What makes a business successful? The most important rule – or if I even dare call it a law – for business success is that there are no formulas. Most business books need to be classified under the Entertainment category. Most business schools need to be classified as just history degrees. When you grasp the free market forces acting on a business, the preceding statements become almost tautological. There shouldn’t be anything non-obvious or deep about the fact that when competition is at play, old formulas for success necessarily must erode. If you are running a successful business that relies on some specific formula, then two things will happen (all else equal, and assuming you do not have some sort of e.g. legally enforceable moat). First, other companies will copy your formula, eroding your market share. Second, some will try to simply displace you entirely, making your old formula entirely obsolete. This is just natural selection and survival of the fittest. Said differently, the probability that a profitable business stays profitable goes to zero over long enough period of time. As it turns out, the same is true for nature: the probability for a specialized species to survive goes to zero over a long enough period of time.

There are absolutely no rules to the game, you just gotta figure out the strategy that works for you. That’s it. All the rules will depend on the opportunity that you want to tackle. Nobody has the answers, so you’re gonna have to figure it out for yourself.