Not Only Luck.
An essay by John Melonakos

Letting Go and Focusing on One Startup

One of the biggest defining moments for any entrepreneur is the moment of letting go and deciding to focus all time, energy, and resources on one startup. The common holdouts before letting go are:

  1. Day jobs paying the bills
  2. Schooling
  3. Other startup ideas which had been brainstormed and worked on in parallel

It is hard to finally take the complete plunge and focus entirely on one startup. You have to ignore opportunity costs. But there is great power in focus and total dedication to one startup idea.

What are your thoughts on letting go and focusing on one startup?

 

From the conversation

Comments preserved from the original post.

rahul garg

I don’t have startup experience, but do think “Decide on one thing, and do it” is a good principle in general. There are too many interesting projects I can do or things I can learn. One of my weaknesses has been the inability to make a commitment fast, and spend time over-analyzing available options, which I think is called “Analysis paralysis”.

As a very simple example, as a developer, sometimes deciding on which technology to learn or invest time can be an important decision. I wanted to learn a 3D API and had to choose between Direct3D and OpenGL. I unfortunately spent a lot of time deciding which one to learn. For example, I read a lot of blogs and opinions of respected 3D programmers or reading about industry trends etc. At one point I finally realized that I should just pick one and dive in, instead of wasting time on analysis and have been pretty happy since.

I learnt my lesson to not be stuck in the decision making stage forever. There are too many interesting things I want to do, but I also realize that as a human I have a finite lifetime so I won’t be able to do all of them. At some point, a decision has to be made about which project you want to commit to, and execution needs to happen.

Somewhat off-topic from your post, but just wanted to share.

melonakos

In reply to an earlier comment

Great comment Rahul! Thanks for sharing. Analysis paralysis does bite many people and keeps them from moving forward.