

Ask HN: One startup at a time? - fjabre

I have a friend who's asked me to work on a startup with him and several others. They have secured 10s of thousands for this new venture. The idea seems ok but nothing has been executed yet.. Just a lot of talk basically at this point.<p>I have also been working on another web startup that is about to go into public beta within 1-2 months. That startup has no funding, but it does have a nearly finished and well fleshed out product with a few private beta users already and it's only 2 founders instead of 5 or 6 which the other one has.<p>My friend has indicated that I would only be involved part-time but I am the most technical guy on the team so I know my involvement would probably require a lot more than that and as anyone who's done a startup knows - it ain't easy..<p>It's tempting of course b/c of how well funded they are but it would be really hard for me to distract myself from something that I put a year of my life into and is nearly finished. I also realize how great a divide there is between talking about building a product and actually building a product even if you're well funded.<p>I wanted to know if anyone out there has had a similar experience and/or has been successful dividing their time between 2 or more startups or if you think the idea of doing multiple startups at a time is just plain crazy.. What would you do?<p>thanks
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pascalchristian
I think you should look at the problem as an investor: which startup has the
best idea/product/market-fit/potential?

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fjabre
Good point.. The one with funding is yet another social network based deal for
the masses while the one I've been working on is targeted to a specific group
of business users like Basecamp..

Unfortunately I don't really think I can 'split' my time between the two..
Inevitably one or the other would suffer IMHO..

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Mz
A) I would be concerned that the one with all the money will turn out to be a
lot better at raising money than at creating something. In the long run, you
cannot borrow your way out of debt. So if they can't produce something, they
would eventually go bankrupt.

B) If at all possible, in the same situation, I would try to spend a little
time on each one and see if I could learn enough from each of them to figure
out what is 'wrong' with each and try to make a more viable go of whichever
one seems best for me. They sound like each one has done one piece of it well
and not the other. It sounds like a unique opportunity to experience the two
things first-hand and grow a unique knowledge-base, out of which something
really viable is much more likely to be born in the future.

