Do you know certain people who seem to consistently have “good luck”? Or others than seem to be consistently plagued with misfortune? I think we all have people in our lives that fit one or both of these categories.
I’ve often reflected on the role that luck has had on my career. For example, my present position as Uniqarta CEO was the result of stumbling across a website where my present co-founder was seeking a partner. It also was the result of a previous (less attractive) startup position not working out. (See my Founder/CEO Conflict post of June 2013).
I could cite many other examples from my career (and personal life)
of positive outcomes being the apparent result of good luck/happenstance/coincidence—pick your term. So what’s going on here? Have I been somehow blessed with better fortune than others? Or, is there some other dynamic at play? I’ve never been able to settle this question to my satisfaction until coming across this article by Richard Wiseman, a professor of psychology who has studied and written about “the principles of good and bad luck”.
The key paragraph from the article is as follows:
My research revealed that lucky people generate good fortune via four basic principles. They are skilled at creating and noticing chance opportunities, make lucky decisions by listening to their intuition, create self-fulfilling prophesies via positive expectations, and adopt a resilient attitude that transforms bad luck into good.
This makes a lot of sense to me as I believe that over the course of one’s life we generally have the same level of good and bad “luck”. The difference is what each of us does with the presented opportunities and how each of us deals with positive or negative outcomes.
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Fundraising update:
It took most of the past three weeks to identify interested investors and schedule meetings with them. The first of these meetings will take place this coming Monday and extend through mid-September. At that point I should have a good set of feedback to help me assess our story, make adjustments, and continue on. I am still sorting through various options in terms of the type of investor to seek, the amount of funds to raise, and the timing of this next round. I’m hopeful that after these initial discussions I’ll be able to focus in on one particular type of investor.