2 builders who never spoke to each other

Go all in on the second bet or barely start it

A middling investment in a side product is the worst of the options, costing enough to hurt the main business without being enough to beat anyone. Where the fear driving diversification is that the main product stalls, more work on the main product is the cheaper insurance.

The method

1. 01

   On a side product, go either all-in or barely in; a middling investment is the worst option because it costs enough to matter without being enough to outwork your competitors.

2. 02

   If you are afraid your main product will fail, the cheapest insurance is more work on that product rather than a backup product.

3. 03

   A niche B2B tool is a bad fit for a few spare hours a week, because design, backend and promotion all compete for the same time and promotion loses.

What it returned

• 327

  Scriv consumed 327 hours and about 26% of Zue's year, earned roughly $900 of revenue and finished about $2,000 in the red after OpenAI, hosting and help.

• Zue's original diversification impulse was fear of Pegasus stalling; he reframed it as preventing the failure instead of hedging it.

• The founder had only a handful of hours a week and says he should have outsourced parts of it to freelancers to protect his own focus.

Sources

• Solopreneurship: Year 7Cory Zue · coryzue.com · Scriv · 2023-12-22
• Narrowing FocusCory Zue · coryzue.com · Narrowing Focus · 2024-01-24
• ABBY: Here’s What Andy Has Learned from an A/B Test ToolAndy Goldschmidt · failory.com · If you had to start over, what would you do differently? · undated