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Ask HN: Is parallel entrepreneurship even possible?

4 points by leowoo91 ↗ HN
I have bunch of ideas at production (around 5) which I'm having hard time to sacrifice one to focus on another. Spendings are not so much, perhaps 100$ per project per month. I'd like to expand the ideas, but in my gut, I feel like I'm making a wrong approach. Am I shooting my self on the feet trying to run many ideas in parallel? I truly like them all. Any related "call from experience" guidance would be helpful. Thank you.

2 comments

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davismwfl
Yes, some advice from my own experiences, don't do it, pick something and focus. You can always come back to an idea if the one you chose bombs. Being distracted means your full focus isn't making one thing excellent, and so you will continually be behind, or fail to meet the goals quick enough. Also, in the end, you will burn yourself out on all the ideas and be bummed.

I tried this before, with only 3 ideas and that was 2 too many. Sadly I ignored a mentor who told me to focus on one, and he even told me which one, and while I put more effort there, I missed a huge opportunity to get his and some other influencers support because I was distracted trying to do too much. In the end, I mostly was successful on the one idea, but it could've been far more than what I did had I listened and focused. And the other 2 ideas went almost no where except to distract me, take my money and worse my time . I was an idiot, don't be me.

Also, I want to preface this with, you can invest in multiple projects but you cannot successfully start multiple companies at once with great success. Are there exceptions to the rule, yes, but one note, they generally start with decent personal or family wealth and can hire people to focus immediately. Are you an exception? I dunno, but my guess with all respect is no, I am not either.

Pick the idea that you feel most connected too and that has opportunity there and focus and shelve the others (for now). If it doesn't work out go back and reevaluate, that would be my advice.

leowoo91
I wouldn't call you had things wrong, I can remind you it's just really difficult to get out of this (as I'm in your past situation). Things holding me back are fear of missing out, daydreaming and believing in created brand value. I certainly agree "focus" is underrated. It's ugly and hard to shift, but I understand that's the hard work. Maybe already lost quite a time too, I should start pushing it to that direction. Thank you for sharing your experience.