Two founders dashed into each other. I mean literally dashed. And life took a great turn.

The story goes like this: A founder of a startup dashed his car while reversing into the car of another founder. Naturally, they got out to “greet” each other. But instead of hitting each other they hit it off and now are pitching their business to each other’s VCs. The first founder narrated this to my friend who narrated this to me, yesterday.

Siva Ganapathy studied in IIM Bangalore between 1992 to 94. Later on, he would work for the Aditya Birla group in various companies and capacities. And one day, he got a call to become CEO and turnaround an ailing garment company. Who offered him the job? Mathew Cyriac, a PE investor and his batch mate from IIM Bangalore.

Steve Cakebread was the CFO of Autodesk. And a neighbor of Marc Benioff, the founder of Salesforce. Marc approached Steve to ask him to find him a CFO. After a tour of Salesforce, Steve offered himself for the job of the CFO.

It doesn’t have to be a neighbor, it could be a neighboring seat in a flight. V. Vaidyanthan was the CEO of ICICI Prudential in 2009. But he was itching to start something of his own. It just so happened that the person sitting next to him was Kishore Biyani who was looking to sell his NBFC. And so the deal was made in mid-air. But VV got lucky a second time too. A few years later, as he was struggling to turn around the NBFC and looking for investors, he met Vishal Mahadevia, an MD of Warburg Pincus, also in mid-air. And Warburg would then go onto invest in the NBFC.

Aneesha Menon worked as an auditor with E&Y. One of her clients was Carwale. And Carwale hired her in the finance department. Shortly after that CarTrade acquired CarWale and promoted her as CFO. Similarly, I have a friend that worked at Infosys and his client was Apple. And you know what happened next.

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According to yourdictionary.com Serendipity is “An instance of finding something good accidentally.”

Years ago, I was not very smart and did not pay attention to how serendipity worked. But having read a few books, I have come to realize that we need to pay attention to Serendipity. And one of the books I would recommend is “How to get lucky” by Max Gunther.

In the book, he gives about 13 different mantras that the lucky people use. One of them says “Go where the events flow the fastest”. That is, you have to be where the action is happening. Say you want to be an actor. Then you have to go to Hollywood or Bollywood. You maybe the finest actor, but nobody will notice you if you live under a rock. If you want to found a tech startup in India, you have to be in Bangalore. Yes, you will have to endure bad roads and traffic jams. If you end up in an accident in Kengeri, like the one above, be nice. If you end up in an accident in HSR or Whitefield, be even nicer.

And I have come to believe that who you’ll meet is a function of where you live. And when I say live, don’t literally think living.

If you live in a place where there are a lot of startups, you will come across a lot of founders with interesting ideas. There are nicer ways to “bump” into them, like startup meetups. If you live some part of your life online, you will come across interesting people. If you live some part of your life in college campuses and pay attention to books as well as your classmates, you will come across interesting opportunities like Mathew C and Siva G. If you live in high end neighborhoods or travel in business class you are likely to meet other successful people and find interesting opportunities to collaborate, like the way Marc and Steve met or the way Vaidyanathan met Biyani and Mahadevia. If you provide a service do a great job; your current client maybe your next boss as Aneesha Menon and my friend found out.

Search Engine Optimisation and YouTube recommendations are a great way for others to find what they are looking for. It is also be a way for them to find what they are not looking for. And that’s how serendity happens. For example, you may search for IDFC First Bank but you may unexpectedly find the luck angle in it’s history that you weren’t looking for. Therefore, if you are a content creator, take extra effort to make your site SEO friendly and provide proper meta tags for the search engines to create serendipitous encounters for you.

I met some of my current friends through serendipity. Because Anshul Khare was such a prolific writer, I wrote to him as a fanboy. He then introduced me to several brilliant minds. If I hadn’t met Anshul, the journey may have been different.

When I was employed, I worked from home about once a week. After I turned an investor, I have only worked out of a co-working center. There, I met a person, now friend, who runs a small business. This guy was so amazing that he self taught himself digital marketing to promote his business and within a few years he and his wife were showcased by Google as businesses that have leveraged Google’s power to grow their business. Today, his business has 500+ reviews at an average of 5! Even Starbucks averages just 4.3.

When the first lock down was imposed, a few friends (all of whom I had met through Anshul), decided to live some of our Sunday mornings discussing stock ideas. This was by far a multibagger idea by itself, because I learnt a lot from them in the shortest period of time. As of date, we have covered over 100 ideas and so many of them worth their weight in gold. This is what my friend Ankit Kanodia had to say about our little group:

While we associate Nassim Taleb with the idea of risk and anti-fragility etc., he wrote a fantastic piece in his book “The Black Swan”. Taleb says that 1 or 2 positive black swan events could have a disproportionate impact on your life and so you should be prepared for them.

Seize any opportunity, or anything that looks like opportunity. They are rare, much rarer than you think. Remember that positive Black Swans have a necessary first step: you need to be exposed to them. Many people do not realize that they are getting a lucky break in life when they get it. If a big publisher (or a big art dealer or a movie executive or a hotshot banker or a big thinker) suggests an appointment, cancel anything you have planned: you may never see such a window open up again. I am sometimes shocked at how little people realize that these opportunities do not grow on trees. Collect as many free nonlottery tickets (those with open-ended payoffs) as you can, and, once they start paying off, do not discard them. Work hard, not in grunt work, but in chasing such opportunities and maximizing exposure to them. This makes living in big cities invaluable because you increase the odds of serendipitous encounters—you gain exposure to the envelope of serendipity.

The Black Swan, Nassim Taleb

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However, one thing that neither Taleb nor Max Gunther talk about is, what do you do after you get lucky? According to me, if you get lucky you should give back.

Warren Buffet has pledged to donate almost all his money to the Gates Foundation some of which will use it for projects in Africa. Mohnish Pabrai started the Dakshana foundation to help poor meritorious kids crack the IIT JEE. V. Vaidyanathan regularly gifts shares of IDFC First Bank to his drivers, cooks, maids, gym trainers and even to his old school teacher. Kunal Shah who built and then sold Freecharge now funds other startups so that they too may succeed. We don’t have to wait to get rich and successful to give back; we can all find some ways to give back. You can visit orphanages with your kids so that they realize that they are lucky. You can teach those kids skills like codding to help them leapfrog in life. Or you could, adopt a child and you’ll realize that the more you give, the more you’ll get.

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When I started writing this blog, I had some idea of serendipity. But as I started narrating those anecdotes and piecing them together with what I had read, I appreciated the power of serendipity even more. I am going to work on getting luckier and hope that you do too.

Cheers!