

Ask HN: Anyone tried running two start ups at a time? - amerf1

I know its a lot of work, I know its a crazy question, But what I mean is did anyone try running two small startup&#x2F;sideprojects at a time. Doesn&#x27;t matter alone or with a team<p>Did you make money? was it the right thing or would you have been better off focusing on one thing at a time
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helloanand
TL;DR - I've done it. One had a successful exit, the other bombed. Spend all
your time, energy and passion into one and make it win.

I used to run two startups in parallel - 1) an online b2c startup - review and
recommendation site for local businesses and 2) manufacturing and installation
of bird spikes.

Not only were both businesses completely different in all aspects, they were
also run out of two different cities. I used to run the online businesses,
while the manufacturing one I handed over to a friend and would touch base
with him very week to check progress and help troubleshoot sales, marketing
etc.

The online startup was a roaring success. We exited successfully in just 3
years of starting up. The manufacturing one failed - the friend lost interest,
I couldn't manage the day to day affairs and it ended up being a disaster.

So don't do two things in parallel.

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nreece
Tried that recently. Doesn't work. A product needs all the attention, and
switching between two is very difficult, specially during the early stages
which are critical for customer development and growth.

There's a reason why successful startup founders with a wide portfolio are
called serial entrepreneurs, not parallel entrepreneurs.

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waster
Maybe too soon for me to be answering, but I'm running two now, though one is
not-for-profit. The for-profit one I founded in part to generate a percentage
of profit to seed the not-for-profit.

I say too soon because I haven't released the for-profit one to the world yet
(still coding). The nonprofit has generated substantial interest in its field,
despite minimal funding to date, and netted me one full-time job offer at the
pinnacle of the field, and likely played a role in some other contracts I've
had since.

But I don't know that two at once is right for most people. It's pretty
insane, and probably only works for now because the nonprofit is in partial
operation (advocacy) and the for-profit is in development. But then both are
seriously big-scale in terms of their aims, so maybe that doesn't help, given
that you said both of yours are small.

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amac
I'm running four projects - usehuman.com, octopus.org, mostvaluablepro.com and
thecloudforum.com. They're all side projects but eventually I'll have to focus
on one for sure. As others have said, dividing your time between things
divides your ability to focus.

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ra00l
the general advice is to focus on one project at a time. However, I can't do
that.. I am currently working on 3-4 projects, besides my one-man consultancy
business. I can't say I'm profitable with any yet though.

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igorsyl
Elon Musk.

