Not dieing is ofcourse the key which is where the luck must kick in big time. I think most startup don't die because founders give up but rather because there are no real options left, just strong desire for not dieing is not enough. One key thing Justin mentions is being in growth market. What if you realize after 5 years that your user base for purple coat wearing alternate movie lovers isn't a growth market? The next logical step would be pivot which is technically a death followed by another cycle - if you have funding leftover. Justin.TV itself was on the verge of folding up because of inability to pay for bandwidth and if Twitch idea hadn't occurred at right moment (aka huge luck) then no one would have known them now. Luck has played huge part in probably every startup Justin has mentioned. For example, Reddit would have perhaps never taken off if Digg didn't screwed up with its redesign. Also all of those startups were immensely blessed by social network of Y and pg which average joe founder would not have and that itself reduces dependency on being lucky.
Having said all that, I think Justin has put the simple success receipe quite succinctly in this article: Produce, get feedback and iterate. Doing this enough number of times in growth market can produce very likely success. That's beautiful, powerful, compact advice.
Having said all that, I think Justin has put the simple success receipe quite succinctly in this article: Produce, get feedback and iterate. Doing this enough number of times in growth market can produce very likely success. That's beautiful, powerful, compact advice.