
Ask HN: Should an entrepreneur build multiple startups simultaneously? - xj
VCs and angels invest in multiple startups all the time with the belief that 1 out of 20 investments (rough statistics) would probably give them a run for their money. What this means is that roughly 19 out of 20 startups are destined to fail. So what is happening here is that the investors are betting on multiple startups to play safe, BUT, the startup founders are putting their soul on one startup (at a time), which statistically, has a very slim 1/20 chance of bearing fruit.<p>It's a general belief that Entrepreneurship is about "jumping from a cliff and assembling a plane on the way down", but if probability and statistics make any sense, that is too much risk to take. Not just the number of years, but personal relations, psychological effect of failing continuously, health etc.<p>So... do you think it's a good idea to get involved in multiple startups ideas simultaneously? Have your say.
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keiferski
The VC analogy doesn't work because entrepreneurs do vastly more work on a
_single_ company than a VC does. If _x_ is a measure of time, then a VC gives
_x_ time to 20 companies, while a founder gives 20x to 1 company.

It's not a terrible idea to work on a few projects simultaneously, but you
should focus on one when/if it shows promise. Also keep in mind that building
a successful startup isn't just a statistical game in which 1 out of every 100
startups necessarily succeeds. As in, a startup might only succeed because the
founders put in the extra work.

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xj
I believe your answer is based on the assumption that founders work closely on
every details, and working on several startups might get them distracted.

But how about recruiting the right people for the right job (well, this
wouldn't be possible for startups with meager fund though) in each of the
startups so that the ideas get implemented as they should, and the founders,
rather than actually developing the projects ground up, merely act as project
managers, monitoring the progress and validating the results against their
vision.

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keiferski
That's certainly possible, but even at that higher level of abstraction,
there's still a ton of work to do. I can't imagine a PM at Facebook in 2007 or
Google in 2003 having the time to run multiple projects at multiple companies.

It might work for smaller companies, but eventually you'll either have to
focus on one, or zoom further out (and essentially become a VC).

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xj
This is exactly what I'm talking about. Steve jobs example cited above.

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sharipova
I believe it's possible, but extremely rare. I mean if building 1 successful
startup is very unlikely, building 2 successful startups at the same time is
even less likely. That is why I think you can play with several ideas at the
same time in the beginning, but you should focus on the one which gets
traction. Yet, I believe people claiming the impossibility of this are not
right. Elon Musk build SpaceX and Tesla at the same time. Jack Dorsey was in
Twitter and Square simultaneously for some time. However, the pressure should
be enormous.

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jasonkester
Yes, absolutely. Build lots of stuff.

Entrepreneurship is about building stuff to make you money. Whether you want
to include cliffs or planes is entirely up to you.

Lots of things that make money start off small and ramp up slowly. It might
take months before your new thing is bringing in even $100/month in revenue.
But that's _calendar_ time, not necessarily _labor_ time. So you might find
you have room in there to build a second thing while you're waiting for the
first one to take off.

You'll find people here with a half dozen SaaS products on the market, all
building on themselves every month, all in some state of active development.
You'll find even more people here with one or two products out there who are
still working 40 hour weeks either contracting or as an employee.

Sure you can follow the 90-hour-week, VC-backed path if you like. And if so,
you probably won't find much time for anything else. But you don't have to.
It's a wide spectrum, and that world is a very tiny slice at one edge.

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argonaut
No.

I remember listening to a guy talk to Jack Dorsey. This guy said "I'm working
on 3 startup ideas." Jack said "that's two too many."

You _might think_ that some people can pull it off: Elon Musk and Jack Dorsey
come to mind. But keep in mind: Elon Musk started two successful startups
(Zip2, then X.com, x.com later merged with paypal) and he did both of those
one-at-a-time. Only after he had lots of experience doing startups was he able
to work on multiple startups at a time. Are you a veteran entrepreneur known
for working 12 hour days and who has already started two successful startups?
No? Then don't think you can do what Elon Musk is doing. Same for Jack Dorsey.
He started Twitter, and only _after getting forced out_ did he start Square.
Later he returned to Twitter (under its new CEO, Dick Costolo).

Also note that Steve Jobs did _not_ really do anything at Pixar while he was
at Apple. His role was closer to that of an investor/advisor.

Running a startup requires _focus_ and _tremendous effort_. Investing requires
due diligence, sure, but after you sign that check you don't really need to do
much work.

What you might be able to do is to work on several side projects; when one of
them starts to get traction/users/attention, then you'll need to focus on that
one product.

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stevenameyer
Whether or not a startup succeeds is not about probability, it is about
producing a good product that people want. If you have the
time/talent/resources to produce 20 different solid products that people are
likely to be interested in using then go ahead. However I think this is very
unlikely.

More often then not building a product that is capable of success requires a
lot of commitment emotionally, mentally, and financially. Realistically being
able to provide this level of commitment across several companies is not
possible for the vast majority of people, and not giving each company enough
attention will spread you too thin and will likely end in all of them failing.

Ultimately if you can create multiple products capable of success at then same
time then for sure, go for it. But most people can't do that, and in the long
run one company that produces a really good product people want is a lot more
likely to succeed then 20 that have ok products that people may or may not
even want.

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padseeker
NO - unless you have lots of money then go ahead. But if you are one guy
building stuff on your own? I think it is bad idea and it is most likely all
your projects will fail.

I guess if you have help with those projects, and you are contributing to them
maybe it could work? But I doubt it.

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bennyg
Why do you say this? I think too many people are focusing on the game the way
VCs and SV play it.

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argonaut
Because here is what VCs do: they forward some money to you, they sign the
investment agreement. Done. They don't need to do any more work except get
progress updates from you (basically they read a single email) once every
couple months. If they're on the board they'll meet with you for a few hours
every month. _That is not a lot of work per startup_.

A founder needs to put in at _least_ 8 hours a day for a single startup.

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itsprofitbaron
You can’t really compare _entrepreneurs_ and _VCs_ roles, as they are entirely
different things. VCs are investors and may or may not have a board role and
although they add value in other ways, the day-to-day running of the company
is left to the entrepreneur.

There are slight variations of this model where you can create an ‘incubator’
of companies which is what was started by IdeaLab (I think they were the
earliest tech incubator in 1996) and what the likes of Obvious, Rocket
Internet, Science etc are doing.

However, in terms of doing 1 startup vs. 20 startups as per your example – if
any of them become successful you are going to need _entrepreneurs_ to run the
startups in your ‘incubator’ (and you’re going to have a problem even
attracting them unless you have $$$) – and _you have far better chances of
having 1 successful startup than 20_

The reason why you have a better chance of having 1 successful startup over 20
is easiest to explain with an example, so let’s pretend that you want to make
$100/day from these startups. You may think that if you have 20 of them that’s
only $5/day compared to 1 earning $100/day and getting 20 to $5/day _may_
sound easier than 1 to $100 especially as, you can “spread” out your chances
of success and income sources – it’s not. The reason why it’s not is because:

Bigger sites make _more money_ – advertisers like to work with large sites
because it’s the same amount of paperwork to advertise on a site with 100,000
pageviews as it is for one with 10,000,000 pageviews – which is why
advertisers prefer to do 1 ad buy on that 10,000,000 pageview site than 100
deals with sites with 100,000 pageviews.

Bigger sites get better _deals_ – when you’re generating a ton of traffic you
get great deals from advertisers. Likewise, bigger sites _open doors_ as most
companies aren’t interested in working with small sites until they have a
considerable amount of users – having 20 sites with 1M users each isn’t as
interesting or valuable as having 1 site with 20M users. Why? Well 20 sites x
1M users each = 20M right? NO! Every time a member of one of your sites is
member of another – it reduces the total number of users.

Bigger sites are easier to _promote_ which makes them _stickier_ after all the
average user only visits a handful of websites.

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orangethirty
No. You will not be able to do any of them right. There is so much shit to do
that you will always be trying to catch up. What I do, is build them in
periods of 3-months.

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sharemywin
You have a limited number of hours. VCs have money to spread to limit risk. I
think that if your an entrepreneur and your not 99% sure your idea is going to
work then you shouldn't waste yours or anyone elses time or money on it.

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jfoster
To use the jumping off a cliff analogy, if you were taking it upon yourself to
build two planes on the way down would you build them in parallel?

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xj
good point :)

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xj
To put it in simple words: Should you put all your eggs in one basket? The
investors don't.

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smartwater
Two startups would give me two baskets. Unless I'm the basket.

