You Earn the Right to Grow: Commitment, Focus and Prioritization

A common issue I see for young people these days (or people in general) in the first few years of their career: complete lack of focus, taking short cuts, not willing to put in the time. Or something I’m still conflicted on: Seed stage founders who also want to do venture scouting or run a rolling fund/angel invest. I think it’s a different story if you are a founder of a Series B company which is somewhat established and has a leadership team in place. But at the seed stage you are still searching for product market fit. And intense focus is how you get there. 

This is a hard concept for generalists like me who are interested in everything. But one thing I did well after some missteps early in my career was that I stuck with things until I got half decent (or hopefully good). That usually took 2 years. First year, you are grinding and learning. Second year, you begin to see the results of the previous year’s work, good and bad. That is why I have an issue with people who jump around from company to company or role to role after less than a year. They don’t stick around long enough to learn and see the outcomes of the things they worked on. 

This is the same with startups. They find a channel or tactic that works but they get shiny object syndrome and they want to try something new. SO they divert their attention and resources to this new thing and the old tactic that was working so well stops working because of lack of focus. This is almost chronic in startup land. 

The lack of attention, shows lack of discipline. But maybe even more important, a lack of commitment. Fortunes are made with concentration, not diversification and hedging. 

It reminds me of a time in the latter part of my professional investing career, when I was exploring doing my own Venture fund. I met a HNW (High Net Worth) Australian who had sold his company for half a billion dollars. He liked my presentation, we had dinner and a lot of drinks together. Initially he said he was very interested in putting some major bucks in. But as we discussed next steps, when he found out I was not going to jump in until 9 months later, he told me directly that he would not invest anymore based on this. He said I wasn’t going to make it because I was not ALL IN. 

It totally stunned me at the moment and I had all these excuses. But he was 110% right. I really did not have the courage or conviction for this. I was just playing and doing what I thought I was supposed to do by Silicon Valley standards. It was a great wake up call that I actually ended up emailing and thanking him later for. (Separate Lesson is don’t be so thin skinned as its usually outsiders who tell you the truth versus those closest to you who fear offending you). 

The point I try to make here is that you have to be “All in” and get Step ONE done and executed well. Then you can move on to work on something else. This is the same regarding projects, startups and even big companies. This was one of the key issues I saw at almost every company I worked at: Alibris, Yahoo! & 500 Startups. All were organizations infamous for trying to do too many things at the same time with limited resources. We never got good or known for one thing. 

Some examples: Alibris did B2C, B2C, B2G all at the same time, definitely. Yahoo!’s infamous lack of focus issue was well stated in the Peanut Butter manifesto here: https://www.cnet.com/news/brad-garlinghouse-updates-yahoo-peanut-butter-manifesto/

For 500 Startups, the challenge and question: is it a Venture Capital fund, an Accelerator, a Corporate Innovation Agency? Focus & prioritization sounds so simple but it’s never easy. Very smart people run these organizations but it’s so very easy to get pulled into a new market or opportunity. And it’s also very hard to say NO to customers or when there is a lot of  money on the table. 

Yet as Napoleon famously said: “He who defends everything, defends nothing.”

This requires immense discipline and something I think most people and companies will continue to struggle with in our ever competitive world.