The 10,000-Hour Rule
Start tracking your hours… Malcolm Gladwell’s third book increases his lead in the ‘innovation as essay’ market. Outliers: The Story of Success walks in with a metaphor: that it takes 10k hours, as a general rule, of experience to become successful. Examples: Bill Joy of Sun Microsystems (early access to university computer labs), Bill Gates (early to high school computers), and The Beatles’ crucible (8-hour gigs in Hamburg 7 days a week, before they ‘invaded’ the US).
Gilt (without the “Guilt”) Groupe
As stealth luxury becomes more and more vogue, i.e., brown (or black) bag shopping at high-end stores to mask purchases; so, too, will there be more online buying. Discrete shopping with north of 50% discounting. Gilt Groupe with $5M in funding from Matrix Partners, a new CEO in Susan Lyne from Martha Stewart Omnimedia, and a partnership with the Council of Fashion Designers of America, looks poised to weather the retail storm with its online, invitation-only sample sales. Read more >>
Bring on the Relevancy Engines
With everyone trying to personalize user experiences, we’re tracking Tsavo, founded by Userplane (sold to AOL for $40M) Michael Jones. Like a few companies these days (Demand Media, Evolanding), Tsavo is rolling up niche content sites, while applying best practices from an experience level. Read more >>