
Ask HN: Have you ever cofounded two startup's at once? How'd it go? - hereiam
I have a unique opportunity in that I am involved in the founding of two separate projects. One of them I am cofounder with another partner, we&#x27;re preparing to go into beta soon (social space) and have worked on for 1.5yr+; it&#x27;s my baby. The other one has sprouted up out of the consulting work both myself and partner have been involved with to help fund us working on first startup. The CEO of a successful &amp; rapidly expanding company that is backing the consulting project wants us to cofound a much bigger picture project in that space with him. They both have a ton of potential and are exciting in their own ways. We&#x27;re also already testing the first phase of software for the 2nd project internally with said company and seeing success. Feedback from initial users of social app is also exciting...<p>My question is this, I&#x27;m 33, no wife&#x2F;kids, no mortgage, and highly driven; but would it be sane to be involved with two projects? I am the ceo of social project and as it&#x27;s my first startup and first time leading such a project, I want to have the best chance for success. Likewise I would need to figure out my role for second project but so far I have acted like a mix between leader &amp; developer in coordinating other contractors, developing on backend&#x2F;client, and interfacing with company backing it. I&#x27;m having a hard time figuring out what approach to take if I choose to be involved in 2nd project and also have FOMO of ditching it entirely. I&#x27;m also interested in approach from angle of myself and partner from first startup as a team etc and if it makes sense to spread the risk around some in two projects?<p>Anyone ever have similar situation? Advice? Thanks!
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invaliduser
Currently doing that, with the following differences: \- I am the cto for both
companies \- one of my startup is already 3 years old

Even with a very low maintenance mode on my first startup, it's insane.
Actually just one startup creation and bootstrapping is insane, so what
happens is I just don't have time to manage and improve the first startup, yet
it «kinda» works because it's a niche, with no competition, and my partner
agreed to manage most of it while I am «less» available, but it really is a
nightmare and it puts the business at risk.

I know it's hard to choose («to choose is to renounce»), but my advice would
be to focus on just one of them.

