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Rest in Peace Fred Smith, Founder of FedEx (and Maybe the Luckiest Entrepreneur of All Time)Is it better to be lucky or good? Why not both?
EXPERT OPINION BY BILL MURPHY JR., FOUNDER OF UNDERSTANDABLY AND CONTRIBUTING EDITOR, INC. @BILLMURPHYJR

Jun 23, 2025



Fred Smith, CEO of FedEx Corp., attended an Economic Club of Washington event in Washington, D.C. in 2012. He passed away on Sunday. Photo: Getty Images

Frederick W. Smith, the founder of FedEx, has died at the age of 80. Smith was a highly successful entrepreneur. Maybe more important, he might very well have been the luckiest.

Here’s a very early story that proves the point. It comes to us courtesy of Roger Frock, who was the first general manager and chief operating officer of FedEx (then known as Federal Express), and who later wrote a book about his time at the company.

FedEx launched in Memphis on April 17, 1973. Soon afterward, the company was nearly broke according to Frock, owing much more than it had to pay for fuel to continue operations.

After a last-ditch financing effort fell through, Frock said he learned Smith had taken an unorthodox approach to handling the cash problem. As Frock wrote in Changing How the World Does Business: FedEx’s Incredible Journey to Success:

“I asked Fred where the funds had come from, and he responded, ‘The meeting with the General Dynamics board was a bust and I knew we needed money for Monday, so I took a plane to Las Vegas and won $27,000.’

I said, ‘You mean you took our last $5,000— how could you do that?’

He shrugged his shoulders and said, ‘What difference does it make? Without the funds for the fuel companies, we couldn’t have flown anyway.’

Fred’s luck held again. It was not much, but it came at a critical time and kept us in business for another week.”

Kids, don’t try this at home.

For one thing, is it legal to take company funds on a gambling trip to Las Vegas? I’ll refrain from attempting to answer that here out of respect for the recently departed.

But, I think Smith’s story provides a great context for the age-old question of whether it’s better to be lucky or good in business.

Smith was clearly both:

Good? Smith famously based the entire idea for FedEx on a term paper he wrote at Yale University in 1965. He revolutionized the industry and built FedEx into a $50 billion company by the time he stepped down as CEO in 2022.
Lucky? Even setting aside the whole “kept the company going with blackjack” story, or the Warren Buffett-esque recognition that simply being born in the United States in the 20th century was a huge advantage, Smith was wounded twice in Vietnam while serving in the Marines before coming home to start FedEx.
It also helped Smith and FedEx that the federal government deregulated the air cargo industry in 1977, opening massive opportunities for Smith’s company.

Of course, we could go down a fun rabbit hole looking at companies that really ought to credit luck — or big gambles — for their early success.

Microsoft? There are a lot of versions of the story, but most of them say Bill Gates managed to sell an operating system that Microsoft didn’t yet own to IBM, acquiring it under favorable terms, and keeping the rights to sell it to other companies.
Twitter? It started as a side project by some of the people behind the early podcasting company Odeo.
Zoom? Would we be using Zoom now if it hadn’t happened to be in the perfect position to become the default videoconferencing setup during the pandemic (at least for a while)?
Non-entrepreneurs often seem to think that entrepreneurs must have an exceptionally high tolerance for risk, but the other way to look at this is that the most successful in the game make every effort they can to reduce risk.

Perhaps that’s the lesson to take away here, sort of a variation on the classic Louis Pasteur quote that “chance favors the prepared mind.”

Luck can sometimes be vital to success, but it usually requires a lot of hard work and achievement to be in a position to take advantage of lucky breaks when they come along.

Smith was once asked what he hoped his legacy would be. He replied:

“I don’t think that way. I just enjoy what I’m doing. I’m very focused on the here and now. The legacy will be the success of the company and, I hope, the success of my children, of which I have a lot of.”

Rest in peace Mr. Smith. Somewhere out there today, I’ll bet a member of a new generation of entrepreneurs will be inspired by your example.

That’s a pretty good addition to any founder’s legacy.
https://www.inc.com/bill-murphy-jr/rest-in-peace-fred-smith-founder-of-fedex-and-maybe-the-luckiest-entrepreneur-of-all-time/91205142