Above is one of my favorite scenes from Wonder Boys (2000), about a writing professor who can’t seem to finish his new book because he keeps writing so many different parts. Now, at over 2,000 pages long, he sees no end in sight. I see this problem in the world of startups quite a bit. Growing startups see someone else doing something that is gaining traction, and then they add that use case to their company as well. Instead of sticking with the earlier choice of their business’s direction, they now try to remove that direction and accommodate more choices. Need I remind you of every company launching their own daily deals arm, or Facebook copying every social startup ever.

For growing companies, it’s a very common feeling in a business to always be jealous of what another business has and neglect all the things your business has going for it that the other one does not. But it is still wrong. You made a choice, and it looks like it’s working. Don’t undo those choices you made and ruin your growth. For companies with some growth, the lure of an attractive market segment can be overwhelming at times, but choosing to focus has more advantages. The first is that you develop a concrete brand for your customers. They know what you stand for, and what you are trying to achieve. What the risk of expanding too early? For growing companies, the main one is alienating your core customers. Let’s say you operate a luxury good, and to expand your market potential you offer a lower cost offering. What your brand used to stand for (exclusiveness, personal service) changes as the market is expanded. Those core customers may no longer identify with your company of your other customers and may now seek alternatives. What also happens is all that thought and development time that went into the expansion did not go into your core business.

I would argue you should choose to focus on one use case for one customer segment for as long as humanly possible as a growing company. That runway ends when you anticipate either a technology shift away from your use case (for Dropbox, that would be something like less reliance on files due to cloud services in the future), you are running out of ways to add value to your core segment’s core use case, or your use case stops growing for that segment (note: this is different from the game theoretical or innovator’s dilemma problems of more established companies where action should be taken quicker, but isn’t). I think a lot of startups fall into the trap of “this isn’t a large enough market”, as if acting like venture capitalists responding to their pitch. First off, market size only matters if you capture a meaningful piece of a market, so you should focus on capturing a meaningful piece first. That will also give you a much better understanding of how big the market could be. Second, you are most likely not a VC. You don’t need a home run to be successful. VC’s do, because most of their other investments will fail.

To wrap up, starting a business a is a choice, and you should make sure the product of your business reflects strong choices as well. You need to give that product a chance to show you made the right choices, and if you did, don’t second guess your direction because another business has made some good choices as well.