Talent vs. Luck: the Role of Randomness in Success and Failure & the Man who could have been Bill Gates
How much can a missed opportunity cost? Well, you are just going to have a rough idea of that, and this time a rough idea will be enough to figure out the actual cost.
This is the story of a failure and at the same time a success story for someone else, not just because of lack of work or intelligence but because of a missed chance.
This is the story then, of Gary Kildall’s fall and the rise of Microsoft and Bill Gates and the role of random events in deciding success.
The Gary Kildall story and the rise of Microsoft
Let’s first know Gary Kildall. It is this man who started one of the most significant revolutions in the last three decades, the Personal Computer Revolution as he was among the earliest to recognize microprocessors as potent computers rather than simple component controllers and build an industry around this concept. It is this man who created the first big software company of its kind, Digital Research Inc. it was this man who built something that day from which we got an OS that we call Windows today, and from that same thing, we got this huge conglomerate we call Microsoft.
Ok, so let’s see what happened to him to be a story.
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| Gary Kildall and his creation (CP/M) |
In 1977, Apple launched Apple II, the first personal computer that didn’t require assembling the computer by self or it came out as a ready-made personal computer. And this release was treated well by the people and it is the time when the story began.
Seeing Apple's success, IBM, the corporate standard for computers, learned that personal computers are no more hobbyist toys, they can indeed be productive. So they decided to launch their own.
In general, big conglomerates like IBM then were slow at decision making and it took around years for a decision to be implemented, but if they do that they will miss the time and the market both, so they did construct a secret committee within IBM, who will handle only this PC matter and hence will fasten the decision making. So they decided to make the hardware not from scratch like they usually did before, they just assembled hardware from other companies, and this way they had their PC ready, but without an OS.
For this OS problem, they head-on toward Microsoft, and met Bill Gates but thought him to be an intern, but later they signed a non-disclosure contract. And after the discussion and knowing IBM’s intentions, Bill Gates informed them that Microsoft doesn’t have an operating system, but at the same time he directed them toward Gary Kildall.
Gary Kildall had a reputation as an OS builder, as he had previously developed the first non-hardware-specific OS, and he called it CP/M (Control Programmed for Microcomputers) in 1972.
So when IBM headed toward Garry, Bill Gates noticed him by simply saying that “Garry, I’ve got some people coming around to visit…… treat them right, they’re important guys!”, but Gates couldn’t say who they were, as he had signed that no-disclosure. And being casual and non-business minded Garry didn’t get the urgency of the thing and left for some other business thing. And upon arrival, IBM met Dorothy Kildall, Garry’s wife and the in-charge of Research Gate Inc. (which was her idea, as she insisted Garry license his creation). But before talking on the matter the IBM lawyers wanted her to sign a non-disclosure and she simply refused, and after no negotiation and a lot of frustration, the IBM team simply stepped back.
A few days after the Dorothy and IBM incident, IBM again went back to Bill Gates. Being opportunistic, this time he refused to say no, instead he convinced them that although Microsoft doesn’t have an operating system, they can make one. And here Gates did something sneaky, he just bought an OS for some 50 or 75 thousand dollars named Q-DOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System) which is a manipulated version of Garry’s CP/M and renamed it as MS-DOS(Microsoft-Disk Operating System) and sold it to IBM with some one-time licensing fee. And soon after IBM again took control over the computer market and overtook Apple in the PC market. Seeing IBM’s rise with MS-DOS, business-minded Gates got on to find a vulnerability in the deal, and eventually, he got one, the deal was non-exclusive. So, exploiting this vulnerability Gates sold MS-DOS to IBM competitors too, this time with a fee for every PC unit sold. And this thing will be remembered for centuries to come as the Greatest deal in history. And it is this sneaky business idea and deal that made him a billionaire over the years.
Seeing IBM flourish and knowing what happened, Garry went over to IBM and explained the matter, and IBM accepted Garry’s request and started providing customers with the options to choose between CP/M and MS-DOS as their PC OS. Finally, justice was brought, but the thing was that the OSs were both quite similar in functionality but, the MS-DOS sold for like 40$ whereas the CP/M cost around 240$.
And then, the fate was decided for Garry Kildall by the PC consumers.
This was just another of the business stories scattered all-around history, or was it?
Embedded in this business story is a lesson on how random events affect fate.
Role of Randomness in deciding Fate
No doubt, Garry’s fall was dramatic. Injustice happened with Garry Kildall, one of the greatest contributors in the PC revolution, an inventor, the best in his field, and a creator with a bright carrier of more than 2 decades with a lead in his field.
Despite being that talented and innovative and visionary, he failed. What else can we call it other than luck? Or, was it just another chance event.
Look, mathematically, it was just another of the various outcomes possible.
Mathematically speaking, success in a field or event is just a matter of luck. Well, it may sound disturbing but that’s it is a chance event among many outcomes possible. In reality, we do tend to neglect the effect of luck in our daily life like a high-school student neglecting air resistance, we neglect it but in reality, it is there.
Yes, Gary was unfortunate but that for sure, doesn’t tell us anything about his talent and merit.
He was no doubt one of the greatest contributors to PC history of all time.
And you know what, Gary was not the only one who is unfortunate enough to slough off of the success. A maximum of the population seeking success is on this side of the story.
Success is often considered as a result of hard work, and it is not a false statement, but at the same time, it is not the complete and sole constituent of success. Luck plays an important role too as a contributor to success.
You may disagree with the above statement I just made, so here is a simple analogy describing the role of luck or chance events in deciding success or failure.
Let’s take a class constituting of only girls students, and as per some estimates there are some 17% of total females are having their periods at any point of time, which is not just an unstoppable flow of blood but also is accompanied by a feeling of pain, irritation and other psychological effects due to underlying activities. So applying the same estimate here, we are getting some 17% of students who were unable to make their preparations properly, even if the date for the exam is picked randomly. So, you will get an ‘unrealistic’ result from the girls, right? Or is it? Look, at any point in time the number will remain the same i.e. 17%, so now how will you get something ‘realistic’? And in this case, it is economically fit to consider the ‘unrealistic’ result as the final.
And you know what the shocking part is? None, neither those who succeeded nor those who didn’t succeed has considered this fact as a player in deciding their fate.
And many such analogies do prove this operation of chance events in happening something to someone.
One such chance event is your birth in the country of your residence. This way being born in a developed country exposes you to a greater set of opportunities than someone born in an underdeveloped country will ever get exposure to.
Now, you may appreciate the role of luck or what I call the chance events in deciding fate or destiny or whatever you call it.
Then what to do for success, considering the effects of chance events in manipulating it
Well, it is seen that the ones who consider its effect on success are the ones who often succeed. And it is no miracle, as the ones who consider its effects have studied what chance events can cause and the potential of chance events. So in order to cancel that effect, they tend to put more effort toward their destiny and hence end up in their destiny.
Mathematically, they are just increasing the sample space by putting in multiple efforts, and thus their probability of being more likely to be successful in their journey toward the destination.
So, it is useful to consider the effect of luck in reaching destiny, as this way you may put in a larger effort that you may never have put in.
And again there is a side-effect of this consideration though, one may believe that his/her fate is already decided by his/her luck, so they prefer not to put any effort without understanding the thing that by putting more effort they can increase their chance of being lucky.
Conclusion
It is almost obvious that none successful consider the role of luck or chance events in their success, that’s probably because that derogatory chance event never happened to them. But that’s not the case with the maximum, but still, we do believe that something like chance events never ever affects the path to our success. And that’s because the rules are set by the ones who have never faced them.
By now it is going to be a long read, although it was meant to be confined to the Garry Kildall story, which only wouldn’t have suited the type of contents I post, so I decided to add something more to the story, a lesson from Gary’s fall, so every time you fail, think twice to blame yourself the whole.
I do believe in luck. I believe if you work hard, your probability of being lucky increases dramatically.
-Ritesh Agarwal
