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Assuming your goal is to have a successful startup company, I've often wondered what the optimal trade-off between time-per-startup idea and number of startup a

Assuming your goal is to have a successful startup company, I've often wondered what the optimal trade-off between time-per-startup idea and number of startup attempts is. For instance, I could spend a year working on two really big, elaborate ideas that I have, but if they fail (likely), then I've wasted ("learned what not to do" if you're the optimistic type) a year working on only two ideas. Or... I could invest my time in a bunch of little startup ideas. Make one simple webapp a week, and out of 52 of them, one should stick, right? But the problem is that in general, the more time and effort you invest into any particular idea, the higher quality the product of your idea will become, and the better a chance it has for success. So, I'm not sure what the best route is. If you look at which companies have historically been successful (FB, Twitter, Instagram), you see that the founder spent almost all of their time on that one idea. But, this may be an example of selection bias. It could be the case that the biggest successes require a huge time-investment in one project, but the probability of success for any random project is very low. In a sense, they won a lottery of a sort. Perhaps your chance of success -- but not mega-success -- becomes more realistic if you focus on many smaller ideas.

namenotrequired 13y ago
Hopefully you've found one of the 52 ideas awesome enough to spend a little longer on. How enthusiastic / passionate you are about it is a big factor in how successful will be.
- icpmacdo 13y ago
  I really like the idea of making a web app every week and seeing whats sticks. Its seems like it would be a much more diverse learning experience.
  - telephonetemp 13y ago
    A web app a week sounds like a pretty brisk pace to me -- but then again my knowledge of web development is rather outdated. What technologies would you use to build a web app in 7 days in 2013?
    - namenotrequired 13y ago
      Perhaps not if you consider they don't need to be polished or great, or (depending on what you're making) perhaps even finished. You just need to work on it enough to get an idea of 1) how enthusiastic you really are about it and perhaps 2) what the market or audience looks like (but mainly 1, because that's what will motivate you or not to spend more time on it). The might not even be the most time consuming activity, especially if you consider what one can make in a single day (see for instance https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6097155 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6097155)
  - lifeisstillgood 13y ago
    It's rather tempting isn't it? However it's too crazy. Too fast paced. Certainly for one.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
cstejerean 13y ago
I think you're right. Building the next twitter would require a huge gamble that's unlikely to pay off. But from what I can tell neither of Twitter, Facebook, Google started out with the intention to be the next big thing. All of them started as something much smaller and focused, even though they eventually grew into behemoths.
no_gravity 13y ago
"If you look at which companies have historically been successful (FB, Twitter, Instagram), you see that the founder spent almost all of their time on that one idea." Where does that info come from and what do you mean with "all of their time"? I would expect that the first iteration of those websites have been coded in a few days or weeks.
- Xcelerate 13y ago
  > Where does that info come from and what do you mean with "all of their time"? It came from my memory of various articles I've read; but that's certainly a fallible source, so correct me if I'm wrong. And with "all of their time", I didn't literally mean "all of it". I meant, with time appropriated towards working on a star-up, it was spent on only one idea rather than multiple ones.
radley 13y ago
Twitter was not a founder-focused idea - it was a side project for a video service.
- schuylerlarson 13y ago
  Actually it was a founder-focused idea that jack had thought of first in 2000 but decided to shelf it. Also it was a failing podcast platform called Odeo.
lifeisstillgood 13y ago
That certainly seems to be the trend - succeed once and diversify. You simply take the diversify first. It's a nice idea - 52 startups.
gbog 13y ago
No, your chances of success are extremely low whatever how you do it, so better do something you like. And the most relevant bias here is not selection bias, it's the one that makes every driver believe they are above average drivers. The same happens with mergers too: the boss believes he will better than the other one, and forget about all the difficulties and costs of a merge. I think that if you really need the money you probably should work in a big corp.

namenotrequired 13y ago

Hopefully you've found one of the 52 ideas awesome enough to spend a little longer on. How enthusiastic / passionate you are about it is a big factor in how successful will be.

icpmacdo 13y ago
I really like the idea of making a web app every week and seeing whats sticks. Its seems like it would be a much more diverse learning experience.
- telephonetemp 13y ago
  A web app a week sounds like a pretty brisk pace to me -- but then again my knowledge of web development is rather outdated. What technologies would you use to build a web app in 7 days in 2013?
  - namenotrequired 13y ago
    Perhaps not if you consider they don't need to be polished or great, or (depending on what you're making) perhaps even finished. You just need to work on it enough to get an idea of 1) how enthusiastic you really are about it and perhaps 2) what the market or audience looks like (but mainly 1, because that's what will motivate you or not to spend more time on it). The might not even be the most time consuming activity, especially if you consider what one can make in a single day (see for instance https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6097155 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6097155)
- lifeisstillgood 13y ago
  It's rather tempting isn't it? However it's too crazy. Too fast paced. Certainly for one.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

cstejerean 13y ago

I think you're right. Building the next twitter would require a huge gamble that's unlikely to pay off. But from what I can tell neither of Twitter, Facebook, Google started out with the intention to be the next big thing. All of them started as something much smaller and focused, even though they eventually grew into behemoths.

no_gravity 13y ago

"If you look at which companies have historically been successful (FB, Twitter, Instagram), you see that the founder spent almost all of their time on that one idea." Where does that info come from and what do you mean with "all of their time"? I would expect that the first iteration of those websites have been coded in a few days or weeks.

Xcelerate 13y ago
> Where does that info come from and what do you mean with "all of their time"? It came from my memory of various articles I've read; but that's certainly a fallible source, so correct me if I'm wrong. And with "all of their time", I didn't literally mean "all of it". I meant, with time appropriated towards working on a star-up, it was spent on only one idea rather than multiple ones.

radley 13y ago

Twitter was not a founder-focused idea - it was a side project for a video service.

schuylerlarson 13y ago
Actually it was a founder-focused idea that jack had thought of first in 2000 but decided to shelf it. Also it was a failing podcast platform called Odeo.

lifeisstillgood 13y ago

That certainly seems to be the trend - succeed once and diversify. You simply take the diversify first. It's a nice idea - 52 startups.

gbog 13y ago

No, your chances of success are extremely low whatever how you do it, so better do something you like. And the most relevant bias here is not selection bias, it's the one that makes every driver believe they are above average drivers. The same happens with mergers too: the boss believes he will better than the other one, and forget about all the difficulties and costs of a merge. I think that if you really need the money you probably should work in a big corp.