First of all, you are not alone. Most people who try to become entrepreneurs do not succeed. Thankfully, you are self aware and willing to face the facts of your reality.
A lot of people will say that success in entrepreneurship is primarily driven by luck. But what they leave out is that it’s input luck, not output luck. Inputs like a “small” $10k gift from a family member. Clean water and high nutrition during childhood that lead to above average intelligence. Literacy, citizenship, family wealth, and more. Not to mention having no mental or physical illnesses and a high capacity to endure stress.
I completely agree with your last sentence, “It’s ok to admit defeat and move on.” In life, you got to play with the hand you were dealt and not the hand someone else’s. It’s unfortunate that some social circles encourage self damaging behavior in pursuit of some idealized lifestyle that can never be accessed by everyone, and it wouldn’t even be good if it was.
> But what they leave out is that it’s input luck, not output luck. Inputs like a “small” $10k gift from a family member. Clean water and high nutrition during childhood that lead to above average intelligence. Literacy, citizenship, family wealth, and more.
Hm, no, even if all of those things are equal the expected outcome is still failure. Your comparison works on the world stage but say within the population of a wealthy country and even just one wealthy city if 100 people were to go down this path only one or two will have a success that offsets their opportunity cost.
The kind of luck that entrepreneurs are talking about in this context is more related to markets being ripe just as your product hits them, technologies going mainstream, meeting the right business contact or partners early on and so on. Those little things can make - or break - a business depending on if they happen or not.
If you have the right input luck, there’s a huge number of small $1-10m annual revenue businesses that can be built. Personally, I can’t do all of them for time constraints so have to focus. I would agree with output luck to some degree with some of the biggest outliers (Facebook, Google) but for some entrepreneurs they have made giant wins not once but repeatedly. Bezos, Buffet, and Musk come to mind - and the fact that in all three of those cases you have abnormally healthy people able to handle stress and work load levels that most of us (including me) can’t take.
I will add that it's only about luck if your entering a certain kind of industry, where your succes is dependent on popularity.
If for example you start lumber company selling timber wood, the only thing you need to have an edge is to undercut the market with 5% on price. Of cause you won't get rich quick or maybe even slow, but it's a tried and tested strategy. Before starting a business you should ask yourself is my business luck depend, or is my success guaranteed as long as I undercut the competition on price or quality.
A lot of people will say that success in entrepreneurship is primarily driven by luck. But what they leave out is that it’s input luck, not output luck. Inputs like a “small” $10k gift from a family member. Clean water and high nutrition during childhood that lead to above average intelligence. Literacy, citizenship, family wealth, and more. Not to mention having no mental or physical illnesses and a high capacity to endure stress.
I completely agree with your last sentence, “It’s ok to admit defeat and move on.” In life, you got to play with the hand you were dealt and not the hand someone else’s. It’s unfortunate that some social circles encourage self damaging behavior in pursuit of some idealized lifestyle that can never be accessed by everyone, and it wouldn’t even be good if it was.