{5} Focus & Stealth

Knowledge from Carlos Iborra and Dagobert Renouf

Chat #1: Carlos Iborra

Serial entrepreneur building @open_incubator at night.

Carlos Iborra:
You are going to start as a solopreneur. And you can only choose 2 of the following skills. The other one will be outsourced at some point.

- Sales
- Marketing
- Programming

Which ones do you choose for you and why?

Dane Lyons:
Programming has to be #1. Then if B2B, I'd go Sales. If B2C, I'd go Marketing.

Carlos Iborra:
I like target-based prioritization. Great insight!

Dane Lyons:
Thanks. It's a nice thought experiment that helps people realize that even though they are going solo, it's still necessary to prioritize and focus.

Carlos Iborra:
💯

Dane Lyons:
What if you also had to pick one disadvantage from this list?

- Your target market is small.
- Your solution is very unpopular with 25% of the population because of a negative social stigma.
- You are forced to build in stealth and can't validate your idea before the launch.

Carlos Iborra:
"All in" to small target market. The more niche... The better!

Dane Lyons:
Me too. You can turn the first 2 "disadvantages" into advantages. And while it's tempting to go for the hater-driven free marketing, that would eventually be a drain.

So I'd prefer to quietly grow within a small market. As long as you stay lean, small markets are great.

Conclusion:
Being a solopreneur doesn’t mean you have to do everything a larger company does. Doing a bunch of things half-assed isn’t how you build a great product. You’ve got to pick your battles and make the hard choice to sacrifice your attention in some areas to invest it in what really matters.

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Chat #2: Dagobert Renouf

Left a $100K dev job to bootstrap a startup with my wife. 💃🕺 Then took it from $300 to $3,000/month, only with Twitter.

Dagobert Renouf:
Risk of having copycats if you talk about your startup idea < risk of having 0 customers if you don't.

Dane Lyons:
I'll bet 50% of people have good old-fashioned paranoia and can't be convinced that it's good to talk about their ideas publicly.

The majority of the rest need convincing. I like this argument. It's concise and drives home the value of building in public.

Dagobert Renouf:
Thanks dane. I used to be in the stealth camp, until I realized nobody gave a 💩 about my ideas 😂

Dane Lyons:
That is true. In the early days, your ideas will be met with a lot of quiet skepticism and some open skepticism.

It's only when you have the validation of traction that people start thinking it's a good idea. And at that point, you already have a head start.

Conclusion:
People worry about their ideas being stolen. It’s human nature. But building in isolation comes with a lot of disadvantages. Your vision has to be rock solid. If you make any wrong turns along the way, it becomes harder and harder to backtrack.

It’s a risk being open with your ideas. But the advantage of being able to course correct as you build is worth it.

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