The HUGE economic consequences of women attributing their success to “luck”
The problem with #blessed
Once upon a time a woman was asked about the success of her company. She smiled and said:
- I have been really lucky….
Once upon a, very similar, time a man was asked about his success. He smiled and said.
- I have always been good at spotting opportunities like this…
Then he went on to tell the story of the dragons that he’d slayed and the difference he’d made.
Most of us recognise this pattern. Men are more likely to attribute their success to their own skill. Women to luck.
And it matters A LOT. As a matter of fact it has shaped big parts of the global economy.
How?
Well, let’s start by looking at this photograph. It’s from Fortune Magazine in 2007. It shows 13 men sitting around gambling tables dressed up as gangsters (looking a lot less cool than they probably think they look).
This is the so-called “PayPal Mafia”: a group of men who were involved in the rise of PayPal and got rich when the company sold to Ebay in 2002. They eventually went on to invest the money in other startups with huge success.
Money from the PayPal Mafia has helped create everything from Facebook to Linkedin. Not to mention Tesla and SpaceX (our friend Elon Musk is also part of the PayPal Mafia). Basically, the influence and power of this group has been ENORMOUS.
They rose to power in an era where companies could - for the first time in human history - create markets with billions of customers. Tech companies changed the rules of labor markets, media markets and democracy itself in big parts of the world.
Depending how you count heads, there are more than twenty members in the PayPal Mafia. There are no women.
And the club is almost exclusively white.
The members of the PayPal Mafia are often celebrated as heroes but as Cindy Gallop points out, they are actually an example of a closed loop of guys funding other guys - who then go on and fund other guys….
(As readers of this newsletter know women only receive around three percent of all venture capital.)
The problem is that we call all of it meritocracy. The triumph of talent. Keith Rabois, a member of the PayPal Mafia described PayPal as a “perfect validation of merit”. It succeeded because they had the best people and therefore it’s not surprising that the same people were able to go on and create so many other successful startups. They must be geniuses! Why don’t we just let them solve all of our other problems as well!
Yes, let’s follow them to Mars!
But this insanely powerful group didn’t get to where they are just because of talent. At PayPal the founder, Peter Thiel, didn’t look through resumes looking for the most talented people. He brought in people he had already come across. There were no women “because we didn’t know any”.
As Emily Chang says in her excellent book Brotopia: Breaking Up the Boys' Club of Silicon Valley:
“The idea that these men just happened to be personally connected to the most talented people available is simply ridiculous.”
But they still believed it.
And it mattered.
Imagine if the PayPal Mafia had said “we were just lucky” instead.
Because they were undoubtedly #blessed. (Especially for closing a 100 million dollar funding round while the dot com bubble was imploding in 2000. If it hadn’t been for that “luck” they would have not been here today….)
But they didn’t see themselves as “lucky”. They put it down to their own talent.
Which had huge consequences.
Because if you are putting your success down to “luck” (like many women do) you are also saying that you can’t replicate it. If it was all down to “luck” why would people invest in your next business? Why would they listen to your advice? Why would they buy your book or back your efforts to send humanity to Mars?
There is no female equivalent to the PayPal Mafia.
HOWEVER there’s also a VERY DARK side of attributing your success to merit (as men tend to do more than women). It means it was all you. You “earned” these billions, so why should you pay tax? Why should you give back? Why should you not think that you are invincible and faultless and unable to fail?
No, there must be a middle way between thinking it was “luck” and thinking it was “merit”.
In the immortal words of ABBA: “Thank you for the music”. Now, that’s a song about REAL GRATITUDE. Not about saying “I was lucky…” as a way of brushing over your own contribution (and run from any responsibility that would come from having to admit that you are actually good at something). No REAL GRATITUDE. The song is about recognising that yes, you might have done a good job singing the song.
But on a deeper level.
The music came from somewhere else.
Happy Thursday!
Katrine