Is luck the key to making money? Yes and . . . no

By Matthew Vincent

Which trio better understands wealth creation? Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg and Big Short author Michael Lewis? Or Victorian showman PT Barnum, virginal chanteuse Madonna and TV oilman Bobby Ewing? Yes, out of Dallas.
If you chose the first three, because you admire their entrepreneurial skills, I have some bad news. All of them claim their wealth is, in some way, down to luck. Two recent books — The Wealth Elite by Rainer Zitelmann and The Geometry of Wealth by Brian Portnoy — suggest there might be something in this. Gates, when asked the secret of his success by author Malcolm Gladwell, said simply: “I was very lucky.” Similarly, Zuckerberg told Facebook Live viewers: “You don’t get to be successful like this just by being hard-working or having a good idea . . . you have to get lucky.” Lewis even urged Princeton graduates to “recognise that if you have had success, you have also had luck”.