What moves the world – agency or chance?

Many years ago, I saw the movie The Social Network, and I came with the impression the filmmakers believed Facebook was almost an “accident”. The movie was good entertainment, and I enjoyed it. But I wondered if they were trying to make a point.

I can’t comment about the disputes at the center of the film; I wasn’t there. Possibly other people had the idea at the same time as Mark Zuckerberg, but it’s not like the idea wasn’t already in the air. There’s nothing particularly proprietary or unique about a social network — many of them existed well before Facebook.

However, the central premise of the film is Zuck sort of stumbled his way to success (fittingly, based on a book titled “The Accidental Billionaires”), and that he was essentially the lucky beneficiary of timing and other people’s ideals.

As someone who has struggled many times to build something from nothing, and occasionally succeeded, I find this notion a little disturbing. Yet we see this angle taken by critics, reporters and other spectators on a regular basis. Why?

During EarthLink’s heyday, Wired assigned a journalist to write an in-depth feature about me. During one of the ensuing interviews, he asked me whether I thought I was responsible for shaping my own destiny or was I, as he felt about himself, “floating down a river” toward a fate determined by my environment and genetic endowment. I bluntly told him that people in that school rarely created or did anything of value in the world. He seemed annoyed and scrawled in his notepad.

A few weeks later, after he had filed his story, I got a call from Wired’s then Editor In Chief, Katrina Heron, whom I had known for years and greatly admired. She told me that she had finally read the article, and that she was killing it. She felt it wasn’t an accurate reflection of me or the company I’d created, and she wouldn’t publish it. She said, “I know you, and this isn’t you.” I trusted her opinion, and took it on faith that she had made the right decision, although I was more than a little curious what the story had to say!

I didn’t have to wait long. The journalist retained ownership of the article and shopped it around to several other publications, and it was soon published in a small magazine in Canada. When I finally read the piece, I understood why Katrina had killed it: The central notion of the story was that EarthLink just “happened,” that my success was pretty much an accident, and that I was just a lucky SOB.

Successful entrepreneurs like to say that it’s all about being the right place at the right time. There’s a lot of truth to this. However, real success is won in a hard knock-down drag-out fight, scratching tooth-and-nail against impossible odds. Elon Musk isn’t exaggerating when he describes some moments of the entrepreneur’s journey as “chewing glass and staring into the abyss.”

Yes, timing IS vitally important, and no one builds anything of scale alone, but the smartest, most ferociously determined entrepreneurs recognize and PUT themselves in the right place at the right time. When a massive new wave is about to crest, they paddle like crazy and drop in. And then they have the conviction and perseverance to survive what usually turns into a brutal ride.

There is always a CAUSE.

The root of lasting success isn’t luck, and greatness is never an accident.