I don't understand this spray and pray approach to business - I'm not businessman so I may be talking out my ass - but I would have thought business is like a long term relationship. May as well have a spreadsheet of 50 failed marriages. If you aren't in it for the long haul what are you doing?
What he called "business" others (myself included) would call "side projects" until one of such projects would evolve into "business".
You have to start somewhere and try things out to find a business bringing revenue. And yes, it is "spray and pray" in essence. And I see nothing wrong with it. (probably because I tried to launch a similar number if not more of such "businesses"/projects and continue doing so)
Think of it more like dating--it's normal to have 50 "failed" dates before you tie the knot. You don't commit until you find a great match. In business, this means the market actually cares about what you're making.
Predicting which software businesses will find this fit is extremely hard. VCs know this, and diversify their investments among many founders (knowing one big payday can make up for 10-100 failures).
Looks like this founder diversified by himself and launched small things faster. And eventually found something worth "marrying".
> Given any talented team, they an take any concept and evolve it to fit the market.
I’ve come to view great teams as “necessary but not sufficient”. That is: without a great team you will fail, but even with one you still need to build something a market will pay for.
If an objectively great team was all you needed, venture investors wouldn’t be satisfied with the dismal likelihood of getting returns on startup money (compared to other forms of investing).
Re: giving concepts time—fair point, but I think you also have to consider your own time as an investment. Sure a failing project could work with 2y more effort, but is it worth two years of your life to find out if it hasn’t already worked? What if you spent that time on giving another idea a chance?
There are very very few people who did it on their first run, it's like winning the lottery.
Bach wrote almost a piece every day. For most of his life. Most of it will never be played or heard.
The thing that's most common among the 'greats' is how prolific they were. They just kept doing. Just watching Jim Henson. Bio - he was doing Kermite for like 20 years before it remotely caught on. I worked at BlackBerry - the company started in 1982, about 20 years before the BB wars born. The other CEO started in 1992 about 10 years. So 30 man-years of combined CEO work before the BB came to be a product.
Business has a bit of luck and a bit of skill - as you learn more (for example, you learn that your Amazon affiliate made you $0.50 at its peak), you may choose to throw the dice again with a bit more force. Formalise it as a new business, or pivot, or don't tell people about your experiments.
No one really knows a general "right" thing to do. Even someone who's found a right thing can't be much help if they just say what they did right. The best you can do is avoid doing the wrong things while probing around for a right thing. It's a way of thinking called inversion.
Try 100 things while avoiding common pitfalls. One of them will probably pan out.
In your scenario would one date around before committing to a marriage or would one just commit to the first interesting person that came along and hope for the best?
