In response to your point: What happens when one starts to take off? You'll either leave opportunity on the table or you'll ditch your other ones (screwing all of your other "partners").

This has been something I have been thinking about a lot lately, and is certainly a potential issue, but also certainly not as dramatic or black and white as you have stated.

Here is some background. Previously, I had two businesses, one with myself and one with a partner. My partner also had another business. When our joint business “took off” (two years in) I had just signed up for a two year graduate school program to take on the side (though for the other students it was their full time gig).

We talked about me not going to the program, but I ultimately did. And when that happened, nothing got dropped and I don’t think any opportunity was left on the table either. In fact, I believe my program helped contribute greatly to our success as I was able to bring in various ideas from the program. Again, I think this is a benefit of spreading risk and having multiple things floating around in your head all the time.

Yes, there were crazy hours for a while, but I was able to meet all my obligations quite well. And nothing really changed fundamentally when we “took off” except we were making a lot more money and having a lot more fun!

This time around, I expect to be in even a better position to manage a “take off,” which I hope happens, but I am not expecting such. After all, like you say, any traction is difficult.

In response to your point: …getting a startup to ANY traction is hard enough…you think you're that much more effective than other founders that you can pull it off part-time?

I agree that getting any traction is difficult, which is the primary reason I am trying to spread the risk through multiple projects. Entrepreneurs usually put all their eggs in one basket, to the extent that the average return on entrepreneurship ends up being less than the opportunity cost of getting a standard job. I simply don’t think this is necessary, especially in the realm of Internet startups.

Of course I am also interested in other alternatives to spreading the risk, e.g. entrepreneur collectives, equity swaps and the like. But I have yet to see anything where the numbers work out well. So I ended up with this approach (for now).

Anyway, having had some success and actively reflecting on it and others, I have come to believe that usually success can be traced to a making a few good decisions or coming up with a few good ideas and then executing those decisions and ideas exceptionally well. Coming up with those good few is the hard part, in my opinion.

In my experience, however, this risk distribution approach has yielded me those good decisions and ideas faster. Maybe it is letting things ruminate more instead of moving at 100mph all the time. Maybe it is just me. I don’t know. But the less time has not been an impediment to date, and I think it has actually helped move in the right direction more of the time. Like I said in the post, “Needless to say, I have to work smart and efficiently for this principle to even be executable.” I guess it wasn’t “needless to say.”

As for executing exceptionally well, that is where the other principles come in (see my other response).

In response to your point: Doesn't seem that eccentric except the first bullet point.

The eccentricity stems from the extreme adherence to the principles. Like I said in the post, “I think a lot of entrepreneurs follow these principles to some extent, at least some of the time. But I take their adherence to the extreme. And I think that is where the sustainable competitive advantage actually arises.” Some examples:

Do as much as possible, myself. Startups usually silo tasks functionally, even if all co-founders are somewhat exposed (via emails/meetings/etc.). Usually X is primarily responsible for sysadmin, Y for the "front-end", Z for "marketing" or whatever. Not so with me. I'm in everything 100%. I also am quite reluctant to outsource things that other startups usually outsource, and it has helped me in the past in countless ways (scale easily, get to optimal configurations quicker, generate innovative ideas faster, etc.).

Question everything, all the time. Startups usually move on when things are done, at least until the next “major revision.” For example, a team may do the “design” of this page or that, and then not touch it for quite a while. I consciously try to think about everything as much as possible, and I tweak little things (like individual words, a pixel here a pixel there) all the time. It is a much more rapidly iterative process.

Only trust data. Startups generally are not doing A/B testing and other experiments all the time. But they should. And I do so whenever I have the sample size to get meaningful results. And even if not, I try to change things up and get anecdotal evidence to point me the right direction. Again, I mean even down to little tweaks, like one word changes and their impact on various conversions. I think this is an essential part of moving to optimal solutions faster.

Don't seek funding unless there is a good reason for doing so. Startups generally take some money to pay for salaries and what not. Not me. It has to be a “good reason.”

I think people are assuming that he is working on a startup exactly like they are (the same equity structure, type of business, roles, etc.) The author really isn't very clear about what he contributes or how anything is structured. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt, although his second bullet point does make me nervous. He may have a performance-based equity arrangement...who knows? Some programmers are 10X as effective as others supposedly, right?

"You think you're that much more effective than other founders that you can pull it off part-time?"

Well, I do. I'm not the author, but I have a similar approach in regard to his first bullet point. I may have a different structure (I hire employees with equity more often than I work with 'cofounders', and I have a somewhat formal VC-ish corporate structure with outside investors for each project, but 95% of the software/internet related ideas we execute are mine, and I'm actively involved in every aspect of the companies.) I think the difference between our approach and that of most startups is related to this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Myth The need for 'monomaniacal' focus from every cofounder is largely a result of having limited resources...if you can't afford an attorney, you have to learn to do it yourself. If you can't afford a designer, you have to learn to do it well yourself. And so on. You have to be a Jack-of-All-Trades out of necessity.

But, once you've had a financial success or can line up backers based on your past experience, you can focus on marketing, innovation, and strategy. You work ON your business instead of IN your business, as the saying goes. I don't worry about cross-browser compatibility anymore. I have an expert for that. I don't worry about A/R, I have people for that. I don't worry about log analysis, and so on. I'm capable of doing those things and I know what to look for to monitor that things are running smoothly, but it is not a good use of my resources to actually do those things. There are people that are better than me at all of those things. I DO monitor the systems and deliverables of my coworkers, but I don't get lost in the nitty gritty details. I work on the things that I think matter the most for success. I occasionally do things I shouldn't (such as write production code) because I enjoy them, but I really wouldn't if I were optimizing everything. You'd be amazed at what you can accomplish when you aren't bogged down in minutiae. Once you have systems in place, you can really scale your expertise across a number of companies.

I think my employees, cofounders, and investors are happier with this structure than they would be otherwise...but I KNOW they are wealthier because of it.