Luck and Risk

This content is based on what I read from the book called 'The psychology of money' written by Morgan Housel. In our lives, there are two possible outcomes called luck and risk, especially in finance. Luck and risk are siblings mostly guided by forces rather than individual effort. There are a few examples that may prove this point. Bill Gates, a well-known American businessman, investor, and writer, created Microsoft, the largest vendor of computer software in the world, along with his childhood classmate Paul Allen. Both were so obsessed with computers that they decided to start a computer company and turned their vision into reality. However, there is something I would like to share with you. Has anyone heard of Kent Evans? He was as skilled as the Microsoft legends and, unlike Paul Allen, Kent Adams had a bigger dream and a business mind. He could have become one of the founding partners of Microsoft but eventually died in a mountaineering accident. Cornelius Vanderbilt was an American businessman who built his empire with railroad and shipping contracts. He was an audacious person who made many railroad transactions that broke the law and let nothing get in his way. John D. Rockefeller is the owner of Standard Oil Company. He was marked as one of the richest people in his decades. He too abided by the laws and brought his company to be one of the largest multinational companies in his period, but luck was not with him for long as the US government ordered the company to dissolve due to their illicit monopoly practices in 1911. So here is the difference between luck and risk, where luck was close at hand for Cornelius Vanderbilt but not for John D. Rockefeller. Mark Zuckerberg, whom we all know as the owner of Facebook, faced a major crash in 2006 and turned down Yahoo's 1 billion dollar offer to buy his company. Now, its worth has increased 60 times more than Yahoo's offer. Luck and risk are doppelgangers, and many people lack in identifying the difference between luck, risk, and skill. Therefore, we should recognize and leave room for understanding when judging failures. 

I would like to conclude my essay with a quote from Bill Gates that I got from this book, "Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people thinking they can't lose''.

                          Thank you