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AnhHung made his point in his article Start-ups 2.0: one, or no one?

Seeing that his point is interesting, I want to bring this on a larger scale.

Take half step back and see

First thing first, not all efforts pay off.

• Facebook used to focus heavily on network and they dropped the Networks page.
• BlogRush does did one single thing with full focus and a good idea, but they didn’t make it.

Why? Because you never know till you try.

Experiments make way for innovation, and pave the path to success

“Innovation lesson: experiment a lot, fail often, and fail early.”

Some spread efforts too thin

Hung argues that some Vietnamese start-ups spread their efforts too thin by make and maintaining so many products: VCCorp, VON, Tinhvan

Just a quick note, while it’s true that VCCorp does have many products, they also have their focus: dantri the cashcow.

Here, from a business perspective, I think I can give some justifications why this approach might make sense.

Why it’s sensible

1. You never know till you try

Simple enough to understand from a Product Manager’s perspective.

2. Market segment

Take one example, VCCorp has 3 e-commerce products running simultaneously: muare, rongbay, enbac. A valid question can be raised: do they overlap one another?

My impression by looking at these 3 products is: muare might map to a market, rongbay might map to a store, enbac might map to a small plaza (ebay might map to a hypermarket by the way). What’s more, enbac differentiates itself from the rest as it’s B2C.

For one area, different customers from different market segments require different features and it’s sensible to satisfy this need.

3. Vietnam market is hard to predict

And while it’s hard to predict, why don’t shouldn’t we try?

In other words, it’s venture by nature.

How to tackle challenges

Obviously, while I point out that spreading the efforts might be sensible, it faces challenges.

Where there are challenges, they are solutions.

Technical

Development efforts can be cut off by using open-source systems. Quick and painlessful.

Resource management

If the company decides to maintain different products, they have to get best at shifting and cross-training their resources through multiple products.

Another thing is to reduce mid-level management overhead where appropriate.

Business model

Managing efforts for career planning

The lessons from managing efforts for several products can also be used for one’s career planning.

Whether to focus, or to experiment?

Most importantly, it is omnipresently advised that focus works best. Pick one thing, be good at it.

However, as one starts his/her career, experimenting through different fields is not a bad idea since it’s hard to know enough about the industry while at college.

Additionally, having different skill sets is becoming crucial in difficult times. If the sector one is most proficient with goes slow, s/he can choose to utilize other skills to go for other industries.

But all in all, eventually one has to needs to determine what to invest most efforts on.

Conclusion

Simply put, it might to be the best way to spread the efforts, but there are reasons why it’s sensible to do so at certain stages.

What do you think?

5 Responses to “You never know till you try”

1. Bảo says:

   January 13, 2009 at 8:16 pm

   Én Bạc seems like a C2C, I think
2. Ice says:

   January 16, 2009 at 2:31 pm

   Enbac has B2C core inside and C2C air.
   Confirmed.
3. Fresco 2.0 » Blog Archive » VCCorp: a mini-VC? says:

   January 21, 2009 at 9:28 pm

   [...] previous post on “Start-ups: One or No One?”, supported the idea that a start-up should “spread its efforts and pave ways for innovations & success”. I would say we should all look at what Google did a few days ago when it became a “serial [...]
4. Tai says:

   February 10, 2009 at 1:36 am

   What I meant by “you never know till you try”

   http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2009/01/communicating-with-code.html
5. Technology As Innovator » Blog Archive » We should take ambiances into accounts says:

   February 10, 2009 at 3:32 am

   [...] AnhHung and I had a discussion in our three blog posts on whether companies would want to pick a direction and fully focus or experiment with their ideas. [...]