Focus, Focus and Then Focus Some More
I will keep on saying this until my mouth gets dry and you want to shut me up. If you want to have a chance at succeeding then you need to focus.
I spent this weekend working with teams at STARTup Live Athens, mentoring them and advising them on branding. I kept saying one thing over and over and over, “You need to focus!”. Some of them listened. Some that I spoke to but didn’t force them to do it, didn’t. The latter had some really good ideas that were on the right track to be focused and target a niche, but they got confused and thought that in order to scale they had to sell their product to everyone. To them, that was the answer to a “global” market and a bigger user-base.
What was the result? Pure dilution of what they stood for and no way to enter a market. Ideas that stood for something and tools that worked for someone, became huge swiss army knives that no-one would want to buy.
What got them there was confusion of how brands became what they are today. Usually when we look at a successful brand we don’t look at what got them to where they are, but what they are doing now. So if Facebook is for everyone, why shouldn’t we? The reality is that Facebook didn’t start there, it started as a network for Harvard students. Google didn’t start by offering all the tools it does today. It started as a search engine and to people’s minds it still stands as the place you go to find out stuff on the net.
If you want to have at least a chance to success, then do me a favour and focus. You don’t have to completely forget your expansion dreams, you’ll need those later. To start though you will need to be very focused and have a very specific market, otherwise you will burn out and fail.
