Hard work wins in business (a.k.a. it ain't just about luck)

Why can't it be both? You can work hard and the business can still flop due to things outside of your control.

I started a business a year before Covid hit. I worked hard and did multiple weeks of working 6 - 7 days. Then Covid popped up and my customer base slowly dried up due to people struggling to make ends meet. Working hard wouldn't have prevent Covid.

This blog post doesn't have much useful content, but I'll add a piece of advice I wish someone had told me when I was ±15:

Most decision makers are fundamentally lazy. When they're choosing the person to promote to manager, the employee to hire, the startup company to invest in, or the restaurant to have lunch at, the decision methodology used is in no way optimal or hyper-rational. It's mostly just based what's familiar, nearby, and available.

And so realistically when great opportunities are available, the people getting them are not the best and brightest in the world, they're the best and brightest in the room – which often pale in comparison to the world at large. But they're good enough, familiar, and available, and so they are able to capitalize on those opportunities.

Thus the piece of advice is: find that room and get yourself inside, because the opportunity is not going to come looking for you.

Best advice I saw on the topic was a throwaway comment here on HN: "be lucky and don't fuck it up" - the hard work part equates a lot to "don't fuck it up" in my own interpretation of it all. There are many other ways to fuck up, of course, such as letting ego get in the way and so on.

As someone who is actively pursuing entrepreneurship for the past year, while doing it on-off pretty much from the beginning of my career (about 15 years), as well as following other solopreneurs/indie-hackers on social network--I move closer and closer to the realization that it's majorly luck based. Let me explain.

Yes, it's humbleness to say that it's all luck, and I think it's egocentric to claim that you know how entrepreneurship work, once you succeed, let alone build frameworks/coaching programs around it.

However, based on my observation, as well as my experience, luck plays a major role in success in entrepreneurship/business/work. You could get lucky because your manager likes your personality, or you can be a hard-working asshole that no one loves and/or respects. The same goes to other aspects. You could get lucky because YouTube/Twitter decided to pick up your content and show it to millions of people, thus earning you customers/followers/brand.

I do think that the only formula for success is when preparation meets luck. As cliché as it sounds, if you put in the work, but get unlucky, you won't succeed. If luck finds you, but you have no product or your videos suck, you won't succeed. It's only when you work constantly, improve your craft, and continue to stay *active*, then, when luck finds you, you might succeed.

And this is what I am going to teach my kids, and this is the answer I'll provide to a random person on the streets.

On the other hand, there are plenty of people who worked hard and still failed in business due to bad luck. This article is pure fluff.

“Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.” ― Seneca

I am a great believer in luck. The harder I work, the more of it I seem to have. -Coleman Cox

“If you trust in yourself. . .and believe in your dreams. . .and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.” ― Terry Pratchett, The Wee Free Men

Hard work lets you capitalize on small opportunities. Without it you'd need a 3-sigma occurrence to benefit. Of course, those are the types you hear about, because they make great stories.

Poker is the best analogy... for the entire life's success, not just entrepreneurship.

You've got a set of cards, some of them can be really good, some really bad. This can the country you were born, family financial power, genes, etc

If you have great cards and play poorly, you can still lose pretty badly. If you have bad cards initially and know how to take advantage of opportunities (new cards that are dealt), you can win.

Hard work is improving your chances for success, you'll unlock more opportunities and it's up to you how you handle them.

I believe luck is a much larger component than most people realize, but I don't see it as the "luck" of when you were born.

There is all sorts of business luck that occurs. As one example, in a startup you get some early customers in a vertical and the government changes the rules to make you're tech necessary for the vertical. And then no one else recognizes or competes with you on that vertical for awhile. So there is a giant don't f it up component as another comment pointed to, but you also don't get run out of business by a slightly better execution from a bunch of competitors.

"Hard work wins in business (a.k.a. it ain't just about luck)"

says every 'successful' business person, company owner, shareholder, etc.

No doubt hard work is a major, or even necessary, factor; when you work hard, you create a much larger surface area for luck, and also capitalize on whatever luck does hit you.

But let's not pretend.

Many people work hard, much harder than many entrepreneurs, and still barely scrape by. There was an article here about UBI that mentioned someone working as a cook (notoriously hard work and long hours), but who was living in his car in the parking lot, unable to afford rent. What kind of system is that?

Also there's rather more motivation to work hard when you're effectively getting $1000's per hour as a company owner vs $2.75 or whatever minimum wage works out as, factoring in benefit cuts as a result of employment.

And BTW I don't think it's only 'pure' luck as most people conceive - it's about stumbling on those gaps and loopholes in the system, or that your father happens to know a guy researching an algorithm that would give your SaaS a winning edge, etc, etc, so a good part of 'luck' boils down to socioeconomic privilege.

Ants and weeds and viruses are hard workers too and they can wreck the entire environment following 24x7 whatever dumb ass simple rules they are capable of coming up with.

A lot of "success" we see today is coming at the cost of wasting someone elses time and energy. And the more we celebrate it the more mindless harworkers think they are on the right path.

Hard work from those in the bottom works for the top, but rarely for those in the bottom.

It's not hard work, nor luck. It's who you know. Then one could argue that "who you know" might be the product of either luck or hard work, which would be a valid answer. In any case, I believe knowing the right people with the right connections is the difference between having a successful business or not (at least in my industry)

Lot of people here are saying luck is a huge factor, which it can be. However, you still need to put in the hard work to have something ready for when that lucky opportunity does come knocking. So in summary, your 'lucky moment' depends on the prior hard work that's been put into whatever it is you're making.

People notice hard work, and hard work pays off -- it's just that it's just one piece of the puzzle. Personality matters, even where it shouldn't, as do luck, credentials, networking and more. Hard work important-but-not-sufficient. (And at a good job, it might even be necessary-but-not-sufficient.)

Everyone works hard. Everyone doesn't win.

Hard work may be a necessary condition. But it isn't sufficient.

Nope, plenty of mediocre people doing great based on nothing but virtue of where they were born or their parents. It’s all luck. Don’t believe me? Imagine what your life would be like if you didn’t get the key moments in your life which defined them. Would you fundamentally be doing the same thing? It’s hard for most people to answer this honestly. For poor people who made it: be honest about what gave you the opportunity to work hard or whatever. It’s probably the fact that you had parents or other support structure to uphold you when you were vulnerable.

Many such people who are entrepreneurs etc. right now would be in the service industry if not for their luck. That’s the only difference between most people, simply luck. That said, I have such admiration and respect for those who truly overcome odds to slowly or otherwise make it despite their bad luck. It’s hard to stop lying to each other about ideals of meritocracy or whatever because everyone has a self image and narrative they prefer about themselves or society. But do you really think that someone else who had your life wouldn’t have done the same as or better than you? Why do you think they’d be worse if you do? Cognitive biases are tricky, I wish people would stop lying to each other and themselves as that might perhaps make for a social environment which is optimal for most people’s self determination

Lots of people have work ethic. But, many of them don't have focus or tenacity.

Its both, its where perspiration meets opportunity.

Both are necessary but neither is sufficient.

You usually need to work hard to even be in the pool of people for whom such luck could strike.

So yeah, it's both, but I don't think anyone becomes a billionaire without luck.

pretty lazy article, the answer is both are necessary if you are talking about outlier success

hard work will typically at least lead to a good outcome, but often not a great outcome, so it's still a good idea, but of course hard working people are often taken advantage of by sociopaths

see: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...

as we in the west have burned through our cultural infrastructure of reciprocity and solidarity, appeals to "hard work" are going to ring increasingly hollow to young people priced out of the life their parents had, i don't blame my young students for their cynicism

Sure, and "beating Vegas" is about skill and following a system, too. /s