Here’s a groundbreaking book that boldly claims that the key to success in business is not talent but the ability to persuade people to take a bet on potential.

Suneel Gupta, a visiting scholar at Harvard, contends in “Backable” (Hachette) that no one ever makes it alone and asks: What is it about certain people that makes us want to take a bet on them?

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As it turns out, it’s not what you think. Backability is not driven by having the best experience, the finest pedigree or the most innovative ideas. In fact, many highly successful people are backed long before they are qualified. We tend to view these people as lucky. But the decision to back them is neither an accident nor a mistake, and rarely the result of good luck.

Drawing from his own business experience, countless interviews with some of tech’s biggest innovators and compelling case studies of classic success stories such as Howard Schultz and Elon Musk, Gupta breaks down the qualities of backable people.

“Backable” pulls back the curtain on the elusive X-factor that some people just seem to have and offers concrete tools like crafting the right pitch and scaling the vision for a project. Anyone from aspiring entrepreneurs to start-up stars can master these skills and jumpstart their next big idea.

Suneel Gupta was the co-founder and CEO of Rise, a mobile health company focused on preventative health, which he sold to One Medical in 2016. Fast Company ranked it the number 1 most innovative company in healthcare and he was named the ‘New Face of Innovation’ by the New York Stock Exchange. He then served as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Silicon Valley’s top venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins before moving from San Francisco to his hometown in Michigan to run for US Congress.

His work has been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune and Vanity Fair. Website: suneelgupta.com. Twitter: @suneel.

Carlye Adler, who assisted with the book, is an award-winning journalist and four-time New York Times bestselling co-author-collaborator. She lives in Connecticut with her husband and two daughters.