The unfair advantage

How important is luck when it comes to doing anything in life?

Let’s talk about career/business and look at some case studies.

Bill Gates is one of the richest men in the world. He built Microsoft; everyone knows this.

But what everyone doesn’t know, is that he was able to build Microsoft because of his love for computers. And he loved computers because he went to a school which was one of the very few schools that had a computer. Bill used to spend hours and hours in school on the computer, coding away.

That’s how he got better and better at programming. He had the passion, but he also had the resources to cultivate that passion.

He was privileged enough to afford an education that less than 1% in the world can. Had he not had wealthy parents, he’d have gone to a normal school without a computer. There’s a very low chance he would get the kind of exposure to programming that he got there. And we probably wouldn’t have microsoft today.

Example # 2: Snapchat’s founder Evan Spiegel. He was the youngest self-made billionnaire at the age of 24.

Self-made, yes. His wealth wasn’t inherited from his father.

But his network was.

Spiegel grew up in a multimillion-dollar home in LA and had a powerful set of lawyers as parents. Because of his parents’ network, he got introduced to big-time VCs and mentors. He got to learn a great amount from his mentors, and in fact, one of the mentors became his angel investor for Snapchat.

Would all this have been possible if he was not born to rich and well-networked parents? I’m not so sure.

Now, you might think that people who are rich have an unfair advantage. That is true, but wealth is not the only unfair advantage people have.

Let’s look at Example #3: Oprah Winfrey

Oprah is one of the most influential women in the world. But she grew up in a very poor household. Her mother was a housemaid. Oprah was discriminated against her own sister (who was of a lighter skin tone than her). And the worst part, she was sexually abused when she was 9.

How then, did she become a billionnaire?

Well, when she was 3 years old, her grandmother had already taught her how to read the bible. Given, she was a prodigy so she could read the bible at such a tender age.

But that wasn’t the only thing that played a role in her success.

Her grandmother and father used to regularly take her to church to recite the bible, where crowds loved to hear her speak. She was already a champion speaker by the age of 8, when kids barely start reciting poetry in school competitions.

Being such an avid reader, she was more knowledgeable than most of her peers.

Because she did everything so early on in life, she actually got her first full-time job on a radio show at the age of 17.

Now, like I said, of course she was talented. She was a prodigy. But would all this be possible if she was not raised by her grandmother and taught to read the bible at a young age? Possibly not.

The point of this whole article is that all of us, whether rich or poor, talented or not, educated or uneducated - have certain circumstances, a certain upbringing and certain qualities, that can give us an “unfair advantage” over others. We just need to reflect on it and understand that unfair advantage, and use it to achieve what we want to.

Also, another point here, is that it’s not always about hard work. You also need to work smart. And yet, sometimes, you may fail, not because you didn’t work hard or smart, but just because you didn’t have the inherent advantage.

(Examples taken from Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers and Ash Ali & Husan Kubba's The Unfair Advantage)