>Isn't it common knowledge nowadays that simple luck plays a really big part of of succeeding as a start-up?

It's not a contradiction. Refer to the chart in the article: http://fortunedotcom.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/unknown2-e1...

Luck can be an important component, however, it doesn't mean it's not super-easy to identify an immediate cause of death in the absence of that luck. For example, let's suppose that you literally have to win a lottery or none of your sources of funding will close. (Remember, we are defining this as a lottery for this hypothetical mental exercise - I don't think it is one.)

Now, there is luck, for example the must-have round closing days before money runs out. That is luck. (In point of fact this is actually reported by some founders - the same ones who declare how lucky they were.)

And on the other half of the spectrum, article shows 30% of startups reporting dying due to running out of money. So in the other 70% of cases the startups either: got lucky to close their round; or had no trouble closing their round; or didn't need it. In any case in 70% of cases, running out of money wasn't the reason they died.

So even though we used a simplified model that you have to win a lottery to get funding, we can still see that it results in some people reporting they were very lucky to get funding at the last minute, however the cause of death in 30% of cases remaining "running out of money."

Likewise, some companies will chance on a product people really, really want, and pivot into it. Meanwhile, "No market need" kills 42% of startups.

So there is no contradiction. You can have three groups of companies in each case:

(1 funding):
Group 1: No problem closing funding. (Or don't need it.)
Group 2: Nobody wants to fund and would die, but miraculously
closes a round just in time. Reports being super-lucky.
Group 3: Tries to get into Group 2 after realizing they're not Group 1. Fails to do so.
They die and report "Running out of money" as cause of death.

After this point, who do we hear from? We hear from 3 in the present article. We hear from Group 2 - very frequently - after they report how lucky they were. We also hear from members of Group 1, who report not having trouble closing their funding rounds.

Now let's look at market fit:

(2 market need):
Group 1: No problem with product-market fit.
Facebook would be an example, Dropbox another.
Group 2: Building wrong product, nobody wants it.
But gets super-lucky and chances onto a market niche and pivots into it.
Group 3: Building wrong product, nobody wants it.
Does not get super-lucky and accidentally pivot into something people want.

So, we hear about Group 2.3 in this article. It accounts for 42% of deaths. We also hear frequently about Group (2.)1 and sometimes about Group 2.2.

It's rarer to hear about Group 2.2 though!! (Much rarer than in the funding example where good ideas were really lucky to get funded at all.

So since we hear so frequently about groups that were really lucky to close their funding for a good idea, but more rarely about groups that were really lucky to identify something people actually wanted, while building the wrong thing, it stands to reason that Building the Right Thing is less based on Luck than funding is.

I'm not 100% sure of this reasoning though.

However, from the analysis above you can clearly tell that simple luck is kind of orthogonal to the points raised in the article. :)