4 ms·

Mark, a little advice. Focus is underrated and oh-so-powerful. Pick one. I'd choose branchr.

by corruption 16y ago

auston 16y ago
Focus is not underrated, it's under-utilized! And I would pick genevine!
markbao 16y ago
Thanks! That's a concern I have as well.
vaksel 16y ago
focus is overrated early on, but yes once you find the one project that is an obvious success, you should try to focus on that 100% full time
cmelbye 16y ago
I'd pick Supportbreeze (if any picking needs to be done). Support needs to be fixed.
astrofinch 16y ago
I disagree. My intuition is that if Mark was to focus on only one of his startups, it would only become about twice as successful. I think it makes sense to work on them all simultaneously if they all seem equally promising. Mentions of the "80/20 principle" make me wince, because both 80 and 20 are stated with 2 significant figures too many. But the idea behind it--"there's a lot of variation in the effectiveness of activities you classify as 'work'"--is correct. If Mark does just the most promising tasks for each startup, he'll be doing pretty damn good. Your comment is a good example of a HN user suggesting a simple heuristic for answering an important question, which I find annoying. Another example would be Paul Graham's advice to make a product that scratches your own itch. Your domain expertise should definitely be a factor when choosing between two startup ideas, but I could probably think of three other factors that are at least as important. I guess I could live with the simple heuristics if they were accompanied by detailed justifications explaining why they're better than most conceivable complex heuristics, but they never seem to be. Simple heuristics are sometimes correct, but there are so many people spouting simple heuristics just because they like simplicity that simple heuristics have a large burden of proof to overcome, in my mind at least.
- corruption 16y ago
  Parsimony.
  - astrofinch 16y ago
    Why is parsimony good? - Simpler principles make better mantras. - Occam's razor--all else equal, you should assume the world is simple. I can't think of anything else. Both of those considerations seem weak compared to other factors.
- NEPatriot 16y ago
  YC batches startups. Why can't we batch our MVPs? See what looks the most promising, shelf the others and go for it?

Mark, a little advice. Focus is underrated and oh-so-powerful. Pick one. I'd choose branchr.

auston 16y ago

Focus is not underrated, it's under-utilized! And I would pick genevine!

markbao 16y ago

Thanks! That's a concern I have as well.

vaksel 16y ago

focus is overrated early on, but yes once you find the one project that is an obvious success, you should try to focus on that 100% full time

cmelbye 16y ago

I'd pick Supportbreeze (if any picking needs to be done). Support needs to be fixed.

astrofinch 16y ago

I disagree. My intuition is that if Mark was to focus on only one of his startups, it would only become about twice as successful. I think it makes sense to work on them all simultaneously if they all seem equally promising. Mentions of the "80/20 principle" make me wince, because both 80 and 20 are stated with 2 significant figures too many. But the idea behind it--"there's a lot of variation in the effectiveness of activities you classify as 'work'"--is correct. If Mark does just the most promising tasks for each startup, he'll be doing pretty damn good. Your comment is a good example of a HN user suggesting a simple heuristic for answering an important question, which I find annoying. Another example would be Paul Graham's advice to make a product that scratches your own itch. Your domain expertise should definitely be a factor when choosing between two startup ideas, but I could probably think of three other factors that are at least as important. I guess I could live with the simple heuristics if they were accompanied by detailed justifications explaining why they're better than most conceivable complex heuristics, but they never seem to be. Simple heuristics are sometimes correct, but there are so many people spouting simple heuristics just because they like simplicity that simple heuristics have a large burden of proof to overcome, in my mind at least.

corruption 16y ago
Parsimony.
- astrofinch 16y ago
  Why is parsimony good? - Simpler principles make better mantras. - Occam's razor--all else equal, you should assume the world is simple. I can't think of anything else. Both of those considerations seem weak compared to other factors.
NEPatriot 16y ago
YC batches startups. Why can't we batch our MVPs? See what looks the most promising, shelf the others and go for it?