Zero to One_ Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future ( PDFDrive )

From the Renaissance and the Enlightenment to the mid-20th century, luck
was something to be mastered, dominated, and controlled; everyone agreed that
you should do what you could, not focus on what you couldn’t. Ralph Waldo
Emerson captured this ethos when he wrote: “Shallow men believe in luck,
believe in circumstances.… Strong men believe in cause and effect.” In 1912,
after he became the first explorer to reach the South Pole, Roald Amundsen
wrote: “Victory awaits him who has everything in order—luck, people call it.”
No one pretended that misfortune didn’t exist, but prior generations believed in
making their own luck by working hard.
If you believe your life is mainly a matter of chance, why read this book?
Learning about startups is worthless if you’re just reading stories about people
who won the lottery. Slot Machines for Dummies can purport to tell you which
kind of rabbit’s foot to rub or how to tell which machines are “hot,” but it can’t
tell you how to win.
Did Bill Gates simply win the intelligence lottery? Was Sheryl Sandberg born
with a silver spoon, or did she “lean in”? When we debate historical questions
like these, luck is in the past tense. Far more important are questions about the
future: is it a matter of chance or design?