Thread by @dunkhippo33

Thursday thread about focus

As my business partner @shiyankoh likes to say, "Startups die from indigestion not starvation".

Meaning - founders often take on too much at the same time and are not focused on enough.

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1) As a startup, it's tempting to want to take on EVERYTHING. New features. New markets. New products. New types of customer personas.

People often think they need to raise a lot of money to tackle all these things.

2) The truth is it's much better to limit the scope of what you're doing.

One customer persona (to start). One simple product that does one thing.

And not much else.

3) Even if you have all the ppl and $$ in the world, you as the CEO still only have limited time in the day. And you have to work with all those ppl and all their projects if you take on a lot.

4) This is why the best founders say "no" to just about everything. No to pointless coffee mtgs. No to calls where ppl want to "pick their brains". No to extra commitments.

5) The best founders also often find they have to punt that feature or that new product for many yrs, because they are still so heads down on expanding as much as they can on their current one.

6) Everything I've said is obvious. We all know it. But the tricky thing is being able to assess what is a priority and what isn't.

For example, many of the best founders will also say no to investor cold emails wanting to talk. Or no to press. Or no to speaking at conferences.

7) Should you take those calls? Sometimes you should -- you never know who could further your goal.

But take press -- often press doesn't help you get more customers in a sustainable way. So you should probably turn these calls down more often than not. It's hard to prioritize

8) And so building a startup is largely like playing one of those resource allocation games -- you have to prioritize around 1 strategy -- only 1. At the expense of other ways to potentially win the game.

Sometimes you don't know what fits into your strategy & what doesn't.

9) In addition, how you win at a startup is often completely different from how you win in school, which is what ppl are brought up in.

In school, you try to be good at EVERYTHING. Get good grades in all subj. Be good at a sport. An instrument. Class president.

10) But in startups, you really just want to be great at 1 thing and standout for that one thing. And often it's ok to be bad / mediocre at everything else. This goes against everything we are taught.

11) So how do you do this? and how to do you relentlessly check yourself?

KPIs. (or OKRs -- another topic). Do you have a KPI you are working towards?

12) One metric you're measuring and one number you're trying to hit. That's it.

You either hit that # or you don't.

Using the "One metric that matters" framework you can assess whether the activities you're evaluating doing will help you hit that #.

13) Will that coffee mtg help you hit $10k in sales this month? (if that's your goal)

Will that talk help you hit that goal?

You won't know for sure but it's a good framework to determine what you say yes to and what you don't.

14) Now sometimes ppl don't want to say no to a mtg, because they want to maintain a good relationship with someone. What can you do?

15) These are a few things that I often do:

-This is my go-to: ask if there's something that would be helpful over email instead of mtg (send video or voice recordings)
-shorten the mtg dramatically -- instead of 30 min, make it 20. Or 10.
-Take a raincheck & punt.

16) If you take mtgs or calls all day and/or do talks all day, you won't have enough time to hit your KPIs.

And that's what it takes to build a startup - relentless focus. It's just hard to do.