Getting Lucky

I assume you've had to answer the classic question:

If you could have one superpower, what would it be?

We've probably all played this game countless times — especially when we were younger, or perhaps even on a date, trying to get to know a prospective partner a little better.

And I also assume our answers have changed as we've matured, accumulated life experience, and developed new interests.

When we were younger, flying or super strength might have been strong contenders. With a little more experience, perhaps we'd choose the ability to read minds.

But there's one superpower that, for me, has become increasingly interesting:

Being lucky. No matter what.

Elon Musk was once asked a similar question, and his answer pointed to something every entrepreneur eventually discovers: you can have all the grit, talent, intelligence, and tenacity in the world... and still need some luck.

Because effort matters enormously.

But effort alone does not control the outcome.

Y Combinator has also explored the many variables that might explain why some ventures become extraordinarily successful while others don't.

Does the founder come from an Ivy League university?

How much money has the company raised?

How many funding rounds?

How many founders are there?

Do they need to be technical?

And so on, across hundreds of possible variables that may influence the final outcome.

Yet there is always another factor sitting somewhere in the equation.

A multiplier that can range, metaphorically, from zero to infinity.

Call it luck.

Call it randomness.

Call it serendipity.

Whatever name you give it, that factor can take a promising venture to zero — or send it into the stratosphere.

That's how important luck can be.

And if luck is the superpower we want, here's the good news:

There are ways to get better at being lucky.

Regardless of your current relationship with luck, you can improve your chances.

In fact, in a world where uncertainty is increasingly the norm, I believe we need to get better at it. We need to learn how to thrive under uncertainty — and how to put ourselves in situations where good things are more likely to happen.

I teach a small section called "How to Get Lucky", focused on understanding the drivers of luck, in one of the Master's programs at the University of Barcelona.

I was initially inspired by Shaan Puri, and over time I've seen more and more people echo the importance of deliberately improving our chances.

More recently, Mark Manson also published one of his Solved episodes on the subject. I recommend it if you'd like to go deeper into the topic.

But first, it's worth recognizing that luck has been understood in different ways across cultures.

In classical Chinese philosophy and metaphysics, life and success are often described through the Cosmic Trinity — San Cai (三才) — which separates luck into three dimensions:

• Heaven Luck (天運 — Tian Yun): The circumstances you are born into. Your time and place of birth, natural abilities, family, and the broader conditions you inherit. These are largely outside your control.

• Earth Luck (地運 — Di Yun): The influence of your environment — where you live, where you work, the people and physical surroundings around you, and the conditions in which your life unfolds.

• Human Luck (人運 — Ren Yun): Your actions, decisions, education, effort, character, and response to circumstances. This is the dimension in which your agency matters most.

I find that last category particularly interesting.

Because while we cannot control every card we're dealt, we can influence how we play them.

There's another framework I like even more.

Serial entrepreneur and podcaster Shaan Puri often talks about four types of luck, based on a model that has circulated for years in entrepreneurial and investing circles:

• Blind Luck: Pure chance. Fortune that happens entirely outside your control — where you were born, certain aspects of your health, or simply being in the right place because of circumstances you did not create.

• Motion Luck: Luck created through movement. You do more things, meet more people, launch more experiments, have more conversations, and create more "touchpoints" with the world. The more you move, the larger the surface area for something unexpectedly good to happen.

• Expert Luck: Luck created through deep knowledge and pattern recognition. You understand a field so well that you can recognize an unusual opportunity before everybody else does — and you have the confidence to act on it.

• Reputation Luck: Luck that comes looking for you. Your work, character, expertise, relationships, or personal brand become known enough that interesting people and opportunities begin to seek you out.

I'm particularly keen on this framework — and especially on Motion Luck.

Why?

Because Motion Luck depends heavily on us.

You can choose to make the call.

Send the email.

Start the project.

Attend the event.

Publish the idea.

Meet the person.

Try something new.

Ask the question.

Build the prototype.

Take another shot.

And every time you do, you create another opportunity for the unexpected to happen.

Even better, Motion Luck compounds.

The more you do, the more you learn.

The more you learn, the more expertise you develop.

The more expertise you develop, the better you become at recognizing opportunities.

And as you consistently do interesting work, your reputation begins to grow.

So Motion Luck can gradually create Expert Luck and Reputation Luck.

That's why I'll never get tired of saying:

We either Win or Learn.

And by doing, experimenting, trying, failing, meeting people, building things, and occasionally getting things very wrong...

I've learned a lot. ;)
And there's one more reason to keep moving: bad luck (learnings) doesn't have to become your identity. A streak of bad outcomes can feel permanent when you're living through it, but randomness rarely moves in a straight line forever.

Think about tossing a fair coin seven times: getting the same side all seven times is possible, but the probability is only about 1 in 64 (1.5%). The important lesson isn't that good luck is somehow due after bad luck — probability doesn't work that way. It's that long streaks are unusual, and the more independent attempts you create, the less any single bad outcome defines your story. Keep moving, keep creating opportunities, and give luck more chances to find you. That's Motion Luck in practice.

Best of luck!
Fredi