>>><snip>
>>>>Don't know much about how Edison or Zuckerberg got where they did, but Gates had extraordinary opportunities as a kid that gave him thousands of hours of computer use at a time when most people had none. He didn't just wake up one day and become a computer genius; he had years of training.
>>>>
>>>
>>>You might find this article interesting. It is written by the chairman of Oaktree Capital, a worldwide investment management company. As a principle and chairman you can be sure he is not financially poor. The article is written from an investment point of view but that doesn't deter from the main points being made. The first 7 pages are the interesting parts in respect of your comment above - basically Bill Gates won the genetic lottery. At page 8 he goes more into ideas of financial markets and will be less interesting to those not interested in investing. It's written in an easy style, will take 10 minutes at most
>>>
>>>http://www.oaktreecapital.com/MemoTree/Getting%20Lucky_2014_01_16.pdf
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>>I'd say you actually only need to read into page 5. For me, the payoff of the whole document is:
>>
>>Rather than “you make your own luck,” there’s an old saying that provides a better way to put it: “luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.” If you prepare through study and practice, work hard and bring your talents to bear, you’ll be positioned to make the most out of opportunities that arise.
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>>That's essentially something I've been saying for years. A couple of years ago, I was asked to give the keynote speech at the annual lunch of the Penn Graduate Women in Science and Engineering, which is what it sounds like, an affinity group for women at Penn doing graduate work in the various science and engineering fields. My talk was focused primarily on the role opportunity had played in my life, started with winning the genetic lottery (3 previous generations to college in my father's family, including amazingly, his aunt) and right on through the various people in the Fox community who'd given me a shot at things (Glenn Hart, for one). I also talked about some young women I'd encountered whose lives had been changed by being given opportunities.
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>>I've thought more than once about putting the text online, but some of it is more personal than I want to share to the general public. (Saying it in a speech is one thing, putting it on the Internet is something else entirely.)
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>
>We aren't the general public, Tamar. We are your friends. Post away.

Nope. This is a public forum and once I post here, I have no control over where the document goes.

Tamar