Dharmesh Shah says his biggest mistake was running two startups simultaneously. The odds of success already low, they plummet further without singular focus. Teams feel abandoned when attention splits, and you can't build deep expertise or raise capital across two ventures at once.
Chapters
What's been my biggest mistake as an entrepreneur? Trying to do 2 startups at the same time. Here are some really good reasons why you should not try to do this. First one, startups are hard generally. Odds of success reasonably low. The odds go down dramatically if you're not focused on one of them. Thing number 2, when you start the second company, the first team is going to feel abandonment. Reason number 3 is that it's really hard to dig in and learn that domain and build the expertise, build the industry contacts. Reason number 4 is you're trying to figure out whether there's there there. You want to put everything you have into that one startup. Then In the event that it doesn't work out, you know that it wasn't because of a dilution of focus. Maybe the idea wasn't good. It can be any number of things, but at least it wasn't that you were trying to ride 2 horses at the same time. Reason number 5, if you ever decide to raise capital, I will say it is borderline impossible to do so if you're trying to lead 2 companies. So anyway, that's my mistake. Advice is one startup at a time. Be completely focused because startups are literally all-consuming.
