How to be, if you can't be lucky

Patrick Lee and Stephen Wang had a problem. Their website design startup, Design Reactor, was busy and they needed all hands on deck. But one of their college buddies turned employees, Senh Duong, was late every Thursday and Friday.

Duong had a pet project. It was a startup in the late nineties and when he pitched Lee and Wang the duo liked the idea more than their design studio. They closed the design studio to focus their efforts.

Their first lucky break came in May with the release of Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace. Not only was this movie highly anticipated, but people longed to know if it was good or not. The curious flocked to the trio’s website, Rotten Tomatoes, to find out.

Traffic grew that year and the next. In the spring the trio received an Angel investment of $1 million, their second lucky break. By October the stock market bubble had popped. Funding evaporated. It was bad luck.

Luck, good and bad, is out of our control.

But there are also things we can control.

The trio was lucky with their timing, but that’s not where the story ends. Before the bubble popped they presold their ad inventory for the next year. They also expanded the database of historic movies. They leveraged ‘long tail’ effects before it had a name. Though never hugely profitable, Rotten Tomatoes has operated as a profitable venture for almost twenty-five years.

Outcomes are a mix of skill and luck. The Rotten Tomatoes co-founders got lucky, but they also built something people wanted, were always selling, and experimented throughout it all.

Luck sets our circumstances. Actions dictate our direction.

For a deeper examination of luck and skill, look up The Success Equation.