When I discovered that being a founder of two companies at once was not just something that I dreamt up, but actually a real movement with a name – parallel entrepreneurship – I was excited. One of the hardest parts of my entrepreneurial journey thus far has been having the time in business school to think about cool ideas for ways to solve problems, but having to commit to only one idea.
Throughout the first year of my MBA program, I focused on one idea the whole time, an app for remixable short-form educational videos. My team and I did a ton of work, completed a business plan, and by the end of it, we had a solid foundation for moving forward to create an app. And then summer came, and I read examples of these parallel entrepreneurs, and I wanted to explore a new, exciting concept. After all, you would never apply to just one job, why put all of my eggs in just one entrepreneurial basket?
The new shiny object of my affection was an idea to host and facilitate improv games online, something that seemed like a no-brainer during a global pandemic where everyone was stuck inside looking for new hobbies. I built the website landing page, I created the Figma designs, and I advertised on Facebook to see if I could get people to sign up for a beta before I even had an engineer to build it!
After several months over the summer of all this work, however, I started to ask if taking on a second project was something I should do. I talked to a few friends and mentors… and they generally had the same advice; You shouldn’t be the founder of two new projects at once if:
- Time: You find that one project takes time away from the other such that you don’t have enough time to give one of your projects its due attention.
- Team: You don’t have a team to support you such that you can focus solely on your strengths for both projects, making your time spent on each as efficient as possible.
- Tenure: You’ve never started a business before and have to learn how to start and run one!
My key takeaway from all of this is that starting one successful business is challenge enough as it is, and as a new founder, that challenge is even more difficult. As much as it might be a blow to pride to admit that you can’t fully commit to two ideas at once, that doesn’t mean you can’t keep your second project for another day. Ultimately I believe you’ll be doing yourself a favor in both ventures to give full focus to one at a time.
For me, while I may be disappointed not to pursue my improv idea right away, I know that if I see an improv app pop up, I’ll be the first on the beta test list. And if not, look out world, it will happen one day!