Last night I attended the Startup2Startup"s CeWebrity DeathMatch: Jason Calacanis vs Guy Kawasaki on "Is Apple Becoming Big Brother?" and it was a hoot. Watching Guy and Jason rag on each other was pretty hilarious and Dave McClure did a great job keeping the action going all night.
After the main feature, Startup2Startup dinners have a discussion at our dinner tables around a topic, which, tonight, was based on the concept of being evil and whether it was necessary or not. One question that circulated around the table was whether or not doing evil things in our lives was justifiable or not. In a funny way, I was glad that we did not get around to me answering this question because I really didn’t have an evil example in my work past to give.
How can that be? Well I’ll tell you. I thought back through my work history and could not think of a single evil event I’ve ever done. Not in business, not in politics of corporation, not in management. Now perhaps some of my former team may think of evil things I’ve done, especially like during layoffs, but that wasn’t really self orchestrated but rather forced on me by the corporation.
I’ve always tried to live my life to a higher moral standard and in dealing with people as human beings. I’ve never been great at lying, and thus corporate politics totally are out of my realm and I have seen many instances where I would have been totally outclassed in dealing with manipulation and backstabbing of others. I’m also not very talkative during meetings, which I believe has sunk my career because I’ve always let others take the limelight and not myself. The unfortunate by product of this is that if you don’t say something in meetings, people tend to view you as having nothing to contribute and thus are not worthy of attending further meetings or advancement in the company.
This, my readers, is the reason why I got about as high as I could up the corporate ladder and then could go no further. Because I’m an honest guy, don’t play corporate politics well, and just do my job well, that’s unfortunately not a formula for success in organizations.
I thought back to this lack of evil and wondered how I came to be at this point in my life. And I came on one big factor which has carried me to this day – that is LUCK.
In looking back to people I’ve worked for, the companies I’ve been at, the people who took a chance on me when I was just a dumb out of college guy, and then somehow being buddies with right two guys at Stanford leading to me joining the right internet startup at the right time – these coincidences were incredible instances in chance.
Looking back at this path I’ve taken through my career, I could have just taken the wrong step in a multitude of places and gone off totally into another place. But yet I ended up here.
Intelligence had an effect? Perhaps, but a lot of smart people do some smart things, or what they think is smart and don’t get anywhere. And I’m not particularly a genius either. I don’t think I went around and did anything special but just happened on these people as I walked through life. So that couldn’t be it.
While a lot of people poo-poo luck, I’m a big believer in it. The big problem is, how the heck do you find luck? I also think that some people are naturally lucky, and there are people who seem to have no luck at all. To that end, I have some suggestions as to how to increase your luck:
1. If you’re a lucky person, you’ve made it!
2. If you’re totally unlucky, I don’t think you’ll instantly be lucky. However, there could be hope for you. Read on.
3. Hang out with lucky people. Don’t you hate it when some of these people always seem to have great things happen to them and it doesn’t seem like they do anything? These are the people you need to find and become BFFs with. The downside is that lucky people want to also increase their luck, so they will try to find luckier people to hang out with. So you may not be successful in becoming BFFs with these people because they may spot your lucklessness.
4. Get rid of unlucky people around you. These people will be a drag on your life. Don’t hang out with them. Something bad that happens to them may also happen to you despite your luckiness. Increase your luck by hanging out with lucky people.
5. Generally, lucky people are happy, and unlucky people are not. I think that your general outlook in life can help add lucky points to your life, or at least fake it.
6. Don’t go putting yourself in risky situations. Why walk around in the middle of the night wearing expensive jewelry in the bad part of town? Duh. Reduce the chance that your unluckiness might manifest itself. Or don’t use up your lucky quotient for the day by doing inherently risky and stupid things.
7. Place yourself in situations where you can shine. So instead of walking around in the middle of the night wearing expensive jewelry in the bad part of town, go to Startup2Startup and meet some smart people, maybe some VC who takes a liking to you and funds you.
As an entrepreneur or investor, I cannot under emphasize the importance of luck. Meeting the right founder at the right time, being in the marketplace and finding some product that consumers love and it takes off, finding the right business partner who ultimately buys your company, or discovering that in a crowded marketplace that you backed the right entrepreneur (like me joining Yahoo, instead of Excite, Infoseek, or Lycos).
Luck is one of those unexplainable forces in the universe. All I can say is do things to increase your luck as one of those things you can do to help you be successful in life or business….and be very wary of when your luck runs out.