success

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Is success just luck?
2 months ago
- Success is not simply the result of 'good luck'; luck is random and uncontrollable, and chasing it is unproductive.
- Attributing success to luck undermines personal agency and skill, while cushioning failure by blaming bad luck prevents fixing real issues.
- Focusing on the 'lucky' 1% is misleading; instead, look at the 'unlucky' 99% who still achieve success through consistent effort and changed inputs.
- Success comes from acting within life, not letting life happen to you—stop making excuses and change your inputs.
The outlier paradox
2 months ago
- Success does not follow a repeatable formula; successful founders are outliers who carve their own path.
- Snake oil salesmen profit by selling fake, step-by-step success formulas to dreamers.
- Success requires acting without certainty, making choices in uncertainty, and persisting without guarantees.
- The author's experience with Keygen illustrates that not giving up too early can lead to eventual success, despite early lack of traction.
- Lessons from successful founders should be seen as guidance for pathfinding, not as a magic formula.
Mean People Fail
2 months ago
- The most successful people the author knows are rarely mean, despite the prevalence of meanness online.
- Meanness is inversely correlated with success in startups; bad people tend to fail as founders.
- Being mean makes you stupid by diverting energy into unproductive fights instead of big ideas.
- Mean founders cannot attract top talent because the best people have other options.
- Benevolent drive helps founders build great things; those focused on improving the world have an advantage.
- Success is shifting from zero-sum games (fighting for scarce resources) to creating new ideas and things.
- Civil order and protection of creation are necessary for new ideas to matter, historically seen in thinkers like Archimedes.
- The approach of intellectuals is spreading, reversing the traditional link between meanness and success.

success

Is success just luck?

The outlier paradox

Mean People Fail