The 10,000 Hour Rule

Malcolm Gladwell and Nick Bayliss have both written about the 10,000 hour rule -- it takes 10,000 hours of practice doing something to become really competent. Bill Gates discusses this in a video. The point Bill Gates makes is that it takes more than 10,000 hours of doing something. It takes several winnowing cycles, so only the best and most dedicated are left. I agree with his insight. But I also believe in innate talent having a role in the mix.

http://www.squidoo.com/10000-hour-rule

Review of "The Lean Startup"

Jim, who is a serial entrepreneur, long-time client and friend, called me up excitedly. "Guess what they're teaching at Princeton? Not to write a business plan. Now, they're teaching kids to just start their businesses." Jim had just been at a session with the Princeton Entrepreneurship Club, where Jim was a mentor to a team of students. The topic that day was Eric Reis's book, The Lean Startup. Jim went on to tell me that Stanford, Berkeley and Harvard have all jumped on The Lean Startup bandwagon. My curiosity was piqued. I had to read it. 

I was surprised by the book.  The Lean Startup – How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses by Eric Reis (2011, Crown), is clearly targeted to brilliant computer engineers and inventors who are in love with their code and their idea, without regard to the real needs of the marketplace. The book teaches them that they need to fill their customers’ needs – a very basic concept from Marketing 101 – and use sound management practices. 

Reis’s principles come out of the lessons learned in the dot-com meltdown and also from management theory. Here's where I got confused. Reis starts out saying that entrepreneurial ventures need to follow sound management principles. But then, he proposes that businesses experiment their way to success, which seems to us to be antithetical to what I learned in my management and marketing classes at Wharton. 

Although much of the advice in this book tends to the very academic – developing and studying cohorts, for example –  Eric Reis has become the darling of Silicon Valley and has excited entrepreneurs with the idea that they do not need business plans, just the willingness to “continuously innovate” and “pivot” when things don’t go according to expectations. He tells readers to start lean and keep learning as you go.

Companies all over Silicon Valley and beyond are embracing Reis's theories for product development and management. For that reason alone, the book is worth reading. If you don't want to read it, then just watch Reis's video telling you about the book and the theory. 

An Entrepreneur's Quote of the Day

"If you want to be a great entrepreneur, you’re going to have to burn your résumé and stop worrying about your reputation, because you’re probably going to go through long periods of people calling you stupid." -- Mark Pincus, founder of Zynga.

I love this quote from Mark's recent interview in The New York Times Magazine ("I Don't Think It's Rotting Their Brains," April 7, 2008). It captures so well the mindset you have to have to succeed as an entrepreneur. You are putting your ideas out there for others to judge. The public, businesses, and your investors are going to making their feelings known by voting with their dollars. Your friends and family are going to be telling you what they think.

But if you have the vision, the fire and the perseverance, you will probably overcome the odds and make it. 

The interview is short and worth a read...

Mark Pincus Thinks Angry Birds Won’t Hurt Your Kids

The founder of Zynga on games, management and his relationship with Mark Zuckerberg.