
Ask HN: Your experiences building several startups at the same time - zeynalov
After my first successful startup I get too much cofounder suggestions and some of them are incredibly amazing projects. Now I work on 2 of them, and today got a brilliant idea to work with. But I'm so busy, I can't even manage my first startup, legal and bureaucratic issues takes too much time.<p>Do you have any experiences/advices about building several startups parallel at the same time? Do yo prefer to work one by one or with several at the same time?
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hsuresh
It is almost always better to work on them one after the other. I am currently
bootstrapping my startup through consulting/freelancing. Even though i try to
restrict my consulting work to about 20 hrs/week, there is always spillovers.
But the biggest problem is that of a context-switch. It is just not easy, at
least to me, to quickly switch from a consulting gig to my own startup effort.
One of the 2 always suffers.

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JayInt
Interesting question.

As someone who is working full-time and working on 2 start-ups (one with far
more commitment) I know what it is to take one too much as an entrepreneur.

The first thought is a warning! Burnout! If you choose to go full-time and a
startup you're going to hit a wall. Naturally if you do more than one startup
you just hit it faster...

So the issue is commitment. My advise would be to divide your week into blocks
of commitment for each project. In my case Mon,Wed,Fri,Sun using 4 hour blocks
per dsy for startup A. Tues, Thurs of 4 hour blocks on startup B (Saturday is
a much needed recovery day, normally resulting in a much deserved hangover).

Another consideration is how you work...

For example I am an 80/80 person. I work 80% and play 80%, the important part
is that i'm never 100% at one time so have that buffer to avoid burnout... you
have to find a balance between the minimum required effort to have a
successful company and your own personal space (even work-a-holics sleep,
generally on the keyboard)

As you have experience with startups i'm surprised you've so easily embraced
another two projects. However that intimates that you know how to divide you
time between them... It would be interesting to see a blog post from you in 6
months to discover if you were able manage both and how the
progression/success of each respectively influenced your commitment in them.

~~~
zeynalov
yes I'm going to write a blog post about the progress. second startup is not a
big idea, it's a ui/ux design bureau. The reason why I get an office and
empleyees for that rather than working online, I need professional web
design/developer team for my startups. Having a team, made me think why not to
open a design studio?! And also sometimes I get big orders like website of
State oil company Azerbaijan Republic. They pay for a website 50-120k euros.
So I founded A ui/ux design (which I am expert on) bureau. My third startup is
a software, which also will need some team to develop it. By starting second
and third, I thought that I already automated the first one, which was not
true and my Project Manager cannot handle with the issues like I did. Everyday
he asks stupid questions and takes my time which make me tired of it.

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yuvadam
Most people cannot do more than one full-blown startup at the same time.

What I personally find myself doing is dealing with several different projects
on varying levels of intensity. So I have one startup that takes most of my
time, and then some side projects that are either limited in time, or fall
into the weekend project category, or just projects I like dealing with in my
spare time, with no time pressure (and no ambitious goals).

But more than one 'real' startup? Don't go there.

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flippyhead
Most people can't event do one full-blown start-up at a time.

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hmahncke
You answered your own question - if you're too busy to manage the issues
around your first startup, adding more startups will contribute to making the
first one fail.

As many HN threads point out, ideas are easy, but building companies, finding
customers, and product/market fit are all hard and need a team's full focus.

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shailu76
Totally understand the temptation of working on various ideas and solving
interesting problems. I dealt with this in my past life. Its hard enough to do
1 start up at a time. Doing 2 or 3 takes a lot. Though i see this with
positives and negatives

Pros: working on multiple ideas will keep your creative flowing. it helps to
connect the dots that you may not even realize. Keeps you going on mandane
tasks on 1 start up because you may have something interesting going on the
other project.

Cons you cant give your best to any of the ideas. all ideas may suffer from
your lack of energy. You may keep working on interesting stuff and put off
uninteresting stuff forever. and we know there is plenty of "uninteresting
stuff" in any project.

my 2 cents.

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fatalerrorx3
I'm currently working on a startup that's attempting to solve a very big
problem, and it sucks up all of my time at the momment.. I wouldn't even begin
to think about taking on anything else at this point. I also want the project
to succeed as well, and I know that in order for that to happen (I'm currently
the only developer) I need to be working on it almost all the time -- I even
work on it on weekends because the work is intriguing...we haven't yet
launched but it takes all my time developing what basically can be considered
a brand new web platform from scratch

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fatalerrorx3
Like others have mentioned also, by spreading yourself out onto too many
projects you limit the chances of success that any one will get..Find the most
intriguing/interesting project and give 110% to that, drop the rest until you
exit the first (hopefully successfully), then you can re-explore your passion
projects with less pressure (that is, if you get a nice money cushion from the
first venture)

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biznickman
I wrote a post on this last night (published this morning)
[http://nickoneill.com/the-most-common-way-entrepreneurs-
kill...](http://nickoneill.com/the-most-common-way-entrepreneurs-kill-their-
business-2012-01/) ... my main conclusion is that running multiple startups at
the same time is a great way to kill your startups. Yes, there are always
exceptions to the rule (e.g. Jack Dorsey) but until you have a company that
has a massive team that can support your business on an ongoing basis, it's
not likely to work.

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seanmccann
Unless you have a lot of capital, it's not about preference, it's about
reality. The more you work on, the more you spread yourself thin. The more you
work on, the less likely anything is going to succeed. If you want something
to really take off, you need to pick one.

There should be one idea that really jumps out at you above the rest. If not
then maybe you haven't found anything big enough yet. In that case it may be
helpful to simultaneously explore multiple ideas. But pick only one
eventually.

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ithought
I like Aaron's post on this topic-
<http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/productivity>

I currently work at 6 startups, 12 hour shifts, over 24 days per month. The 2
main startups I spend 48 hours per week at. The other 4 take up 36 hours per
week. One is very profitable and I use it to fund the others. However, I don't
think this is a smart strategy at all. I'm just wasting money but having fun
intellectual pursuits.

~~~
zeynalov
I read his motivational articles like years ago. I am not sure but I was 22 I
think, and it was really great article. Absolutely will read it one more time.

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inestyne
It's not really the workload but the brain overload. Right now I have a paying
gig which I try to work on but not think about maybe a 3rd of the time. The
rest of my time and mental energy goes into my one startup. I had a couple
side startups but I had to let them go. My mind was trying to think about all
of them at once!

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ww520
Starting on multiple help if they are similar and you can share resources
between them, like design/arch/code/services/hardware. It's difficult to
context switch between project/product with the same efficiency. I found it
easier to devote one week or two weeks on one and then switch to another.

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playhard
Jack Dorsey is the right guy to answer this.
[http://thenextweb.com/entrepreneur/2011/11/14/jack-dorsey-
do...](http://thenextweb.com/entrepreneur/2011/11/14/jack-dorsey-does-8-hours-
at-twitter-8-hours-at-square-daily/)

~~~
loceng
It's very different when you have completely different environments (eg:
contexts) to pull your mind into a different mode. Your mind will very quickly
switch. Like most starting up multiple startups though you have one space
where you work, and therefore you need to figure out other queues to create
context for what you're working on - and try to eliminate other distractions
from unrelated things. This is very hard for me, which is why the alternative
is to work on only 1 project. Of course life itself includes more than 1
project.

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glimcat
The "log jam" effect tends to mean that your inefficiency goes exponentially
with the number of projects you're trying to juggle (where "projects" are
anything which regularly requests time).

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rokhayakebe
How much work did it take to make your first startup successful? Now what do
you think the outcome would've been had you only invested half or a third of
your time, ressources into it?

~~~
zeynalov
I know, it would be surely better to work only one of them. But I think I
didn't explained the issue very good. It took 6 month to make the first
startup to work, 1 year to automate it fully, to be able to work on other
projects. Even it's fully automated, I have to control everyday how it's
doing, what problems project manager has etc. and it takes my time and I can't
concentrate me on the next project. Maybe the problem is in automation, or I
have to find a good CEO for my first startup?

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exess1
Im currently working on 3 concurrently. The main thing is that I have good
teams surrounding me on all 3. If you have QUALITY people surrounding you, you
can accomplish a lot

~~~
AznHisoka
which 3 of them?

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petervandijck
Dries is running Acquia and Mollom, 2 startups in effect, started around the
same time. I think he delegates really well.

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billpatrianakos
Who do you think you are? Jack Dorsey? If you like 16 hour days and have a
chip on your shoulder then go for it. But in all seriousness here, I wouldn't
advise you to do this. One is more than enough. I'd hate to read about you
here in a few years in an article about you snapped under all the pressure.

Focus. We all have a million great ideas but it's incredibly rare to be able
to execute on more than one of them successfully let alone a single idea
successfully. One is enough and if you have some extra passion to burn off
well then that's why god created side projects. I won't give you advice on how
to get through more than one startup as I believe it would hurt you (or
anyone) more than it would help.

There's only one Jack Dorsey. Remember that.

~~~
zeynalov
I want to automate my first startup and make a better one. With the first
startup I can't make more than 70k euros/month. It's in Germany, noone would
buy it. So should I kill it? Because I have better ideas.

P.S. I didn't say I'm Jack Dorsey. I really appreciate what he does and did.
But I and anyone else can be better than him, if you ask my opinion.

~~~
billpatrianakos
First off, don't take offense to the Dorsey comment. I was kidding. There was
an article about him working 16 hour days at 2 startups that I was reminded
of.

You should have mentioned these details originally. If you can automate it and
it really doesn't require too much attention from you then I'd say keep it
running and pursue other options. Doesn't seem like a problem to me.

When you say you can't make more than 70k euros monthly I worry. 70k each
month is a lot of money. Is that in your pocket or what the business is making
before expenses? If that's your pay then I hope you're not in it for the
money. Doing anything for the money is a sure way to fail in the long run. But
all things considered I can't see a reason why you shouldn't go for 2 at a
time in this particular situation. Good luck.

~~~
zeynalov
70k is monthly net profit. I know working for money is not good, but my
business model is limited. It's local. It can't grow anymore. For example,
Google can grow, Facebook can grow, etc. they can invent interesting things by
the time. But my first startup gets already boring and I seek something more
interesting. I dont want to stuck in an office working whole the time on it.

