Nothing Wrong With More Options

A few years ago I pitched a VC in Menlo Park. Their second-to-last question: "You're working on two companies at the same time. How does that work? Aren't you unfocused?"

I explained one was an experiment while I spent most of my time on SimpleDirect. They passed.

I could have taken ANC off my profile. I didn't.

Other pitches, same question came up. Podcast appearances, same thing. "How do you stay focused?"

The assumption behind the question: focus is good, optionality is bad. One thing, all in, that's how you win.

That assumption used to be correct. It isn't anymore.

Why "Focus" Made Sense Before

Building something used to be slow and expensive. Shipping a product took months. Hiring was hard. Capital was required. Attention was the bottleneck.

In that world, splitting your focus was genuinely costly. If you weren't all-in, you'd get outcompeted by someone who was.

The advice was right for its time.

Why Optionality Makes Sense Now

What you build today can be disrupted much easier than before.

The thing you're "focused" on might be worthless in 18 months. A new model drops. A competitor builds your product in a weekend. The market shifts. What felt like discipline turns out to be a trap.

In this environment, having nothing else isn't focus. It's fragility.

Optionality is a hedge. Not scattered effort—cheap experiments with clear stop conditions. Multiple bets running means if one dies, you're not starting from zero.

This Isn't New

Look at 37 Signals. Basecamp made them money for 20+ years.

But they keep shipping new products that don't directly relate to Basecamp. HEY. ONCE. Different customer segments, different bets.

Is that distraction? Or is that smart positioning for a world that keeps changing?

Each product was an option, not a dependency. Basecamp funded the experiments. They didn't bet the company on each new thing. If something didn't work, they could kill it and move on.

What This Looks Like For Me

Before I started my first company, I tried a lot of things.

E-commerce - didn't like it, moved on. Amazon FBA - sold it. Quant trading - lost money, learned finance wasn't for me.

It was through these experiments that I found what actually interests me.

Same thing now. I started creating content five months ago. I didn't share much online before that.

The experiment had a simple test: if no one engages after three months, I stop. Five months in, people keep reading. So I keep writing.

Building what some people call a "YC competitor" - although I don't want that scale - is a new experiment.

Buying other businesses is new. These are options I'm exploring, each with its own kill criteria.

Some won't work. That's fine. The point isn't to collect projects. It's to discover where commitment actually makes sense.

The Point

"Stay focused" is advice from a slower era.

When building is cheap and fast, and when what you build can die overnight, the real risk isn't distraction. The real risk is having all your eggs in something that stops working.

The people who tell you to focus on one thing are giving you advice from a world that moved slower. In this one, the focused founder with nothing else is one bad quarter away from starting over.

Run experiments. Keep options. Kill the ones that don't work. Double down when the signal is clear.

That's not lack of focus. That's understanding what the game actually is.