Start-ups are hard, but there are a few things that you can do to make your life simpler and give your start-up a better chance of success.
These are lessons I’ve picked up along the way and now live by to simplify my life and optimize the amount of time I have to work on my company.
Side Start-ups are Poison
If you are a start-up founder, you should not have any other companies you work on. Do not start hacking on a new start-up idea. Do not get involved with anyone else’s companies. Do not even start thinking about other ideas unless you are ready to permanently throw in the towel on your current start-up.
Start-ups take a tremendous amount of energy and time to succeed, and by splitting your resources between multiple start-ups, you’re guaranteed to have a lot of of unsuccessful and half baked companies.
This doesn’t just happen to “bad” entrepreneurs. Lack of focus happens to almost every founder.
“After my first company died, I did an inventory of the projects I had worked on in the last year. There were something like 30 projects that I had started on and not finished. My total weakness was focusing on things.”
- Ev Williams, cofounder – Twitter
If you are tempted to start something new, here’s a good test. Keep track of where your mind is drifting to on weekends, in the shower, and when you sleep. If you are not thinking about your current start-up constantly, then it’s time to move on. Most start-up founders do not suffer from a lack of amazing ideas, they suffer from a lack of focus. If you stay focused, you’ll be unstoppable.
Also, I used the term side start-up above deliberately and I am totally fine with founders having side projects. In my opinion, a side project is something you work on in your spare time to hone your skills, learn and have fun. You should have no responsibilities to customers, employees, or investors on a side project, which is what makes it different from a side start-up.
Usually side projects help you learn something new that you can incorporate back into your start-up.This blog is a side project of mine that I use to improve my writing skills, help others, and archive my ideas. If I decided to close down shop tomorrow because it was making me stressed, I wouldn’t be letting anyone down.
Hell Yeah, or No
It took me too long to realize that my time is my most valuable asset. My start-up is all consuming, so when I agree to do things for other people on top of my already busy lifestyle, that is taking away from my leisure time. When I do not have leisure time, I do not think clearly and make poor decisions, thus hurting my company.
Derek Sivers introduced me to the concept of “Hell Yeah, or No” in his book Anything you Want (highly recommended). The basic idea is that if you aren’t thinking, “Hell yeah I want to have a meeting with you!”, then you shouldn’t take the meeting with the person who asks.
This rule has not steered me wrong yet, and has gotten me out of countless meetings and distractions that I would have regretted doing later on.
Let Your Customers Captain the Ship
There’s no better way to stay focused than to talk to your customers. Talking to your customers is never a waste of time. Your job as a start-up founder is to build an amazing product and sell it. By talking to your customers, your biggest issues and main priorities will automatically bubble to the surface, keeping you focused and on track.
Respect the Headphones
As a start-up founder, you have the opportunity to set the culture of your company. Building a respectful workplace free of avoidable interruptions is very important. Teach your employees that when someone has headphones on, you should avoid interrupting him at all costs. Being in a state of flow is when you are most productive (and scientifically proven to be happiest).
This concept was referenced in the Social Network as being “wired in,” and I 100% agree with it. Even if it’s inconvenient at first and kind of socially awkward, just try it out and you’ll quickly see gains in productivity across your entire company.
Use Chat
My cofounder and I communicate through chat during the workday whenever possible. When we had interns this summer, we asked them all to use chat and not interrupt us and each other. Compare the two scenarios below:
| Talking | Chat |
| Bill: Hey Ted: (ignores because headphones are on) Bill: (wheels over, hits on arm) Ted: What? Bill: Do you think the sign up button should be green or red? Ted: Red because…(2 minute explanation) Bill: Ok – thanks (wheels back) |
Bill: What color do you think I should make the sign up button? Ted: red – http://bit.ly/oh4JPM |
The talking scenario could take a total of 10-15 minutes for Bill to focus back on his work. The chat scenario takes 30 seconds total to finish, and because the interruption was shorter, getting focused again will not take as long.
Work Odd Hours
If all else fails, you can always try working early in the morning or late at night. These are times when the Internets are slowed down and there will be less tweets and post on HackerNews to read and be distracted. You’ll also be free of phone calls, text messages, and people wanting to bother you.
Start-ups are about moving as fast as possible. If you avoid distractions that slow you done,
you’ll greatly increase your chances of survival.
Do you have any tips or stories about how you killed distractions from your life? Share in the comments below.
Great post. Thank you for sharing your experience.
Indeed, I disagree on “Use Chat” section. Chat is a major concern for my startup.
Most of the people use Chat for low value topics. Instead of solving problems themself, they ask by chat around and interrupt again and again other. From my stand point, it is the first source of interruption and lower productivity. Against what you write, from my stand point, it is much more efficient to talk than to chat. It is like a network, the bandwidth is much wider when you talk, it is just that simple.
In retrospect – I think it depends on the situation and your company’s culture. Using chat does not mean giving each employee free reign to interrupt each other. You wouldn’t walk across the office to another employees desk to ask a question if it wasn’t important. If you ingrain the same mentality into your organization, chat can make you much more efficient because you don’t have to take off your headphones and use proper social cues like eye contact, voice inflection, and others.
These are all key fundamentals in building a successful business. Appreciate your insight!
Good read. Couldn’t disagree more. But good read
Great tips. I find my biggest issue is splitting my focus. I’m running 4 different start-ups right now, and I’m at that point where I’m all cloudy on what I should work on.
The issue is not know which one of these start ups is the winner, the one I should be pouring my energy into. Do you have any idea on identifying the right one to work on?
Which one would you work on if you won the lottery tomorrow?
Does any one of the four projects really stand out in your mind as your top-level idea? Do you think about one more in the shower, on weekends, and while you sleep?
It’s hard to know which start-up is the winner, but IMO, unless you choose one none of them will be the winner. Ideas are generally not what makes a start-up valuable, and it’s all about execution.
If you can choose the one you’re most excited about, you’re energy and ability to execute will make it into the natural winner.
work when nobody else is in the office.
my biggest distraction is reading good posts like yours…
Without doubt, time is our most valuable asset. Focus is critical. While we’ve never lost sight in developing the Meshin app, but we’ve also taken several opportunities to obtain the user and consumer feedback. Therefore, some of our best distractions have come from people outside our offices. Great post, Andy!
damn its like you can read minds, i am mostly ‘wired in’ and pull all nighters. others dont apply to me because i am a one man army
HA!
Great insight. As a founder of a few startups (one exit. one fail. one strong.), I both agree and disagree with some of the points on this post.
Here’s where I agree:
1.) the headphones – the bigger they are, the louder they shout, “Don’t Bother Me;”
2.) using chat – there’s a time and place for everything and chat is no different;
3.) working odd hours – I find 2-3 am to be a personal window of optimal efficiency
Here’s where I disagree:
4.) Hell yeah or No – If you’ve never met the person, how would you know? I’ll have coffee with anyone, just to hear their story and perspective on life.
5). Let Your Customers Captain the Ship – I’m partial to the “listen to your customers with a grain of salt” kind of mentality. Although probably more helpful than anyone else offering you advice, if you let customers steer the ship, you and your crew are bound to end up in troubled waters. You’re the captain. Wear the fucking hat. Steer the fucking ship (with eyes and ears wide open).
6.) Side Startups are Poison – I believe one can pursue multiple “ideas” at once without failing as long as those ideas are branded well and revenue from one helps to build revenue from two and so-on and so-forth. We see examples of this all the time in internet startups that have the word “Labs” affixed to their names, which pump out different products and/or apps (sometimes completely unrelated to one another), that could be individual companies in and of themselves (ie: Milk, 37 Signals, Grasshopper, etc). Richard Branson too, is a pyramid of success in starting, building and running multiple businesses at once. Shit, there’s that branding point again.
Anyone know a good branding specialist? No, seriously. I need one.
This really was inspiring, I appreciate it and it was very timely. We were starting to consider other project opportunities on the side while we wrapped up our initial startup. This will put a stop to that for sure. Thanks!
Thanks for the comment, Joshua. We had to make some tough decisions on our start-up as well. We ended up pivoting away from the model we spent years on a simpler and more scalable version. Things have been much better since.
For a good read on the subject – Read Ev Williams interview from Founders at Work. Blogger was initially just a feature of their whole system.
Great post… my one exception to the “hell yeah or no” – I wouldn’t cut off all access to the serendipitous meeting/conversation. There are people out there that will be able to help in ways that are not apparent. Some have been a HUGE help to me that I met without an agenda or purpose in mind. They are now friends, and they have connected me to some very valuable resources. If I had thought too much about whether to take the meeting originally, I might not have. I agree that “No” should be a well-used vocab word, but don’t be absolute.
I use Hell Yeah or No more as a guideline in life and I do make exceptions. It’s basically just a way for me to think quickly to myself if I want to actually take a meeting or not, and give myself an excuse to say No if I think I shouldn’t.
Interruptions are interruptions whether phone, chat or in person. The most disruptive one is whichever one you are not allowed to turn off. I can silence the phone ringer and lock the door. (There is a locking door on each office right, if not you don’t take developer productivity seriously.) Hopefully I can also disable the chat as well.
Whatever the interruption is, thinking about the buy flow and what color the button will be will 100% definitely break my flow and take 30 minutes to regain. It doesn’t matter that it is a quick insignificant question. Wait it does matter, because breaking flow and blowing the $100 labor cost of a 30 minute interruption to have an answer on button color that will be ignored after all 15 people in the department are interrupted to take an impromptu survey is insane. Fire the guy who is interrupting people to ask about button color. If he needs other people’s feedback, bring it up during a break, during lunch, during a meeting, on a survey on the company’s development wiki, or send an email that can be answered at leisure. But do not interrupt my work.
Scott – I really like your enthusiasm about not being interrupted, and I admit my example was a bit over simplified. I would be pretty annoyed too if someone interrupted me with an answer that could easily be found online. My point was to think about how long unnecessary interruptions from coworkers can really take when you factor in lost productivity from the loss of concentration. I agree with you that interruptions should be avoided at all costs.
On the other hand, I would make a case for collaborative group think during allotted times, and then having dedicated hack time that is free of interruptions. That way you get flow of ideas and shared creativity along with productivity. Most questions do not need an immediate answer and can wait to the appropriate times you’ve mentioned.
Yeah — it’s easy to recognize the winner: the one with the best team. If you are the team, then the answer is obvious again: the winner will be the one you focus on.