Light fires, add fuel. Grow.
For a startup with a small team, the most precious resource is the team’s focus. As PG says, it is important to choose the top idea in your mind, because it will get most of your attention. I was talking to a friend today who has a side project he built two years ago. He had kept it alive but hadn’t nurtured it. Now, it is suddenly beginning to get attention. Several people are using it regularly. He recently put in a feedback mechanism, and he has received a lot of it. The heightened user engagement has gotten his creative juices flowing again and he is rearing to make progress. He told me he planned to rewrite the whole project in ruby, which he has become far better at over the past two years. He wanted to ensure he could move as fast as possible, with a better tool. I told him to delay the ruby port, and instead work to identify what has caused the renewed attention amongst users. Then he needs to replicate it, so he gets more users. He needs to identify fire(s), light more, and add fuel. As a startup, once you have validated that your product has value, growth should be the top idea in your mind.
“raring” instead of “rearing”? Great post. Will come back to it again š
I am always curious about how some companies grow rapidly but don’t nurture their base structure and end-up in a bad place (friendster, RIM BBM network outage come to my mind) and how some companies grow while always keeping their fundamentals strong (google search!). I guess the initial decisions matter a lot.