How to Kill Start-up Distractions
andygcook.comEr, Ev Williams was probably not the best example to use for "it's better to focus on one thing." Would the author have told Ev to focus on Odeo rather than work on that crazy, silly side project called Twitter? Perhaps Billy Chasen shouldn't have been "distracted" by Turntable.fm?
The article is essentially one big tautology: don't be distracted by distractions! Well, the problem is no one knows what's a distraction and what's the next Twitter. That's the skill that matters - not ignoring "distractions" altogether.
It's perhaps important to remember that Clay Christensen remarked that nearly all disruptive innovations look like toys at first.
Thanks for the comment and you make a good point. I guess what my main point was that you should pick one thing to focus on once you know what the optimal thing to focus on is.
Imagine the Odeo team split their efforts between Twitter and their first idea? I doubt Twitter would have became the site it is today if that happened.
Well, by your own logic, they would have become perhaps an even better site, right? That they were less "distracted" by the sub-optimal Odeo?
No one could ever disagree with the assertion that you shouldn't devote time to sub-optimal outcomes - it's strictly irrational. "Distractions" arise not from founders making irrational decisions, they come from misjudgements about the expected future value of these "distractions." I'm not sure the solution is to ignore altogether things which have uncertain future value (which I believe is what you're proposing?) because our judgement about these issues is often so wrong.
"Hell yeah or no" and the like make for great rhetoric and catchy blog posts, but they assume our off-the-cuff intuition on such matters is correct. In my experience, it usually isn't.
The author writes: Usually side projects help you learn something new that you can incorporate back into your start-up.
How true is this! I'm on the side learning Django (because I want to use its admin feature to do a lot of CRUD) and on another side stint I'm dabbling in MongoDB, which also can come in very handy for my main projects.
This article is a (well written) startup distraction.