How I Built This: The Unexpected Paths to Success from the World's Most Inspiring Entrepreneurs

by Guy Raz

Tristan even had the blessing and guidance of Ben Horowitz himself, who’d given him two important pieces of advice during his time at the firm: First, Horowitz told him, “what usually look like good ideas are bad ideas, and what look like bad ideas are good ideas, because the problem with good ideas is that everyone tries to do them, and as a result, there’s no value to be created there.” Second, he said, “you need to do the thing that you believe you are the best person in the world to do, where you have a unique proposition, given your story, to solve a problem.”

The Beatles told us that money can’t buy you love. Rousseau taught us that money doesn’t buy you happiness. The Bible warns us that the love of money is the root of all evil. And these casualties of the subprime mortgage crisis showed us that money can’t be the primary motivating force behind our businesses.

Whatever the case, the question you will need to answer for yourself as an aspiring entrepreneur isn’t whether you will ever have any luck—you will, you probably already do. It’s what you are going to do with the luck that you have.