
The Most Common Way Entrepreneurs Kill Their Business - da5e
http://nickoneill.com/the-most-common-way-entrepreneurs-kill-their-business-2012-01/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+thewebpreneur+%28Nick+O%27Neill%29&utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher
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mtgentry
When Jeff Bezos creates a new division at Amazon he'll hire a product manager
for the first 0-1 million in sales. When the division grows to 1 million, he
fires them and brings on another person for the next 1-5 million stage of the
company. He knows that some people shine in the early stages while others
shine later.

I think it's OK to skip from one thing to the next if you build a team that
will support and nurture what you've built before you leave.

Bill Gross has a helpful taxonomy that explains this stuff:
<http://masongentry.com/images/personality_types.jpg>

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rkudeshi
Do you have a citation for the Bezos anecdote?

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mtgentry
Here we go: <http://youtu.be/Z4jH-hvxFUs?t=1h8m26s>

My figures were off and he says "executive talent" not product managers, but
my point about benchmarking stands. Sry, it had been a while since I watched
it : )

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forrestblount
Another common symptom of this behavior is expanding to multiple customers. As
soon as the product/feature you're looking at developing doesn't serve the
customer you're currently serving you're losing focus. It's great if you can
identify a more profitable customer, but often I see teams chasing many
different customers and not executing on serving any one of them especially
well. s/customers/jobs a la Christensen and the same holds true.

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cek
The best ventures are those where the leaders are as good at saying 'no' as
they are saying 'yes'.

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joshfraser
Focus, yes. Also, listen.

If your customers are consistently saying, "this is nice, but what I really
need is..." that's a massive sign that you should refocus your product to
address their pain.

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ams6110
Maybe. You have to look at how many other customers agree on the "this is
nice" and are paying for it, and how many of them would agree on the "what I
really need is" and pay for that.

It's common for a basic product to satisfy many customers, who then all have
slightly different needs for additional features. Taken to extreme, you end up
with Microsoft Word.

On the other hand, you have Spolsky's claim that the #1 way they increase
sales is by adding new features.

Finding the right balance is difficult, so it's easy to say that it's a common
cause for loss of focus by entrepreneurs.

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john_flintstone
You're narrowing the focus too much. The article was not about software or
tech businesses, it was much more general. I've seen the same problem
described in businesses selling poultry rearing products and fashion
jewellery.

