A long time ago, I came across a book called Chase, Chance, and Creativity: The Lucky Art of Novelty（《追逐、机遇和创造力：新奇的幸运艺术》）. I no longer remember everything in it, but its central idea stayed somewhere in the back of my mind: luck and creativity are not entirely random. Chance may arrive unexpectedly, but we can still choose how often we encounter it and whether we are ready to recognize it.

Author: Koutian Wu; GitHub: ktwu01

Yesterday, while talking with Anne, I found a phrase for this idea: luck sourcing—the sourcing of getting lucky.

We usually speak about luck as if it simply happens to us. But perhaps luck can be sourced: through the people we meet, the conversations we enter, the places we spend time, the questions we keep asking, and the strange ideas we decide not to dismiss too quickly. We cannot command a lucky outcome, but we may be able to create more places for luck to come from.

That is the idea I want to explore here.

Luck Sourcing

About six years ago, I started “expanding my contact list.”

At the time, I did not have any clear goal. I just felt that if I knew more people, interesting things would always happen. So I would use all kinds of spare moments to add people, chat, and build connections.

Once, I added dozens of people in a row on a train. I got so absorbed in chatting that I passed my stop without realizing it.

Later, I worked as a VC intern and was responsible for deal sourcing. In theory, I should have been constantly looking for projects, researching founders, and building investment leads.

But in practice, I would often get halfway through my work and start chatting with friends I already knew. On the surface, this looked like slacking off; but many new projects, collaborations, and pieces of information came precisely from these conversations with no clear purpose.

I later realized that this behavior could be given a name, just like deal sourcing.

It should be called luck sourcing.

Deal sourcing is actively looking for deals. Talent sourcing is actively looking for talent. Luck sourcing is actively looking for luck.

Many people understand luck as a random event: waiting for an opportunity to appear, waiting for a benefactor to contact them, waiting for something good to happen by chance.

But much of what we call luck can actually be increased.

The more people you know, the more frequently you communicate, the more communities you participate in, and the more often you are exposed to new information, the higher the probability that unexpected opportunities will appear.

Luck sourcing does not guarantee success.

It simply lets you appear more frequently in places where “good luck might happen.”

You are not waiting for luck.

You are sourcing it.