There's a myth in Silicon Valley that successful entrepreneurs, like oil prospectors, ultimately just get lucky. They sink a well in the right field at the right time, and they've been cashing in on that guiser ever since. I won't deny that luck plays a huge role in any highly risky career, but I don't know of many entrepreneurs who strike oil on their first try or their second or even their 20th attempt. You need some reason to keep going, and this is normally what we call grit or persistence.

When you're a truly gritty person, you have tremendous clarity about what that top-level goal is—that life philosophy that drives everything else, and you actually are very good at aligning your day-to-day actions [and] your to-do list/task list to that top-level goal. You don't waste time doing things that are unrelated to the top-level goal.

The skills that make someone a brilliant and visionary product developer, someone intensely focused on vision, aren't always married with the skills to manage the team to get there.