On Luck & Serendipity

I don’t throw salt over my shoulder, and I am by no means particularly superstitious or religious. But I’ve had a peculiar affair with the…

I don’t throw salt over my shoulder, and I am by no means particularly superstitious or religious. But I’ve had a peculiar affair with the number 18 for much of my life, and figured I’d share some thoughts on why we look for signs of luck and how they help us.

18
The number 18 seems to always pop up for me at inflection points in my life. As an undergrad at Cornell, I was assigned “skb18” as an email address, as the 18th person with the initial SKB at the university. My phone number at my first job was 902–1800 (9x2 also wasn’t lost on me). I was accepted to business school on January 18th. My wife’s birthday is 9/9/81 (which can be twisted to ring all kinds of bells on my 18 radar). The first investment I ever made in the founding of Behance was $18,000 to cover a 5 month contract for the designer who became my co-founder. The first home I purchased with my wife was on the 29th floor of a building in NYC (again, some math required, but it’s there). And the list goes on.

Why do we look f…