(just posted this to the blog before reading here... I essentially agree with diziet) Dan, I like your conclusion, but disagree with the premise. I contend t

(just posted this to the blog before reading here... I essentially agree with diziet) Dan, I like your conclusion, but disagree with the premise. I contend that your understanding of the Pareto principle was initially incorrect and you are not alone as your link to David's post is evidence. I further contend that your new approach is actually more aligned with the Pareto principle. The Pareto principle does not say that 20% effort will give you 80% of the benefit. The principle says that 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. That is a very significant distinction. The key is figuring out which 20% gives you the proverbial bang for your buck and doing 100% of that. That is not always easy or obvious. If you are talking about 'time' and all the hats a founder has to wear in an early startup, the math quickly breaks if one tries to spend %20 of the time on more than 5 things. IMHO, Pareto Power Law applied to entrepreneurship is not about spending %20 time on anything, it is about getting to parity on the undifferentiated infrastructure that every company needs to run for as little time and money as possible, so you can focus on narrowing down and finding the %20 of causes that really move the needle in your space. Then go all in... Regards, Andrew