Fantastic breakdown of why focus compounds while distraction dilutes. The line about envy masquerading as strategy stuck with me because I'veseen that exact pattern play out in early stage companies where reactiveness gets confused for agility. Depth over bredth isn't glamorous but it's the only path to durable leverage.
1996 - 98 I worked at a Yahoo partner company (Preview Travel). Among their competitors (Excite, Webcrawler, Altavista, Lycos, etc.) Yahoo appeared the most interested in spreading out the peanut butter on the internet. AOL (a mostly-closed ecosystem) was already capturing eyeballs at a rapid clip, and in late '98 Google began its march toward monopolizing much of what we use today. Google was boring until they weren't.
Fantastic breakdown of why focus compounds while distraction dilutes. The line about envy masquerading as strategy stuck with me because I'veseen that exact pattern play out in early stage companies where reactiveness gets confused for agility. Depth over bredth isn't glamorous but it's the only path to durable leverage.
Focus. Insanely.
Avoid death by a thousand paper cuts. Especially self-inflicted.
Excellent piece Brian and Brad’s observation was & remains sage.
Don
amen
1996 - 98 I worked at a Yahoo partner company (Preview Travel). Among their competitors (Excite, Webcrawler, Altavista, Lycos, etc.) Yahoo appeared the most interested in spreading out the peanut butter on the internet. AOL (a mostly-closed ecosystem) was already capturing eyeballs at a rapid clip, and in late '98 Google began its march toward monopolizing much of what we use today. Google was boring until they weren't.