Persistence Over Luck
As we reflect on 25 years since the founding of Virtual Trip, a message from my co-founder Periklis Akritidis keeps coming back to me:
“One thing I’ve learned in the last 25 years is that you have to persist to succeed. Luck matters, but it’s not everything.”
I could not agree more. In fact, I think this may be the single most important lesson of my entrepreneurial life.
It is tempting to attribute failures to bad luck. When things don’t work out, it is easier to say “We were unlucky” than to admit we didn’t persist long enough, or with enough intensity. But the truth is that outside of rare, extraordinary events, luck explains much less than we think.
Yes, extraordinary events exist. Winning the lottery. Being in a plane crash. Or being born into extreme wealth — or extreme poverty. For someone in Europe or North America, being born into an extremely poor family may feel like extraordinary bad luck. And yet, tragically, this is the standard reality for a large share of the world’s population.
Here I want to pause to acknowledge my own good fortune. I was born in Greece in the 1970s. Not into privilege, but into stability, education, and possibility. For that, I am profoundly thankful. And one of my life’s missions is to use whatever platform I have to help more people — especially from less lucky geographies — gain similar chances to try, to persist, and to succeed.
But outside of such extraordinary circumstances, I believe life is, in a sense, inherently fair. If you try seriously and consistently, with high frequency and intensity, over a long period of time, then — absent extraordinary bad luck — you give yourself a genuine 50% chance to succeed. A coin toss. And that is extraordinarily fair.
Persistence compounds. Every attempt teaches you something. Every failure sharpens your instincts. Every repetition increases the odds that you will be in the right place, with the right preparation, at the right time. Luck can help, yes. But persistence creates the conditions where luck can actually matter.
Does this mean one should never quit? Of course not. Knowing when to stop is part of the journey. But those who develop the habit of quitting too often, too easily, are almost guaranteed to fail. Persistence does not guarantee success — but without it, success is nearly impossible.
Looking back on the path from Virtual Trip to Epignosis, AbZorba Games, Yodeck, and more recent ventures, the pattern is unmistakable: success came not because we were lucky, but because we persisted. Sometimes through pain, sometimes through exhaustion, often through uncertainty — but we persisted.
So thank you, Perikli, for the reminder. As we celebrate this quarter-century milestone, the message feels as urgent as ever:
Persist. Because while luck is out of our control, persistence is always within our reach.
