Makes me wonder - is it all luck at some level? After the fact one can look and see - what made all the successes successful? What attributes do they all share? Is it only that they succeeded?
I don't think it's 100% luck. Larry and Sergey liked working on search engines and said "hey, let's make a company". It turned out that other people liked their search engine too, so they made money.
If you have the same passion for something else, that's only half the battle. The other half is making sure your passion aligns with the passion of people willing to give you money. I've come up with a few good ideas in my life that I'd love to do as my "real job", but I know nobody else would be interested. That is why I am not a millionaire :)
Of course, the luck is being able to predict what people will want.
I hear what you are saying - I'm just thinking luck is the multiplier - ebay, google, etc - how many other search engines aren't as successful? how many ebays does no one know about? I guess luck is timing to some degree - but its also plain luck. All of the monday morning quarterbacking that goes on seems obvious in retrospect, but the future is still completely uncertain. VC's expect 1 in 10 to fail b/c thats just historically what has happened. If they knew what made the 1 hit they wouldn't fund the 9 losers. I'm just saying, really nothing new I guess, that the business of predicting the future by looking at the past is colored by confirmation bias. What characteristic do all self made men have in common? They took alot of risk. However, thats also the same trait incarcerated bank-robbers have in common. I'm just saying prediction is impossible.
By all means do what you love b/c if it crashes and burns at least you won't have hated the last 2 years of your life.
Sometimes it's about staying in the game long enough to get your first deal. And I quote, "10% luck, 20% skill, 15% concentrated power of will, 5% pleasure, 50% pain, and 100% reason to remember the name." - Linkin Park
