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You need to put in 1000-hours of hard work on a new project to begin seeing meaningful returns. Gladwell based his quotable theory on some research, and it was

by nikcub 16y ago

You need to put in 1000-hours of hard work on a new project to begin seeing meaningful returns. Gladwell based his quotable theory on some research, and it wasn't a new idea. In terms of a thousand hours to viable product, there are just far too many examples of products that have become successful in less time for it to be a theory. eg. * first version of Facebook was ~2 weeks of code * chatroulette * Inviteshare - built in 24 hours and sold to Techcrunch the next day * First version of Crunchbase we built in 48 hours * all the 24 hour hackathons that have released products * you can pull together various bits of open source software with some glue and a stock template and have a product in 24 hours There are heaps of other examples of products launched with 10-200 hours of work that became hits, I am sure others can suggest more. While you may have come to this conclusion by looking at your own two examples, it definitely does not apply across a broader spectrum.

mixmax 16y ago
Launching a product is only the first step. Seeing meaningful returns is the hard part. I can code up a chatroulette site in a weeks time, but that doesn't mean it'll make money. Actually as far as I know chatroulette still isn't making any money. Unless you're extremely lucky or well connected you won't have 100 paying customers after a week. It's easy to glue something together from various templates, open source libraries and modules. But apart from a few outliers it takes years to achieve an overnight success.
- nikcub 16y ago
  ye I know, my point was more that he was trying to draw a line between his two experiences that doesn't exist. The counter-point was simply 'well here are some examples of sites that took a lot less than 1000 hours to build and they were successful'. If he said 'profitable', then I would have found other examples, but my comment wasn't support to be about the specific examples anyway It is crazy to suggest that 1000 hours is some sort of benchmark. It leads to crazy thinking where on one hand it could be 'only 800 hours to go until this is a success' and on the other 'well i have put 2000 hours into this and it is going nowhere, according to what I read on HN I should have given up 999 hours ago'
harscoat 16y ago
And so Zuckerberg did not write code before "theFacebook" and it took him only 2 weeks to MVP? He arrived at Harvard in sept 2003 and the next week started to write code for "course Match" and then went on with Facemash... 1000 hours is around 20 weeks if you put 50h/w, less than 6 months. TheFacebook launched on feb4 2004. So 1000 hours that may well be it or even more in the case of Facebook.
- zach 16y ago
  The recent New Yorker article indicates that Mark put in a lot more than 1000 hours of programming before his freshman year. Search for ZuckNet: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/09/20/100920fa_fact_vargas?currentPage=all http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/09/20/100920fa_fact_...
- nikcub 16y ago
  In 'the facebook effect' it talks about how Mark was up for a week writing the first version
- joe_the_user 16y ago
  I'm sorry but it should be obvious that while Facebook's success might have involved genius, it certainly didn't unique programming genius. Zuck didn't create a real time flight optimizer, an ultra-fast RISK chip or anything of the sort. He created a decent web app. He was no more a genius programmer than Bill Gates (who also might been both a programmer and a genius FWIW but not a genius programmer). What he created was a decent web app that began superbly positioned and then expertly skippered it into the true golden market position. The genius ranged from business to social to UI with programming ability being a distant if important factor. And that in many ways does contradict the 1000 hour thesis - he could have had experience in building great web apps beforehand. He could not have gotten experience building billion dollar companies before hand - but he did well (however much I might find Facebook unfortunate on various levels).
  - benkant 16y ago
    > RISK RISC?
kiba 16y ago
10,000 hours journey in order to produce 24 hours developed and profitable and overnight success web app. I am less than 10,000 hours in developing my MVP and with little experience in building web app.
- kristianp 16y ago
  I had to look MVP up, it (probably) means "Minimum Viable Product".
mortenjorck 16y ago
What matters is being in the right place at the right time. If you are in exactly the right place at the right time, you can gain huge traction with a 24-hour project. If you are in a workable place at a workable time, 1000 hours may well be a good benchmark. If both time and place are working against you, there's no telling how long it might take. You might never get traction. It's just you and your tenacity.
fookyong 16y ago
you've confused "launching a product" with "success". as many of us here who have built multiple products / services, building it is about 10% of the battle :) not everyone launches under the TechCrunch umbrella - surely you can see that those are extraordinary circumstances.

by nikcub 16y ago

mixmax 16y ago

Launching a product is only the first step. Seeing meaningful returns is the hard part. I can code up a chatroulette site in a weeks time, but that doesn't mean it'll make money. Actually as far as I know chatroulette still isn't making any money. Unless you're extremely lucky or well connected you won't have 100 paying customers after a week. It's easy to glue something together from various templates, open source libraries and modules. But apart from a few outliers it takes years to achieve an overnight success.

nikcub 16y ago
ye I know, my point was more that he was trying to draw a line between his two experiences that doesn't exist. The counter-point was simply 'well here are some examples of sites that took a lot less than 1000 hours to build and they were successful'. If he said 'profitable', then I would have found other examples, but my comment wasn't support to be about the specific examples anyway It is crazy to suggest that 1000 hours is some sort of benchmark. It leads to crazy thinking where on one hand it could be 'only 800 hours to go until this is a success' and on the other 'well i have put 2000 hours into this and it is going nowhere, according to what I read on HN I should have given up 999 hours ago'

harscoat 16y ago

And so Zuckerberg did not write code before "theFacebook" and it took him only 2 weeks to MVP? He arrived at Harvard in sept 2003 and the next week started to write code for "course Match" and then went on with Facemash... 1000 hours is around 20 weeks if you put 50h/w, less than 6 months. TheFacebook launched on feb4 2004. So 1000 hours that may well be it or even more in the case of Facebook.

zach 16y ago
The recent New Yorker article indicates that Mark put in a lot more than 1000 hours of programming before his freshman year. Search for ZuckNet: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/09/20/100920fa_fact_vargas?currentPage=all http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/09/20/100920fa_fact_...
nikcub 16y ago
In 'the facebook effect' it talks about how Mark was up for a week writing the first version
joe_the_user 16y ago
I'm sorry but it should be obvious that while Facebook's success might have involved genius, it certainly didn't unique programming genius. Zuck didn't create a real time flight optimizer, an ultra-fast RISK chip or anything of the sort. He created a decent web app. He was no more a genius programmer than Bill Gates (who also might been both a programmer and a genius FWIW but not a genius programmer). What he created was a decent web app that began superbly positioned and then expertly skippered it into the true golden market position. The genius ranged from business to social to UI with programming ability being a distant if important factor. And that in many ways does contradict the 1000 hour thesis - he could have had experience in building great web apps beforehand. He could not have gotten experience building billion dollar companies before hand - but he did well (however much I might find Facebook unfortunate on various levels).
- benkant 16y ago
  > RISK RISC?

kiba 16y ago

10,000 hours journey in order to produce 24 hours developed and profitable and overnight success web app. I am less than 10,000 hours in developing my MVP and with little experience in building web app.

kristianp 16y ago
I had to look MVP up, it (probably) means "Minimum Viable Product".

mortenjorck 16y ago

What matters is being in the right place at the right time. If you are in exactly the right place at the right time, you can gain huge traction with a 24-hour project. If you are in a workable place at a workable time, 1000 hours may well be a good benchmark. If both time and place are working against you, there's no telling how long it might take. You might never get traction. It's just you and your tenacity.

fookyong 16y ago

you've confused "launching a product" with "success". as many of us here who have built multiple products / services, building it is about 10% of the battle :) not everyone launches under the TechCrunch umbrella - surely you can see that those are extraordinary circumstances.