The deadline to apply for Mini Seedcamp Zagreb is fast approaching. This is a great opportunity for startups.

• Seedcamp Zagreb application deadline: Midnight, 27th January

If you have an interesting startup, make sure you apply and get a chance to take advantage of everything Seedcamp has to offer, including:

• Get access to a world-class network of advisors to help you with every aspect of your business
• Be recognised as one of the 20 best start-ups in the region
• Open a direct route to seed and venture capital

Former Seedcamp finalists include great companies such as Zemanta from Slovenia, Brainient and UberVU from Romania, and Shoutem from Croatia.

I will be at the event (along with Tomaz and other experienced dudes) as a mentor doing my best to share past experience and give advice if needed.

I look forward to meeting everyone there!

In his latest book (Outliers), Malcolm Gladwell argues that if you want to really master something (e.g. playing guitar, programming, playing golf), there is a high probability that the number of hours you will need to invest into it will revolve around 10,000.

10,000 hours if you want to be an expert at something. This means 14 years if you are doing it 2 hours per day.

Looking back at Seth Godin’s insightful post entitled What would a professional do?, this makes me wonder:

How much can you really achieve by doing all the little tasks you’re (at most) average at yourself instead of leaving them to those who have devoted their 10k to them?

Once again the question of focus and extreme specialization. Sharing work and profits vs. keeping it all to yourself because you can just do it so much better and faster.

Based on the experiences of others and my own, I would say that the question you need to ask yourself is this:

Is the combination of your personal talents, traits and circumstances, confronted with all the tasks in front of you, so wonderfully special that you can do twice a better and cheaper job doing it all by yourself?

This is seldom the case, but surely not unheard of. And of course, your environment and circumstances might be preventing you from doing otherwise.

But consider this: if you can do it only twice as good as with a team of other 10k-ers, you will probably make a profit; however, the next time around you will not have made the important connections and experiences to even have this choice and you will most likely be doing it by yourself again.

And as you get older, and the cycle continues, you probably start losing your edge, along with your wonderfully special advantage – and you lose.

Bottom line:

Do the stuff that matters to you the most right now and stop thinking about what you feel might come in handy later.

Otherwise you end up just being an amateur at a lot of things. And – as Seth Godin put it -

Be an amateur on purpose, not because you have to.

There will always be enough time for your whims later on if you do it right. Right?

Focus FTW!

P.S.: I think we might be building up a little fascination with the number 10,000 here (see my earlier post, 10,000 Reasons To Focus).

Related articles by Zemanta

• Book Review: Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell (basilandspice.com)
• Gladwell’s Book Examines Outliers Success (somewhatfrank.com)
• 10000 Hours, Hits and Experts (steffanantonas.com)

The philosopher appeared in front of the Hotel Imperial and attracted a crowd by his actions. He removed his coat, folded it, laid it on the sidewalk, placed his hat upon it; then he drew a small rubber band from his pocket. He broke the circle with his fingers, and, stretching the elastic to its limit, held it above his head.

“Gentlemen,” said the philosopher, “and pardon me – ladies – I did not see you. In this little piece of elastic there is the philosophy of life and living. When it is stretched to its full length it represents the strained life; when relaxed it is the simple life.

“Appearances, ladies and gentlemen,” said the philosopher, stretching the elastic until it threatened to snap. He allowed the rubber to relax with a snap and chuckled.

“But there’s the goods. It doesn’t look so big, but it amounts to as much as is more solid.”

“And you, ladies?” Once more the elastic extended. “Dress! But there’s simplicity. And who shall say that the original Eve was less of a woman than any of you?”

That decided Policeman Xenodocius, the Classic Cop of the Tenderloin. He arrested the Philosopher of the Elastic Life.

“Pardon me,” said the sophist. “I have but one more lesson to-”

“Come on!” said Xenodocius urgently.”

“Well,” said Sergt Charles Place, placidly, a moment later, “I don’t see that he did anything dangerous.”

“Aha!” cried the philosopher. “Here is a man of good elastic. I congratulate you, Sir.”

As the philosopher turned to go, he saw the reporters. Out came the inevitable elastic.

“Gentlemen,” said he, “you see it is stretched. Now it is not stretched. This applies also to journalism. There is no need for you to make it the length of this. See!” And he slowly allowed the rubber band to contract. “Observe that it loses nothing but gains rather by compactness.”

A wave of his hand and he was gone.

- The New York Times; May 6, 1905

A great talk about the long tail of technology – it’s not always paramount to be able to capture the biggest and the meanest of customers – success often lies in tapping the heterogeneous “rest of the crowd”.

Steve Nielsen created an extensive list of notable M&A’s in 2007.

Here is the link.

For me, among the most interesting were:

• Last.fm bought by CBS for $280 Million
• DoubleClick acquired by Google for $3.1 Billion
• aQuantive by Microsoft for $6 Billion
• Logoworks by HP
• Avaya by Silver Lake & TPG for $8.2 Billion

Of course 2008 is bound to be exciting in this regard as well – this post suggests 5 possible acquisition targets:

• AOL
• Zoho
• Clicky
• CrazyEgg/ClickTale
• NetVibes/PageFlakes

A lot of people (including me, I guess) would add Digg as well, although it’s been holding its hand up in the M&A class for quite a while now already …

And according to The Drama 2.0 Show,

Web 2.0 darling Digg has reportedly retained investment bank Allen & Company to find a buyer. Asking price? A cool $300 million. As noted at Mashable, nearly all of the obvious potential buyers have reportedly expressed little to no interest in Kevin Rose’s baby previously and despite the Christmas spirit, nobody seems generous enough to make Kevin a $60 million kid (idiot editors at BusinessWeek notwithstanding).

I have used a couple of good tools for both personal and professional organization during the last couple of years.

If you’re organizing work in a small company, a single project, a sports team, conferences, pub crawls or just yourself, some of the tools below might come in handy.

• Basecamp (37signals) – Project management and collaboration (small project, teams of < 50), free for a small number of projects

• Highrise (37signals) – Simple CRM for small organizations, free for limited use

• Google Calendar (Google) - A great online calendar with a very good mobile phone version, free

• Del.icio.us (Yahoo!) -Link storage and sharing, free

• Thoughtbag (GRECO) - Generic information tagging and sharing tool, free

• Backpack (37signals) -Neat personal organization application, free for a small number of projects

Image via Wikipedia

In the past couple of years, I have stumbled upon a series of useful podcasts I listen to more or less regularly.

Below is a list of the ones I have found most useful.

1. Technology

• Hanselminutes - a great software development podcast by Scott Hanselman (focusing on MS technologies)
• TWiT - This Week In Tech – fun and informative weekly updates on what’s new in the tech world (by Leo Laporte & co.)
• Net@Nite – web tech updates by Amber MacArthur and Leo Laporte
• SecurityNow - IT security by Steve Gibson and Leo Laporte
• Ruby on Rails Podcast

2. Entrepreneurship

• Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders - Stanford Technology Ventures Program
• Iinnovate - about innovation and entrepreneurship

3. Language

• ChinesePod - great podcast for learning Mandarin
• Notes In Spanish (intermediate, advanced)
• P4 Klartext – daily news in clear and easily understandable Swedish
• The French Pod Class
• Selkouutiset - simple Finnish podcast
• Montaigne’s Tower – Steve Kaufmann’s podcast on language learning

4. Science

• Science Friday – great podcast about science
• Brain Food – easy listening, scientific facts

5. Miscellaneous

• TEDTalks - talks fom the TED conference – a must-have
• Manager Tools – great tips on managerial practices
• Princeton University Podcast 2006
• YALE University Podcast
• Visual Culture
• Futures in Biotech

Thanks to David for some of these links .

There has been a lot of talk about the importance of focus.

Focus on one thing, be persistent, and you will succeed.

But succeed in what? In making yourself an expert in one field whilst growing completely oblivious to all the other interesting things life has to offer?

Well … to some extent, yes.

Focus is when you stop looking at everything that interests you and constantly struggles to draw your attention.

Focus is when you shoot like a laser beam towards the goal in front of you. The goal that, naturally, was set before the shot. And a goal that might, when you have finally reached it, have become outdated …

This is why even those who do focus have to constantly be on the lookout for change and must devote at least a bit of their attention to whatever else lies out there.

So what stops them from going after one of those other distractions, some of them maybe a hundred times more promising that the goal at hand? What gives them the confidence and, yes, the right to abandon what life has in store for them?

People who know me will say that I’m all over the place. And I love it … I enjoy life and I love diversity. I would go to considerable lengths to keep the balance between all the things I’m fond of, all the things that are keeping me afloat.

I’m always curious and in pursuit of experience … wondering about the impact that different roles and situations may have on me, my life and my emotions … How a particular role would make me feel.

So … how does it feel to shoot out like a laser beam?

Well … I guess I’m about to find out …