imagine luck as a sign you hold up to the world for opportunities to come your way.

why are some people lucky, like the person who finds $100 on the ground, and others not so much, like the person losing the $100 from their pocket?

this is not about that kind of luck. this is about the luck that can be made with intentional effort.

luck can be manufactured with hard work, being able to spot opportunities, leveraging the latest tools, and positioning. rather than waiting in line to go through the front door like 99% of other people, there is always a way to find a third door.

these are some examples from early days at tks, where teens worked on projects and built in public online to create their own luck through different approaches:

• ben raised $6.5m at age 17 building the first non-invasive glucose monitor after 2 years of hard work studying fundamentals of magnetism, mris, and positioning himself for vc funding.
• hannah landed a computational biology research position by creating a proof-of-concept and cold emailing 134 labs until one responded.
• tommy secured a full-time position at rigetti before college by exploring the intersection of quantum computing, meeting the ceo at a hackathon, and maintaining a newsletter for personal progress.

while some might say, if you had to work for it, then it’s not luck, i disagree. if a past action helps unlock future opportunities with little extra effort, then there’s more luck.

making more luck is like increasing the surface area of that poster.

a larger surface area means more visibility. more visibility means more opportunity for other people to find you and more visibility for you to spot more opportunities.

before the internet had network effects, where you lived and went to school were the main influences for that personal surface area of luck. the saught after fancy college credential seemed more like a billboard amplifying personal luck when compared to individual hard work.

this was how the world worked pre-internet because institutions were closed networks and direct paths to desired corporate roles.

all of that changed with the internet. one post on x can unlock funding. anyone can direct message a ceo on linkedin. in the age of the internet, content is the key to build a bill board for your future self, where thousands, potentially millions of people, could see this increased visibility.

this made fancy credentials just another piece of paper because more people got them and they aren’t as relevant as what someone can do in the age of the internet. the internet is infinite leverage for a larger surface area because the cost of distributing that content is zero.

with youtube, there’s no need to rent out physical theaters to show people a video of you building. with substack, there’s no need to physically print and mail newsletters. leveraging the internet like one big online game of increasing personal leverage and probabilities of discovery enables the largest surface area an individual has ever been able for themself. until 2025.