CEO @ Pavilion | Co-Host of Topline Podcast | Join Top GTM Execs at Pavilion's GTM2024 | October 14-16 2024 | Austin, TX | Get Your Tickets Now
In a world of constrained capital, companies can't do everything nor be everything to all people. That's a VERY HARD lesson for executives to learn when they're scaling. We need to maintain our strategic focus. We need to choose a small number of things and be great at them. One of the great fallacies I've seen from executives and companies is the idea that to grow they need to start doing something differently than the thing they're currently doing. They need to offer more experiences, more products, etc. In fact, one of the critical mistakes I see companies make as they're scaling is looking to go multi-product or multi-geography too early. They open an office in Europe before they've exploited the office in the US. They open an office in APAC when they can't even get someone on the phone. At this stage, it's important to stay focused and learn to say no. Companies assume that it's easy to do small things. It's easy to build a product and just say... "It's just going to run in the background. We're not going to invest a lot in it." But any product, any source of revenue, any person in charge of that source of revenue becomes like a snowball rolling down a hill. They become a center of gravity. Every new department wants more resources. Every time you charge somebody money, that money can develop into an amount of money that is just big enough that you can't afford to lose it, but not big enough that it can become the main driver of your growth. And all of those resources, all of those priorities, sap your strategic focus. They take you away from the ONE BIG THING that you can do. And that's because most people underestimate the power of doing 2-3 things incredibly well, as opposed to doing 50 things mediocrely. That's why I constantly try to encourage companies to narrow their focus. That's what we're trying to do at Pavilion every day. We're trying to narrow the member journey, narrow the set of experiences we offer, but make those experiences better and better as opposed to trying to do more things and not be great at them. That's a mistake we've made before. And not one we will make again.
Constrained capital is a falsehood. In 2014 there was $11 trillion dollars in the money supply. In 2024, just 10 years later, there is $20 trillion dollars in the money supply. We are flush with capital.
Sam Jacobs - When building companies I’ve found that “what you don’t say no too, will kill you” - focus is the key to success. Secondly, “if you can’t make it repeatable and scalable in the US, don’t expand overseas” - if the team does not fully understand the ICP, the GTM process and cannot make it repeatable in North America, then hold off on expanding overseas or even into a channel. “If you can’t make it repeatable internally, you can’t do it externally”
This is amazing wisdom. Thank you Sam. I do not feel like I am cracking up. I have seen the over-expansion of a company into multiple products and regions that often did not lead to success. It is not pretty to watch, especially over and over again. I am not sure why that pattern keeps repeating. It could be because intuitively, more products should equal more sales. 1+1 = 2, right? It is easy math. In reality, more products create more quality problems, unclear positioning, and strained resources trying to maintain, sell, and service all these products.
Katie Berg
2w
Easy to say "we'll just invest a little" and not realize the impact that small pull of focus has on your ability to execute well on core priorities. Especially when you start stacking a few of those small things. All of a sudden you're only operating at 80% on the priorities that matter most. This goes for company gtm as much as it does department - specific priorities.... Very relevant as we're locking in our Q3 objectives rn 🙏.
It's a tough call every time and something that we've been very intentional at Unveiled: Bridging The Gap to Sponsorship . In our mission to enable equitable access by breaking the cycle of being over-mentored and under-sponsored, it has been difficult but necessary to remain focused on the area of career advancement that is a gap in the market. In our interactions, we get so many requests for broader help and we really want to help but we know that it is important to stay focused on sponsorship so that we can truly address it, especially when we are making a tangible difference.
Chris Kaempf
1w
This hits home. Its the 'shiny object syndrome' which can be a killer for scaling companies. When you have more capital, more people, more capabilities, it becomes seductive to meddle in all kinds of things that have very little to do with creating a viable long-term business. Focus is the top competitive advantage in a world full of noise and distractions.
I completely agree. Staying focused is key to growth. I've seen many startups fail because they try to do too much, too soon. It's tempting to expand products or enter new markets, but it often spreads resources too thin. Like Jim Collins says, it's about getting the right things done well. A startup's success often lies in doing a few things exceptionally rather than doing many things mediocrely. Narrowing focus not only optimizes resource allocation but also strengthens your core. When you master your main thing, everything else can follow in due time. Let's make every effort to excel in a few areas before we stretch ourselves thin. Great insights!
Often, I think it comes down to boredom for founders. Staying focused on doing and improving the same things day after day can be boring. And many founders are "ideas people".
The Unstacked Startups community just released a great newsletter/blog about how CEOs aren’t — or shouldn’t be — superheroes: https://foundermail.substack.com/p/foundermail-9th-edition-startup-ceos
CEO @ VEN | LinkedIn Top Sales Voice | RevOps
2wLove it. VCs can make this especially hard - they will often push companies to denature themselves in order to achieve unrealistic growth. The truly great executives will first know how to focus, then also know how to manage the internal pressure generated from the "people at the table".