Lady Luck

Luck is the dividend of hard work. On this St Patrick’s Day, we raise a glass and concede to Lady Luck and the role she plays in the success of the great companies and leaders of today.

In his commencement address at Harvard, Zuckerberg conceded: “We all know we don’t succeed just by having a good idea or working hard. We succeed by being lucky too. If we’re honest, we all know how much luck we’ve had.”

Below we take a look at how the world’s most widely used operating system is a product of some very fortunate geographic circumstances, Bezos’ brush with bankruptcy and a fortune in the eye of the storm.

Add a dash of Bailey’s to your morning coffee and read on!

University Gates

As incredibly talented and hard-working Bill Gates is, luck played its part. Reading Malcolm Gladwell is the closest many of us come to studies in psychology or sociology. In his 2008 book Outliers, Gladwell investigates the determinants of high performance.

According to Gladwell, Gates was only able to become a computing wonder-kid for 2 reasons. Firstly, he carried out the requisite “10,000 hours” to become an expert. Secondly, his best friend’s mom granted him unlimited access to one of the very few computers in the whole United States.

Gates was able to use the University of Washington’s computer lab at any hour he pleased. Any given night or weekend in the early 1970s, Gates and his friend Paul Allen were likely working on code in the heart of Seattle. In his late high school years, he was averaging 8 hours a day programming. One year out of college and he had passed 10,000 hours. Very few people had access to a computer at all at this time, let alone unlimited use of the facility.

Would Gates have been successful in some field should he have not had the same access to a computer? Probably. Would 1.5b people globally use his Windows operating system? Who knows but aren’t we all a little lucky that’s the case.

Brush with Bankruptcy

Webvan, Geocities, Boo.com. Long forgotten companies who went down with the dot-com crash at the turn of the century, Amazon was a month away from potentially facing the same fate. Despite losing 98% of its market capitalization from its highs, Amazon was able to weather the storm and rise 430x from its lows as it became the world’s largest retailer.

Former CFO Warren Jensen sold US$672m of convertible bonds to foreign investors. Even before the market showed signs of weakness, the market demanded a return of 6.7%. Fiscally conservative by nature, Jensen wanted to sure up Amazon’s balance sheet, even if they weren’t in immediate need of funds. Within weeks the market crashed. Capital raising in an environment that saw the Nasdaq fall 80% was virtually impossible as Amazon was forced to rely on these reserves.

Of course, shrewd administration ensured Amazon completed a raise but the timing of the raise was coincidental. A week or two later and Amazon could well have joined our list of forgotten companies.

Lucky Deposits

]Topping the Australian rich list is Gine Rinehart, daughter of Lang Hancock. The family’s multi-billion dollar mining empire can pay thanks to a storm over the country’s western state.

The story goes that Lang Hancock, a small-time grazier and miner, was flying to Perth when bad weather pushed them off course. On their new, diverted route Hancock spotted the rich red earth of Western Australia. Gorges that looked like solid iron, as he put it. Until that point, Australia was under the impression that they had an iron-ore shortage. The government had banned all exports. The discovery quickly put Australia on the map as a mining nation. Such a discovery laid the groundwork for US-listed BHP and Rio Tinto to supply the world with Australian iron-ore.

Indeed, the country’s deposits would eventually have been discovered but such a discovery so early in the century allowed Australia to gain a competitive advantage in the space.