After it was accepted for publication under the name “Robert Galbraith.” Then Rowling came forward and surprised them with the happy news.
My younger son writes computer code. He just developed a plug-in that will make him a bunch of money. He has given away much of his work over the past couple years in order to get his name out there and get himself invited to speak at developer conferences. He has a number of other “products” in the pipeline. He started his own company so that he would have both control of his work and reap the rewards. His first career was in investment banking, but his passion is all things computer. I have no doubt he will be successful. I doubt he’ll sell his company, but who knows, if somebody throws enough money at him???
Would he be able to repeat his success? I think so because of his passion for the field and he has a wife who manages the money side of things. He failed in his attempt to develop apps and I think in his gut he wants to prove to himself he can be a success in that field. He’s an Apple hater who has recently invested in an iMac, an iPhone and an iPad, so I think he’s going to make another stab at apps. 
…thats just self-depreciating fluff. Its the sort of thing you expect the winning captain to say “All credit to the opposition/we were lucky to win/etc.” Would Branson still have succeeded in other ways if Tubular Bells was not successful? Your cite demonstrates he most likely would have been. He shows that he can pick talent and is wise enough not to get in the way. What exactly is it in the article that convinces you that without Tubular Bells Branson would not have made it?
I’ve only browsed the thread but it appears that the term “entrepreneur” is confused with the term “inventor”.
An entrepreneur is a person who promotes a business idea/product. An inventor is the guy who spends hours or years in his garage/computer teasing out ideas. If he’s unworldly he will sell an idea to the entrepreneur.
Bill Gates is an inventor who happened to understand how to develop a business, thus becoming an entrepreneur.
‘Formula for success: rise early, work hard, strike oil.’ – J. Paul Getty
I didn’t say he wouldn’t have been successful just that luck played a huge role in where he is today. I’m not getting the impression that people realize just how big of a record it was, especially so in the UK. As for Branson and his business acumen, I’d guess that he’d have become a millionaire without such luck, perhaps even a multi-millionaire. Nevertheless, he will repeatedly tell you how important record was to his career, in any forum, over and over again. This is a guy who was later sued by Oldfield and Oldfield even encoded “Fuck off RB” on one of his albums.
BBC Interview (audio)
On the importance of John Peel’s playing of the album in its entirety on Radio 1
More on Tubular Bells and how it came about
So, you have a guy with a good instinct as well as business acumen, a willingness to take some risks, mix in several strokes of extraordinary luck (as well as smaller misfortunes), and you get a billionaire.
Definitely luck plays a part.
A lot of the people that manage to get rich quick, for instance, do so by investing in an industry or tech at the point where most people haven’t even heard of it, and reaping the rewards when it snowballs.
Now obviously, you have to have a certain personality to succeed in being such a pioneer. To find out about the latest ideas and help make them workable.
But, OTOH, most of these potential “next big things” flop; and no-one can predict with certainty which ones will succeed*. Furthermore, it really helps if you have the right network of friends who can help you get started.
- Not quite a new tech / idea, but still the example of Angry Birds comes to mind, as the first big smartphone game. It’s a decent enough game, it’s free, and it has well-designed characters. But still, there were many games around at the time you could say the same things about. The time was right for something to be big, but it could easily have been something else IMHO.
…again: not sure of your point. He attributes the album as being important to his career: but he doesn’t attribute his career to good luck. Luck is a factor: but good instincts, as well as business acumen, and a willingness to take some risks play a much bigger role than luck in his career wouldn’t you agree? While the articles attribute his decisions to “luck”: I would suggest that his success is more down to him having made a decision that others chose not to. That isn’t luck.
Yep. You’ll never meet a talented musician who isn’t rich and famous.
Sure he does. How about an exact quote? (I’ll note that I’ve never said it was solely luck, just that he’s had huge amounts of it, without which he likely wouldn’t be where he is today.)
[QUOTE=Richard Branson]
You do need lucky breaks to be successful. I’ve had enormous amounts of luck.
[/QUOTE]
At this point, I’m going to let his own words make the case for me as they are pretty clear, whether you believe them or not. I’m not sure how you can parse “you do need lucky breaks to be successful” in any other way, but feel free to continue doing so.
…your quote doesn’t state that Branson attributes his whole career to luck. Luck comes about as the result of “doing things.” If I lead a boring, decision and risk free life, odds are on that luck won’t play a big part in my life. The more decisive I am and the more risks I take: the more “luck” tends to play a part. In essence: lucky people create their own luck by making decisions and by not giving up.
Actually you haven’t even shown where luck played a significant role in anything. What part of the Tubular Bells story was “luck”? Having read all of your cites it seems clear that Tubular Bells was a success because Branson worked his ass off to get the album heard by the right people.
…we’ve all agreed that luck plays a part. Haven’t I said that luck played a part? This is the original quote you initially had issue with:
And your response:
I put it to you that if Branson had not had success with Tubular Bells, he would have had success with something else. The success of Tubular Bells was “unexpected” because other people didn’t think it would be successful and walked away from it. Branson thought otherwise. Branson “made his own luck.”
To me, the question doesn’t really come down to “Would <entrepreneur X> have been successful if not for luck?”, but rather to what degree luck played in the magnitude of the success.
For example (one that I mentioned a while back in the thread), Mark Cuban would have been successful- hell, he was successful prior to the sale of Broadcast.com to Yahoo!.
However, I think had he not sold it when he did, he’d never have been anything other than a middling-level millionaire type entrepreneur. He certainly wouldn’t have been the billionaire celebrity owner of a sports team.
In his case, the success was his own, but the magnitude was almost solely due to being at the right place at the right time.
Richard Branson would have been successful as well, although he had a couple of lucky breaks that he capitalized on, no question.
I realize that “success” hasn’t really been defined here, but I don’t know that it really needs to be to make my point.
There’s an old saying that luck favors the prepared. You can’t be a successful entrepreneur if you don’t take advantage of the opportunities that come your way. On the other hand, no one has total control of what opportunities come to them. Another aspect often overlooked is that some of those mega-successful business types also had mega-setbacks (didn’t Henry Ford go bankrupt more than once before his blow-out success with the Model T?) so another aspect, in addition to hard work and luck, is the ability to persevere despite setbacks and disasters.
Many of the successful entrepreneurs I know endured a lot of failures before they finally made it. Which makes me think that dogged persistence (or boundless optimism, if you like) must be a factor.
Being quite a Mike fan, especially considering I live in the US, I can support this. TB was not just a song - it was a two side fully instrumental (except for Viv and some grunts) album by a kid under 20 who played almost all the instruments. Not exactly the recipe for a best seller. A huge best seller.
The Fuck Off RB bit is in Amarok, and one track 60 minute piece, the second to last for Virgin, which was decidedly non-commercial - but brilliant. His last record for Virgin, Heavens Open, was all about getting out of the contract. So, ripping off the artist had something to do with Branson’s success too. When I took Virgin to England they played TB as we were loading.
One can always find a reason for failure after the failure. I challenge anyone to be successful most of the time. Obviously, of the thousands of successful startups you can find a few which lead to new successes - but most don’t. BTW, does NeXT ring a bell, Sam?
The small number of second successes show that it isn’t all brilliance. The Black Swan talks all about selection bias.
One of the reasons the Times thought that there was something to the rumor is that Galbraith’s agent was also Rowling’s - someone who would never give Galbraith the time of day. And the publisher certainly knew who wrote the book. Do you have a cite to the contrary?
The gentleman who founded Halliburton Oil was from a rural area of north-West Tennessee. He invented a “contraption” while working for an oil company. They didn’t seem to take to his initiative and for one reason or another, fired him.
He went to work with another oil drilling company who found his device very helpful. From there he worked his way up in the ranks to put it mildly.
After he was already a success, he tired of having fragile items (cameras, perhaps) jostled around while he was flying. So he came up with a solution to the problems with a case that would protect them. It’s known as “the Halliburton Case” or the “Zero Halliburton Case.”
http://www.google.com/search?q=The+Halliburton+Case
I see them on television all the time, but I’ve never been able to afford one – or at least, find a good reason to afford one.
Anyway, its invention added to his fortune.
I’ll keep that in mind next time I read Agatha Christie or Sherlock Holmes. 
To add to what has been said-to start a large enterprise (like a new garbage collection business) requires a LOT of money. You can only raise this kind of cash if you have a good track record. Even a modest restaurant is a huge investment…so if yo have made a lot of money in your first venture, your chances of succeeding again are much higher because of this. Nikola Tesla was a great inventor, but he had no business sense-if it hadn’t been for George Westinghouse, Tesla would have failed.