Talent = Hard Work + Luck

Even if you haven't read Malcolm Gladwell's latest book, Outliers, you probably heard about one of his key concepts: the "10,000 hour rule". Essentially, Gladwell studied the backgrounds of many truly exceptional people to find out what made them stand out from the rest of us "normal" people. One thing he found is that most of these "outliers" became truly exceptional only after spending at least 10,000 working in their particular field. This roughly equates to ~10 years.

Since this July will mark my 10-year anniversary working with entrepreneurs and startup ventures, I keep telling my wife that our gravy train is just now getting ready to leave the station. Ha! At least Kirby Ferguson made me laugh with this video take on Gladwell and others: