In this episode, Steli and Hiten talk about luck. Did that CEO experience huge growth just because he was lucky? Or did they tank because they were unlucky? The question of luck or a lack thereof is dependent on the belief and attitude of the individual. Steli was asked directly whether luck played a role or not in the success of one’s startup. Steli and Hiten share their two cents on the topic of luck and express why we need to foster an attitude of gratitude.

Time Stamped Show Notes:

  • 00:04 – Today’s episode is about luck
  • 00:33 – Steli was asked what role luck plays in a startup’s success
  • 01:27 – Luck is defined as “success or failure apparently brought about by chance rather than through one’s own actions”
  • 02:02 – Hiten says that a person’s belief about luck depends on the person himself, but we should not think that we are unlucky
  • 02:34 – Hiten says luck can be considered the same as hope
  • 03:03 – Steli does not think about luck, but feels gratitude and appreciation play a bigger role
  • 04:01 – Steli has always believed that people are responsible for everything that is happening to them
  • 05:23 – Hiten says the belief that luck played a role in the success of your business depends on your attitude
  • 06:31 – Gambling is about chance rather than luck
  • 06:53 – Steli and Hiten both lost a parent and this could mean they are unlucky—but they don’t think they are unlucky
    • 07:10 – Hiten believes everything happens for a reason and to think about luck means forgetting about the reason
  • 07:32 – If you know WHY something happened, then it is not because of luck or a lack thereof; in this case, your attitude towards an event is important in determining what you will do about it
  • 08:13 – People consider luck to be part of the equation because they feel someone succeeded at something and it was undeserved
  • 08:28 – Steli knows a co-founder of a big startup with whom he was not very impressed; he thought that the guy ‘just got lucky’
    • 09:38 – Steli realized that he did not know much about how the company grew and the role that guy played in those early years    
  • 10:15 – Attributing someone’s success to luck is based on a lack of information about someone and it is lazy to think this way
    • 11:28 – It is better to calculate why we consider a person lucky
  • 11:56 – Hiten says we don’t really know the causes of what happens to us in life and that is why the word luck exists
  • 12:33 – Life is complex when it comes to understanding causation, but business should not be that complicated
  • 13:01 – Steli says luck should be taken out of everyone’s vocabulary and we should have an attitude of gratitude instead
  • 13:35 – End of today’s episode

3 Key Points:

  1. A belief in luck depends on a person’s attitude.
  2. Gratitude for all that we’ve received and experienced and should take more weight than attributing what we have to luck.
  3. Take “luck” out of your vocabulary and consider why we consider ourselves and others so lucky.  

Steli Efti:

Hey, everyone. This is Steli Efti.

Hiten Shah:

And this is Hiten Shah and on today’s episode of the Startup Chat we’re going  to talk about luck and Steli’s going to start because he’s the one that inspired  this thing. I got a lot to say on my side. I can’t wait.

Steli Efti:

Here’s the deal. Somebody asked me, “What role does luck play in startup success?” That  question was not that difficult for me. I was like, “I think it does play  a role. How much is so difficult to say. How you define luck and the context around what you view as luck versus what you view as just opportunity that  you were prepared for. It’s very individual way of how you and I interpret events  in life and yada, yada, yada.” Eventually I was like, “You know, I do think  it plays a role there. There’s some luck involved. How much? It’s so tough to  quantify. I don’t know.” And then he asked me, “Okay, can you share some times  where you think you were lucky and that really turned into a big success?” And  I was not able to answer that question. I was like, “You know what? That’s  a great question. I’m sure there are some examples. I need to think about this,  but I don’t have anything instantly that I can think of.”

Hiten Shah:

Let’s just define it. In Google, when I type in luck it says, the noun,  is “Success or failure apparently brought by chance rather than through one’s own actions.” The  beef I have is that it says apparently. Apparently means apparently, it doesn’t mean it  was success or failure brought by luck or whatever. It says, “Apparently brought by chance  rather than through one’s owns actions.” If everyone listening and all these people, if everybody  wants to believe that they’re either lucky or unlucky, go for it. Please, go for  it, but I won’t agree with it. For me, I think the question’s bullshit. Not  because the person’s bullshit, I just think we should not be relying on luck and  we should definitely not be thinking we’re unlucky. And the reason is, by definition it’s  apparently something that happens and we don’t even know. Basically, to me, that’s like saying,  and especially in business, I would say even in life and career to a great  extent, you’re not sitting here just going through some motions and hoping to be lucky.  It’s the same as hope. Some founder used hope with me this morning and said,  “I hope.” I’m like, “Really? You hope? You hope?” That’s the same as luck to  me. It’s like, “I want to get lucky.” “Okay, how are you going to get lucky? Oh, you’re going to do some things. Well, then, that’s not luck.”

Steli Efti:

This is an interesting one. Listen, I don’t think about luck a lot, or I  think about it not at all, to be honest. That’s why I was like, “I  don’t have any example.” I’m sure there are some if I thought about it, but  it’s not really a word, it’s not really active in my vocabulary and it’s not  in my mental model of how I explain things and how I think about things.  It doesn’t play a big role in there. I do think that gratitude plays a  large role, and appreciation. I do feel blessed at times. I am very thankful for  a lot of blessings of life. I wouldn’t say that that’s luck, but I’ve had  a lot of … There’s a generic lottery ticket that I picked in terms of  my health and in my family and in which part of this globe I was  born and there are a bunch of things that I don’t think I played a  determinant part in creating. So luck is not really a big part of it, but  gratitude is and I don’t believe that everything … Growing up I think I was much more black and white in believing that people are completely and a thousand percent  responsible for everything they have, all the good and the bad. And I still feel  responsible for everything in my life, but I kind of grant the right that some  people might have been dealt much worse cards than others, so life isn’t really fair.  It’s not a super equal playground, but the thing to me is that … If  you think about luck a lot you inevitably also have to look at the other  side of the coin, which is … Is there a better word than unluck? Or  unlucky? Unfortunate? What is that?

Hiten Shah:

No, no. There is no … No, there isn’t a better word. You’re luck or  you’re unlucky.

Steli Efti:

It’s interesting because in the German language, and in Greek, there is a distinct different  word for unluck. It’s not the negation of the word luck. It’s just a totally  different word in both these languages. It’s funny-

Hiten Shah:

Typically, you would say bad luck or good luck.

Steli Efti:

Bad luck or good luck. Interesting, interesting.

Hiten Shah:

That’s the disparity. Here’s the thing. I agree with you about gratitude. I think my  biggest point on this luck word is just you’re essentially copping out, especially in business  if you say, “I got lucky,” Or, “I didn’t get lucky,” or “He got lucky,”  or “She got lucky,” or whatever. Or “Dave had bad luck.” It’s like, “Wait.” That’s  basically saying that there are things out of your control that impacted the situation and  you could do nothing about it. What I love about when you went to gratitude,  just love this, is that you went to attitude. To me that’s attitude. By saying  luck or unlucky or bad luck or good luck, any of it, you’re basically saying  that my attitude is that there are things that happened to me in my life,  to me in my business, and they’re based on something I do not control. I  know that sounds weird because you’re going there. You’re like, “All these things happened. You’re  born in certain family, certain time.” All kinds of stuff. I’m like, “Yeah, yeah. I  get all that, but it’s all about your attitude and your perspective on it more  than anything else.” The number one thing is your attitude and that’s why I love  that you went to gratitude, because it’s like, “Look at it this way.” I can  look in hindsight today and say that any time that I felt or thought that  I was unlucky … Because we all do that. This is just a word that’s  in our vocabulary and it’s spread out everywhere, especially in a gambling culture. This culture  we have a lot of gambling going on, too, and that apparently is about luck,  but it’s really about chance. It’s in a different word. End of the day, for  me, every time I thought about it, I look in hindsight and I can tell  you a lot of these things. And we talked about a lot about these in  episode that you can say we were … Even you and I both have some  family things where you can say, “Oh, we’ve been unlucky.” We both lost a parent,  we’ve been unlucky. Right, Steli?

Steli Efti:

Yeah.

Hiten Shah:

But our attitude, I don’t think I would say it like that. That would be  disrespectful to my mom, first of all. That would be disrespectful to my life and  so to me, my attitude is that everything happens for a reason. If I think  it’s luck I’m going to forget about the reason and forget about the fact that  I’m still alive and I get to do things and my attitude impacts everything. My  attitude now is just like, “Oh, that happened? Okay. Can I define, do I know  why it happened? Yes or no? Yes, then it has nothing to do with luck  or that word.” Right?

Steli Efti:

Yeah.

Hiten Shah:

And if I say, “No, I don’t know how this happened. It happened,” I can’t  go back in the past and prevent it anyways, then all that matters is my  attitude. So why not have gratitude for something that you feel unlucky about?

Steli Efti:

I love that.

Hiten Shah:

That’s my little rant for you.

Steli Efti:

All right. I love it, I love it.

Hiten Shah:

, but that’s why I love what you said. That to me calculates the whole  luck versus gratitude versus all of that.

Steli Efti:

I want to throw something else in here that I have never thought about that  way, but I’m wondering. I’m wondering if a big component of why people think about  things as luck or unluck or bad luck is because they observe certain people having  success that they find undeserved or when they put together all the events that led  up to this person’s success, it seems like it wasn’t deserved hence there is such  a thing as luck. I remember distinctly there is a founder. He was officially the  co-founder of a multi-million dollar tech startup that every listener’s used, so it’s a really  big deal. I’m not going to name the name. Nobody knows that co-founder, but he was only there for the first, I think, six months, and I’ve known this guy  for a long time. I’ve never been particularly impressed with him, but then when the  company went IPO he made $80-90 million. I remember a friend of mine and myself,  the first two or three times that we met with him, a friend of mine  and me actually bad mouthing him a little bit and going, “Dude, this guy got  lucky. Thank God he met this other guy that’s a real rock star who made  that company real a success and he just was around for half a year or  eight months, long enough to get some vesting in to be considered a co-founder.” The  company was such a massive success that this guy made a killing and for the  past 10 years he’s just been having failures, because he on his own is not capable of it. But I also remember that a few years later my friend brought  him up again and that time I was much more uncomfortable discussing him like that.  I was like, “Wait, wait, wait. Let’s be fair. We don’t know what happened in  the first year of that company. We really don’t know this guy that well. We  met him three times and we heard a few things from other people, but we  don’t know how much ownership of his own success he has. We don’t know his  background, his upbringing. We don’t know how he put himself in the position to is  where he is. So, let’s not pretend we know that he’s somebody that doesn’t deserve  all he’s got. We don’t know.” Now that we’re talking about luck, I just remembered  this, looking at somebody else’s life and not being able to make the math, probably  because you don’t have enough information, and then attributing this person’s success to something that  is a word that can explain everything. “Oh, he just got lucky, he just met  the right guy, but he had zero participation in his own massive success.” Now, as  we were talking, and even a few years later, I realize that my … I’ve  got much more uncomfortable judging people and making up stories about other people because I know I don’t know them and I don’t know what really happened. Now talking about  this concept of luck, I wonder if a big component of why it’s such a  popular thing is because we don’t know other people’s lives and all the things that  lead up to it, so when we try to come up with explanations why they  have what they have or they don’t have what they have, luck or unluck or  bad luck might just be the laziest and easiest ways for us to explain other  people’s lives and where they are.

Hiten Shah:

Yeah, and that’s lazy.

Steli Efti:

That’s lazy, yeah. There you go. It’s just a little rant. It doesn’t even have  a conclusion. I was just like, “I wonder if that’s also part of it,” because  I’ve observed this with myself and people I know.

Hiten Shah:

I think it’s our language. It’s back to language. It’s like, “What words do we  use and how do we describe things?” When we hear luck I think it’s better  to calculate why was that person, what we call, lucky. When you say luck you’re  letting go and you’re saying, not in a good way, I think you’re letting go  and saying, “I had no control over it,” or “That person had no control over  it. They just happen to get lucky.” It’s like, “Wait, the person showed up. The  person did something.” Right?

Steli Efti:

Yeah.

Hiten Shah:

How is it luck if the person was there and they showed up and there’s  a whole … The other problem with this is, in life, we don’t really know  what causes the things that happen to us. The cause and effect is actually not  that clear. That’s why we need a word like luck, to be honest. Because we  haven’t taken the time to think about why things happen and what the sequence is.  I’m sure I would not be the same person I am today without a number of countless things that happened to me, that I cannot even understand today unless I  think about it. And even then I only have my own viewpoint and my own  understanding of it. I don’t know why this person did that. I don’t know why  that person did that and things like that. To me it’s very complex because life  is complex when it comes down to understanding the causation versus what you would call  correlation, while business isn’t that complicated. It shouldn’t be. I think that we conflate these  things and we, just from a language standpoint, I don’t ever want to feel like  I got lucky and I don’t ever want to feel like I have bad luck.

Steli Efti:

I love it. All right, let’s take those two words off our vocabulary. If you  feel lucky, maybe you should just say, “I’m really grateful,” and think about-

Hiten Shah:

I like that.

Steli Efti:

… Your appreciation and gratitude for the world. And if you think you had bad  luck, maybe you should start asking yourself, “How can I be more grateful and more  appreciative of the things I do have and focus more on what’s within my power  and control.” Shouldn’t matter how much bad luck you think you have, there’s some real things in your life that are giving you a heads up or giving you opportunities.  Even just being healthy. Gratitude is the answer, luck isn’t. I think with that we’re  going to wrap this up.

Hiten Shah:

Cheers.