Focus and Why Less is More

Posted by Joseph Ansanelli on Mar 27, 2011 in Startups | 3 comments

Besides questions about people, what’s often one of the most important execution questions for a startup?

What should we NOT do?

Focusing on one or just a few things is the proverbial strategy of “putting all your wood behind one arrow.”  Yet it is amazing how much pressure there is to do more.  Often investors will push to do more, you will feel competitive pressures to follow all the things your competitors do, and of course you have a long list of things that you’d like to do.

Yet the good thing is that focusing on doing one or a few things really well has proven time and time again to have amazing results.   What if I told you that a product that weighs 137 grams or less than 30 quarters, could generate $10 Billion in revenue? in one quarter?  That’s of course the iPhone.  And what’s even more amazing, in the fourth quarter of 2010 Apple generated almost $27 Billion in revenue from products that can easily fit on a startup’s conference room table.

Now, it’s easy to look at one of the biggest blockbusters and successful companies and say everyone should do that.  Yet when Steve Jobs returned to Apple, Apple’s annual revenues had been dramatically declining -- in 1995 $11 billion, in 1996 9 billion, 1997 7 billion -- and many had written the company off. It owes much of its turn around success to its effort to focus. (Disclosure: I worked at Apple from 1992-1996)

In a 1997 MacWorld speech, Steve Jobs outlined the key things on which the Company would focus:

1. Board of Directors
2. Focus on Relevance
3. Invest in Core Assets
4. Successful Partnerships
5. New Product Paradigm

Fast forward to 9:10 of the video to see Steve talk about this.

Of course, with any good strategy, people should come first and the strategy should come second and thus Apple’s focus on the board and team.  And yet points 2 and 3 are all about Focus. To enable its turn around Apple shored up its strengths and focused on creative professionals and education. It canceled lots of products to focus on few and made them great.  It invested in re-building it’s brand. In general Apple focused on its core (no pun intended…) before it did anything new and only then did it have a chance to do new things and to eventually become the most valuable technology company today.

But of course, you’re probably thinking,  ”Well that’s easy for Apple to do but we’re a startup. We have to go out and do lots of things to in order to become bigger and grow and become dominant!” Interestingly, if you look at almost any successful startup company, they got there by doing a few things, or even one thing, really well before moving on to do something new.

Facebook started out as a service just for Harvard, and then expanded to other Universities, before eventually opening up to everyone.

Google did great search.

Amazon sold books.

These were all unknown companies at some point.

Focusing on one or a small list of things that really matter and getting success there first is key in a startup because you have limited resources -- not enough people, not enough money, and definitely not enough time.  You have to get success in one place before moving on to tackle the next set up of things.  And there are lots of other examples from companies with which I have worked.

At Lookout (disclosure: I am an investor and Chairman of the Board), we developed mobile security software.  We started with Blackberry, Windows Mobile, and Android. About a year ago, we shifted our focus from Blackberry and Windows and put most of our effort behind Android.  And now we are the top mobile security app for Android, and one of the top ~25 applications for all of Android.  It was a tough decision to shift our focus away from the other platforms, but we had a small team and decided to put all our proverbial wood behind one arrow.  And it’s only now that we are talking about expanding internationally and looking at other platforms.

At ZangZing (disclosure: Co-founder), we’re building a new way for groups to share photos more simply and beautifully.  We’re starting by focusing on the web and making sure that is awesome before moving into mobile apps.  Some people say we should do it the other way around, but we think once you see what we’ve done on the web, you will understand why… And either way, we could have done web and mobile at the same time, but we have limited resources and decided to do one thing well first.

At Vontu (disclosure: Co-founder here too), we developed data loss prevention security software.  We decided to focus initially on helping companies with lots of customer data such as credit card numbers, social security numbers and other personal information.  And we focused on the US.  And only on the Fortune 1000.  And even within the Fortune 1000 only on a few key segments: financial services, retail, and insurance.  And as we had success, we then expanded and eventually had customers all across the Fortune 1000 and outside the US.  The revenue ramp was great -- half a million, 3 million, 13.5 million, almost $30 million, and on the path to $50 million when Symantec bought the company for $350 million.

In summary, in a startup, don’t give in to the temptation to do more because usually doing less results in more success, more quickly.

Anyway, i hoped you enjoyed the post.  A few others you might like about planning and execution are Can you Count? and If you don’t know where you’re going, well, you’re lost.

And let me know what you think.

And thanks to Kevin for his awesome focus photo.