucky if you pay attention to purpose, passion, and gratitude.
Many, like Moderna and Flagship Pioneering founder Noubar Afeyan, argue that “counting on luck is not a strategy.” For them, luck may fit better amid the supernatural filled with superstition, rituals, and charms.
When it comes to starting businesses, we’re more comfortable equipping founders with the skills they need for the job through accelerators, courses, and mentorship, and instilling them with the virtue of hard work. Nevertheless, founders (and anyone starting any new venture, really) need something more. This begs the question: How do we get lucky?
To better understand how luck influences success, I listened to over 200 interviews with startup founders on Guy Raz’s podcast How I Built This. I analyzed each episode to understand how the entrepreneur understood the concept of luck, how much of their success they attributed to things outside their control, and any contributing factors that led to their success. The results were surprising.
What is luck?
For most of the 200-plus entrepreneurs, luck is understood as circumstances outside of their control that impact their venture. With this primary concept in mind, the potential for luck is all around us, all the time.
Reflecting on luck is a meaning-making process for most founders, inviting them to reflect on how factors outside their control affect their success. Sweetgreen founder Nicholas Jammet explains that founders experience circumstances leading to positive and negative impacts, good and bad luck respectively. To add to the complexity, sometimes a circumstance may seem like “bad” luck in the short term, but be reinterpreted as “good” luck in retrospect.
Across the interviews, founders most frequently pointed to three types of luck:
- Timing: Founders start, pivot, or exit their venture at just the right time to take advantage of market dynamics. As Instacart founder Apoorva Mehta reminds us, “you have a moment in time when a company is possible. Anything before that isn’t possible. Anything after is too late.”
- Serendipity: Founders meet a pivotal person (e.g., cofounder, investor, mentor) or a seemingly random event happens that changes the trajectory of their venture. This was the case for BlueMercury founder Marla Beck, who remembers a lucky moment when Leonard Lauder, head of Estee Lauder, wandered into her store, and she seized the moment to develop a powerful relationship.
- Unearned identity privilege: Founders such as former Bonobos CEO Andy Dunn, recognize the privilege that comes with the “family you are born into, and your genetic stock,” aspects of your identity outside your control like race, sex, gender, socioeconomic status, or country of origin.
While we may not have control over how these moments emerge in our lives, we can become better at “seeing” and “seizing” these lucky breaks when they present themselves, as Twilio founder Jeff Lawson points out. More on that to come.
Equal parts luck and skill
How much weight do entrepreneurs place on luck when considering their success? To answer this question, I analyzed and rated the responses of entrepreneurs on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 indicating it’s all skill (like Kendra Scott, founder of an eponymous accessories brand who said, “there’s no luck involved,” and 5 indicating all luck like John Green, founder of Complexly, who said, “it’s so 100% luck that it’s impossible to even explain how 100% luck it is.” Interestingly, across guests on the show, the consensus was that luck and skill weigh almost equally (2.94 out of 5).
Before you comment with critiques of this methodology, let me call out a couple key caveats to these results.
- Humbly overstating luck: As Tim Ferris points out, there is a tendency for successful people to publicly attribute their success to luck over skill—potentially skewing these results toward the luck side.
- Gender and racial dynamics: Women and people of color have their skill and expertise challenged disproportionately compared to others in Silicon Valley, as Miriam Naficy, founder of Minted, alludes to when she recounted how people attributed her first successful exit as “lucky.” This socialization potentially skews their responses towards the skill side.
- Religious and spiritual interpretations: Some spiritual and religious people reject the notion of luck, preferring concepts like blessing (ActOne Group founder Janice Bryant Howroyd) and destiny (Tate’s Bake Shop founder Kathleen King), again skewing the results toward skill.
While these results may not pass scientific muster, they allude to the significant part luck plays in successful startups.
How to get lucky
By our own definition, we can never control or generate “luck,” despite the common refrain from founders, “I make my own luck.” However, when we get clear on our purpose, follow our passion, actively work toward our vision, and operate out of gratitude, then we are able to better filter through the uncontrollable circumstances of life (the seeds of luck) to attract, see, and seize the luck in our midst.
Focus on your purpose: With uncontrollable events happening all around us all the time, having a sense of calling and purpose focuses our attention on the luck in our midst, and can even help us attract circumstances favorable to our mission. According to Mary Waldner, founder of Mary’s Gone Crackers, it is a mistake not to honor your calling, “because when you honor it, the universe works with you and supports you.”
If that sounds too out there for your taste, consider research supporting her claims. When entrepreneurs perceive their work as part of their calling, they are more successful at attracting resources to their projects, while entrepreneurs who perceived their work as a “job” had less favorable outcomes.
Purpose and calling motivate us, help us to cut through noise, and enable others to understand how they can support us. It’s the sort of focus and drive that helped Brooklinen founder Rich Fulop take advantage of a chance encounter with Neil Blumenthal, founder of Warby Parker, on the streets of New York to pitch his idea and get advice on fundraising. Serendipity presents a lucky break, but passion gives us focus to see and act on opportunity.
Follow your passion: Passion both attracts luck and fuels entrepreneurs to continue their pursuits. Ellen Latham, founder of OrangeTheory, received some important advice from her father growing up, “when you are passionate about something you do, you will always find work, and you may find a lot of money one day.”
Many startup founders point to the serendipity of meeting future investors, but research finds that passion improves the success of founders in raising venture capital. Nancy Twine, founder of Briogeo, a clean, natural hair care company, found that “people . . . extended courtesies and opportunities to me because [my] passion became infectious.”
Moreover, passion is an important component of grit, which enables entrepreneurs to persevere, exposing themselves to more luck in their midst. Not quite sure your passion: Follow your curiosities and try new things to explore possibilities.
Get in it to win it: “The decision to do something is a very powerful one,” says Robinhood founder Vlad Tenev. Having the courage to take a first step equips startup founders with newfound focus to help them attract opportunities and identify luck in their midst.
Describing his perspective on luck, Kodiak Cakes founder Joel Clark believes that fish can actually jump into your boat, but “you gotta be out fishing for that to happen.”
For many startup founders like Politico and Axios founder Jim VandeHei, sharing early-stage project ideas can lead to improbable connections that spark success. Taking even a first step can attract lucky breaks. What’s more, working hard toward a passion actually increases the sense of passion, creating a passion flywheel effect. Getting started is a great way to focus your attention in a particular area, and generate and sustain passion for your startup.
Stay in it to win it: Many founders quote the famous adage: “The harder I work, the luckier I get.” This turns out to be true as well. With uncontrollable circumstances ever present and emerging luck always coming into proximity. The longer you are in the game, the more luck you can attract, see, and seize.
Over his 15 years in Silicon Valley, Emmett Shear, founder of Twitch, saw many entrepreneurs persevere and can’t think of any “who hasn’t had some level of success. Eventually, you do get lucky.” Not everyone will hit the jackpot like Shear, but grittier entrepreneurs—those who combine perseverance and passion—can work on their ventures longer and expose themselves to more opportunities.
Practice gratitude: While you may not be able to attract unearned privilege, practicing gratitude helps to develop a stronger sense of purpose and helps you seize luck through increased productivity.
YouTube personality and filmmaker Casey Neistat attributes much of his success to his privilege. Reflecting on his “winning lotto ticket,” Neistat acknowledges he has “a debt” that “can only be paid via hard work.”
Niestat is not alone. Practicing gratitude helps people to refine their sense of purpose, which then helps them focus their attention and see lucky opportunities in their midst. This higher sense of purpose also correlates with increased grit, enabling entrepreneurs to stay in the game longer, attract more resources to their projects, and expose them to more luck.
Business culture often makes us feel like our only options are to work harder or smarter. But the data points to other factors that are often forgotten or dismissed.
Cultivating purpose, passion, and gratitude can transform the way we think, helping us to identify opportunities, influence others, attract resources, and persevere through the good and bad luck that will inevitably come our way.
While we may never be able to generate luck—no matter how many founders claim to do so—we can cultivate postures and practices that harness our ability to identify luck and take action.
