[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="160" caption="tricia@cheekyattitude"] [/caption] Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert , did a great job with the EclipseCon 2007 Keynote talk on Tuesday. While the talk was certainly entertaining, the thing I liked most about his talk was the focus on things like " failure ", " timing "," luck ", and " persistence ". Scott pointed out that his "list of failures" got to 29 items before he stopped counting. Of those 29 failures, most would have been successes had they been shifted forward or backward in time by as little as 5 years. As I've said before, timing is everything. Startups are often too early to market. Lots of VC-backed startups do not have the patience to wait for the market to catch up to them. Patience. In addition to his 29 failures, Scott did recognize 3 successes. And, certainly, a bit of luck played a part in the successes. However, Scott