Specialization

I would attribute half of my struggles and disappointments in my startup journey to just one factor: “Doing too many things.”

This may seem weird – aren’t you supposed to do a lot of things in a startup?

No, no, no.

Don’t do that, please. And this applies to all of us, not just entrepreneurs.

In my last startup (ConceptOwl), we were teaching four subjects – Physics, Maths, Chemistry, and Biology. In retrospect, I should have just done Physics – I Ioved the subject and understood it intuitively like not many people do.

Hence, had I just taught Physics, I could have created not just videos, but games, experiments, simulations, live demos, DIY kits, quizzes, and a zillion other teaching tools that few other companies could have offered.

But what did I do? Very stupidly, we started teaching other subjects in which I neither had the depth nor a deep intuition. As a result, I could do none of those things I imagined.

Let me ask this: Should you sell one liter of pure milk, or add three liters of water and sell 4 liters of diluted milk?

The answer is pretty obvious – sell the best milk you can. Yet, I failed to understand this concept intuitively. I now do and I hope to remember it always.

This applies to not just startups but anything else in life – don’t take up too much. Do less. Don’t overwhelm yourself.

But once you do take up something, do it like your life depends on it. Because it does.

– Rajan

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