Photo by Bennett Raglin/Getty Images for Fast Company
"If people think I was just at the right place at the right time and just snapped my fingers and twirled a couple of times and here's Bumble, I mean, they're really wrong," Bumble founder Whitney Wolfe told NPR.
- Many entrepreneurs agree that it takes a combination of skill and luck to build a billion-dollar business.
- Squarespace CEO Anthony Casalena said he thinks that "anyone who possibly claims that they didn't get lucky is crazy," on an episode of NPR's "How I Built This with Guy Raz."
- Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke compared the timing of his company's launch to "winning the lottery five times in a row" on NPR's "How I Built This with Guy Raz."
- Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
It takes more than brains and a great business idea to become a billionaire - it also takes a substantial amount of luck. Just how those two elements stack up against each other, however, varies depending on who you ask.
In episodes of NPR's "How I Built This with Guy Raz" - a podcast where successful entrepreneurs explain how they founded their businesses - the last question Raz asks each guest is, "How much of your success do you attribute to your skill, your intelligence, your hard work, and how much of it to luck?"
Read more: 11 billionaires who dropped out of college before making their fortunes
Turns out, the founders of billion-dollar businesses Slack, Squarespace, Away, Shopify, Bumble and Dyson all answered the question differently.
Keep reading to learn which entrepreneurs contribute their success to their own hard work, and which ones say it was all luck.