The Lottery of Association

This is a draft of my ted talk presented at Tedx University of Port Harcourt on Saturday, April 5, 2025. The final speech is a bit different from
this draft, due to some length considerations and the fact that I overestimated my retentive memory.

What are the odds that the person who will change your life is in this room right now?

Think about it – in this very room. Take a moment to look at the person next to you, “Is it them?” Don’t worry, I don’t know either, I just wanted you to look at a pretty face. But seriously, the question stands: What are the odds?
I’ll give you a hint: they’re a lot higher than you think. I’d argue you’re sitting in a giant lottery of potentially life-changing connections.

My father has always been one of the biggest positive influences in my life. He is a very smart man, unarguably one of the most hardworking men I know. He is also really audacious and ambitious. A big dreamer. But yet, he was stuck — in a small town, working a small job, doing small things.

My father is also really stubborn. He was adamant that his children could and would live the dreams he was unable to. And so he went to great lengths, even going into debt to give us the best education within reach, and to imbibe in us an obsession with excellence and hard work.

When I got into University, I began to meet and make more grownup friends, and in some of them, I saw an ideal representation of who my father wanted me to be. They were incredibly smart, worked hard, studied hard, and graduated with the best grades. But still, they were stuck, in a small town, working a small job if they were lucky, and doing small things.

Now, I believe that my father was right. In fact, I believe that the world is better off when more people share in my father’s obsession with excellence and hard work.

But I also now realize that the world will always have far more ordinary people than extraordinary, and that a vast majority of people who can impact the world and their immediate communities will never get the opportunity to do so. And while this is a damning reality, we still have a right to aspiration, and to attempt to do big things.

And while talent and hard work are incredible advantages to have when you’re trying to do big things, there’s a third advantage which I’ve come to believe is the actual difference maker. I call this advantage “The lottery of association.”

To properly describe this phenomenon, I will paint three very random scenarios for you:

1. In 1971 a 16-year-old high school student in Santa Clara County California decided to introduce his 16 year old classmate to a 21 year old friend he had made.
2. In 1995, a young Stanford University freshman was assigned to an older student to show him around campus. They did not like one another and argued throughout the campus tour.
3. In 2021, this 3rd year undergrad at UNN went to debate practice as he does every Friday evening. After practice, several freshers who were trying to join the debate club and had watched him debate walked up to him to have a conversation. It annoyed him because they were wasting his time. He was in a hurry to go and watch the Man Utd game that evening.

Now I know what you’re thinking — there’s nothing special about any of these scenarios, they’re as normal as it gets. Young boys are always making friends and introducing their friends to one another, that’s how friend groups are formed. University seniors are always bullying freshers so it makes sense that the two boys in story number two didn’t get along. And yeah, Man Utd fans are like addicts who will cancel every engagement only to watch their team lose.

Every day, thousands of these kinds of encounters occur randomly across the world, nothing special.

But there actually was something special about these stories:

• The first scenario was Bill Fernandez introducing Steve Jobs to Steve Wozniak in 1971. Jobs and Wozniak went on to become great friends, and a few years later, they started building a computer for fun. That computer became Apple I, and is most definitely the reason why there is an iPhone in your hands today.
• The second scenario was Larry Page and Sergey Brin, they would later come to like one another and a few years later in 1998 they started a small company called Google. Yes, you can google it if you think I’m lying. So without them meeting that day on the Stanford campus, we probably will still be using yahoo or bing (Do you guys remember Bing?).
• And the third story? Well that was me. And one of the freshers I met that evening was a 17-year-old mechanical engineering student called AJ. I didn’t know it then, but myself and AJ would go on to become really good friends. He inspired me so much and pushed me to take my career seriously, he saw the world so clearly at such a young age, and he helped me see the world in that way too. Because of my association with him, I’ve gone on to have a relatively successful career telling stories, building and selling technology for organizations across 3 continents. By 2023, myself, AJ, and our third friend Darlington came together to build The Garage, a coworking facility to help students within our campus learn and work better. Today, that business has helped over 5,000 students.

Remember: all three of the scenarios I just shared were completely random. The players in these stories didn’t know their lives were about to change in that moment. I find it very interesting that we meet loads of random people every day who could change our lives, and we don’t even know it. I still think back to the day I met AJ. There were 48 freshers at practice that day, I spoke to about half of them. What if he wasn’t part of the half I spoke to? What if he forgot to text me when he got home? What if I didn’t show up for practice that day?

Maybe I’d still be content in being excellent at small things.
Maybe I wouldn’t have taken my career seriously.
Maybe The Garage would never exist,
and maybe I would not be standing here right now, talking to you

The secret to doing big things lies in having people who help you see the world better, who believe in your abilities, sometimes even more than you do, who push you towards your dreams, who support and partner with you, and sometimes, who compete with you, breathing down your neck, and preventing you from slowing down in your quest to greatness..

As important as these associations are, no matter how hard we try, we can never really choose who these people will be in our lives. They will come into our lives in the most random ways, and then they will stay despite the odds, until they change our lives for the better. We meet thousands of random people in our lifetime, but only a few of them will stay, and within that few, a tiny fraction will change our lives in remarkable ways.

It is in this sense that the lottery of association exists.

When I realized this was a thing, I decided that this was a lottery I was determined to win. So I went all in.
I became what you would call a professional gambler.

One thing you aren’t taught in gambling school, maybe because big betting doesn’t want you to know this, is that for you to win a lottery, you have to be lucky.

Even worse, we’re convinced that luck is an uncontrollable force, a cosmic roll of the dice that some are blessed with, while others just cannot have it no matter how hard they try. I’ve come to realize that this is simply untrue.

Luck, like any other advantage, is cultivated, hoarded and weaponized by those who understand its mechanism. It is not merely the product of chance but the ability to recognize and exploit randomness to one’s benefit. The right friends, the right timing, the right moment of hesitation or audacity — these are not random gifts but inherited or learned advantages that masquerade as fate. Those who seem perpetually lucky are not beneficiaries of divine favoritism; they are simply better at placing themselves in the path of opportunity, and more crucially, taking the opportunity before them when it does come.

You see, every part of our life is a lottery that is highly consequential; when and where we’re born, who we’re born to, it affects everything about us - how tall we grow, how healthy we are, how far we go in life. And you can’t really control what you get from this lottery. But as every degenerate gambler will tell you, there are things you can do to improve your chances of winning the lottery, to get the odds in your favor.

What are the odds that a child of mine will become an Olympic athlete? Looking at my protruding belly, I would say the odds are pretty low. But what if I got married to an athletic woman from Kenya, what if we raised our child in the high altitude villages in Kenya. What if for my child’s first birthday, I got them running shoes and a basketball? The odds begin to lower.

So let’s apply the same principles to the lottery of association.
What can we do to increase our chances of meeting the person that changes our life for the better?
Well I have good news and bad news.

The good news is that we’re here right now. Young, maybe ambitious, and most importantly, in university.
When we started our coworking space in UNN, Several of our earliest visitors were strangers to one another. They just came in, did their work, and left without even acknowledging their neighbors. Over time, the more often they came around, the more neighboring faces became familiar to them. They began to interact more with one another and bonded over sports, work, games, and anything else that interests them. Today, there are 10 documented startups cofounded by people who met themselves at The Garage, and one of them has gone on to even raise a pre-seed round. Now this is just a tiny pond on an island inside the ocean that is a university campus. If these kinds of connections can be built from such a small place, imagine how many more opportunities exist for you just because you’re here, right now.

Universities are prime environments for unexpected, meaningful connections. Honestly, I think it is like a buffet of personalities. You’ve got every flavor of person here: the developer who will not take his eyes off his computer no matter what, the debater who can win any argument (and never shuts up), the sports fanatic who can name all the goal scorers when Chelsea beat Blackburn 5-0 in 2009 and the time they scored, the activist, the artist, the Casanova, the class clown. It’s like an all-you-can-meet menu of potential friends and collaborators.

And you’re living together, studying together, stressing over the same problem sets at midnight. If there’s ever a place where associations form naturally, it’s here.

There’s a popular saying: “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” And whether it’s scientifically five people or not, the core idea holds true: your closest relationships profoundly shape your habits, mindset, and outcomes. If four of your closest friends are gym rats, you’ll probably start doing push-ups just by osmosis. If they’re entrepreneurs, you’ll catch the startup bug. If they’re chronic Netflix binge-watchers…well, you get the idea. In a university, you get to choose much of your “five.” That’s an incredible opportunity – and also a responsibility. Think of the five people you spend the most time with. Are they lifting you up? Or pulling you down? Choose well at the buffet of personalities, and you’ll feast on motivation, knowledge, and support. Choose poorly, and you might end up with indigestion.
So that’s the good news.

The bad news? Is that the clock is ticking.. After university, chances are you will never be able to engage with as large and diverse a pool of individuals as you have access to while in here. As you get older, your pool begins to narrow down to your family and close friends, people at your workplace and religious institutions, and if you’re lucky enough to afford it, people at the gym, social clubs, and other recreational gatherings. It means you might want to act with some urgency, because if you miss out on this moment right now, you will never get this good a hand at the lottery of association..

So what can we do right now to stack the deck in our favor and better our chances of winning tickets in this lottery?
Three things:

1. Always be in motion.
   There’s a concept … developed by Jason Roberts, a software dev, called “increasing your surface area for luck,” which basically says that the more you expose yourself to new people and ideas, the more likely you are to stumble onto something or someone great. Sociologists have found that casual connections – the people you chat with occasionally or meet briefly – can be incredibly powerful. A famous Stanford study by Mark Granovetter showed that “weak ties” (like acquaintances) often helped people find jobs more than close friends did. Why? Because those acquaintances connect you to new networks and fresh opportunities that your immediate circle might not have. So start moving. If you sit in your room 24/7, the odds of bumping into an amazing new person are about zero. Join that club, go to that workshop, volunteer, play sports, go to the “nerd events,” the “weird events” , the random lecture where free rice was promised. The more you put yourself out there, the more tickets you can win in the association lottery. Be an active participant in this campus.. Everytime you attend a new meeting or social event you are literally saying “I’m here, world – give me my next lucky ticket.”

2. Be kind and genuinely curious about people.
   This sounds almost too simple, right? Your grandma could’ve told you that. But you’d be amazed how far genuine kindness and interest in others can go. People are drawn to those who show sincere curiosity about them. It’s rare! We’re all a little guilty of being absorbed in our own drama – exams, deadlines, our phone screens. When you truly listen to someone, ask questions, remember their name, their dog’s name, that they love Marvel movies – you stand out. Kindness, warmth, a sense of humor – these are like magnets in the lottery of association. They increase the chances people will want to connect with you, introduce you to their friends, and generally keep you around. And selfishly, being kind means you’ll have more folks willing to support you when you need it. It creates a positive feedback loop of good vibes. Also, kindness is free, so there’s no excuse. Being curious is free. You don’t need to be the smartest person in the room (in fact, don’t be – if you’re the smartest in the room, find a new room!). Just be the one person willing to say “Hey, that’s cool – tell me more about how you are training pigeons to code!”. And remember, everyone you meet knows something you don’t. Every single person you meet can teach you something that you don’t know. Including babies. Like Dale Carnegie says, take the spotlight off yourself, be interested in others, and you’ll build a network in no time. Plus, it just makes life more enjoyable when you can genuinely connect with others rather than treating people as transactional. Be the person others are happy to see walk into the room.

3. Don’t fear failed associations.
   Not every connection is a winner, and that’s perfectly okay. In fact, it’s not just okay – it’s necessary. You will outgrow some friendships. Some friendships and partnerships will fizzle out. Some mentor/mentee relationships won’t click. Don’t cling to a losing lottery ticket hoping it will magically turn into a winner. Know when to cut your losses. In the startup world, co-founder breakups are super common – like breakups in marriage. In fact, according to Y Combinator’s Founder, Paul Graham, about 20% of startups have founders leave at some point. That’s 1 in 5 odds that even carefully picked business partnerships don’t last. It happens! The key is not seeing it as a personal failure or a reason to never trust anyone again. Extract the lessons — why did this association fail? was it misaligned values, lack of communication, someone not pulling their weight?, and carry on. The beauty of the university environment is its diversity and scale. There are so many people around that if one friend group or team isn’t right for you, you can find another. Don’t ever think you have to stick with toxic or unproductive associations out of loyalty or fear of loneliness. Sometimes walking away from a bad influence is winning the lottery – because you just cleared space for a positive influence to enter. So, give yourself permission to move on when an association isn’t adding value to your life (or worse, is subtracting value). It’s not cruel; it’s self-care. Wish them well, and go find your tribe.

So back to the opening question. What are the odds the person who will change your life in this room right now? By now, I hope you’re convinced the answer is: pretty darn high– if you’re willing to participate. Association is a lottery, yes, in that there’s an element of randomness – you don’t know who you’ll click with or what chance encounter will matter. But it’s a lottery where you 100% control how many tickets you buy.

Look around you one more time. Go ahead – look to your left, to your right. One of these people might be a future business partner, or your maid of honor, or the friend who 20 years from now will tell your kids “Let me tell you what we used to do back in uni…” How cool (and slightly terrifying) is that?

Success in many ways is a team sport. No one truly does it alone. By being here, you’ve already stepped into the arena with potential teammates all around. Some of those teammates will lift you higher than you can imagine. And you’ll do the same for them – that’s the beauty of life.

Your future self might just look back and say, “I can’t believe I met them that night – it changed everything.” And maybe that future person you’ll meet is also thinking the same about meeting you.

So, as you leave here today, remember: every handshake is a potential winning ticket. Go out, bet on people, and make your connections the jackpot that changes your life.