This week I hosted my first Startup Social Dinner of 2023. It was a beautiful evening, filled with lively conversation and amazing food.

There, I met a guy named Dan. He described himself as a professional athlete, turned professional esports player, turned high frequency trader. He’s now starting his first company, and yes, it’s already generating revenue (Congrats Dan!).

But what a bio right? It seemed pretty all over the place until we started talking, and he began to peel back the layers.

The crux of Dan’s repeated success—in so many disparate domains—boiled down to one thing: Focusing on inputs instead of outputs.

I just need to figure out my next move

I don’t know about you, but I’ve spent days—maybe even weeks—sitting at home trying to “figure it all out”. Ruminating alone, making plans, mapping my future, trying to find my path and my purpose.

• What kind of career would be fulfilling?

• Where do I want to settle down?

• How do I get there?

But contrary to what we may think, successful people don’t draw out a map of their life first, and then follow it to a destination. Instead they’re fierce explorers, and the act of exploration reveals their path.

E. L. Doctorow echos this idea, when describing his own writing process. “Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”

But too many of us are just sitting in the darkness, waiting for the fog to lift before we start driving.

Outputs rule our lives

We’ve been trained our entire lives to focus on outputs.

• What school did you get into?

• How many followers do you have?

• Did your company fail or succeed?

• What grade did you get on the test?

• How many sales did you make this month?

And we’ve been told for decades, “If you want to succeed you have to work hard”. Fine, but this statement also has an insidious twin—one that’s logical, but completely false:

If you’re not successful, that’s because you didn’t work hard enough.

As if life was a gum ball machine, and all you had to do was keep putting in more quarters.

Inputs make opportunities, not luck

The problem is we want to feel in control.

We want to live in a quarter-in-gum-ball-out kind of world, but we fundamentally don’t. This summons a universal tension.

We can only control our inputs, but we’re judged on our outputs.

Take, for example, this tweet from Pat Walls. Each green box below represents a day that he wrote code. A day he improved his business.

It’s a visceral representation of consistent work and “making your own luck”. In five years, Pat has gone from running a relatively obscure business, to making over $83K per month with Starter Story.

But there’s another—far more important tweet—for us to learn from.

Marjin was also a startup founder. He was also putting in the work, writing code, and improving his business each day.1 Was he also making his own luck? 

One founder worked hard every day, writing code, and ultimately succeeded. The other put in 3 times as much work, and failed2.

This is the dark side of outcome-based judgement.

If you do your time, put in the hours, are diligent, study and network, there is no guarantee that lady luck will smile upon you.

That’s because we don’t make our own luck, but rather, we make our own opportunities. Luck then chooses to either strike them down, or breathe life into them.

The more we engage with the world, the more code we ship, the more people we meet, the more emails we send, the more opportunities we ultimately create.

But we do not create luck. We only invite her in.

He broke his ankle twice

He reached Olympic levels of speed on the track, and then, SNAP. Twice. My new friend—and dinner mate—Dan broke both of his ankles.

After years of training, of speed drills, of workouts and protein shakes, his professional career was ended abruptly. On that day, more than bones broke. Everything he had worked for was gone. There was no Olympic team, no glory.

But the powerful lesson he shared with me at dinner was: It’s not about what your efforts yield, but rather, the fact that you’re putting in the effort at all. 

Success is not about the dogmatic pursuit of a goal we set for ourselves when we were 18. It’s not about committing whole heartedly, and then slashing through every obstacle in our way.

Instead, it’s about giving each day our best shot.

It’s about driving at night in the fog. It’s about correcting course when new information comes to our attention, or when lady luck says “You shall not pass.” 

After his injuries, Dan decided to spend his mandatory recovery time playing video games. He pushed forward, feeling in the dark, not knowing where this new pursuit would take him. Only knowing that his old path was closed, and something new was up ahead.

By consistently showing up, he became one of the best esports players in the world. He did the same thing when he later attended University of Cambridge, and again as a high frequency trader.

I have no doubt he will continue this journey by walking an organic path, in concert with luck and opportunity, rather than in opposition. 

—Zac

P.S. Want to get plugged into the startup community of San Francisco? Startup Social is hosting a brunch on February 18th. If you’re interested, sign up here!