Early stage companies need to be tightly focused. The more focus they have, the higher the likelihood of success. That is just the way it is.
Many medium-sized companies struggle with focus. Instead of finding a strong foundation on which they can build, they try to do more and more things. Often, disparate business get co-mingled together. Confusion and poor accountability rule the day. See my earlier posts on true P&L accountability if you want to see how important focus, accountability and P&L management is to me.
My investors have venture capital in their DNA. Narrowly-focused business plans are paramount to them. Part of their bias toward narrow focus is cemented from the notions in the two paragraphs above. Adding to their bias is that most of them are focused on the telecom sector. The very nature of their existence springs from the expectation that they will fund multiple telecom companies. This is obviously easier if each company has a tight business plan.
One of the appeals of Zayo was how tightly we defined our initial strategy. The company was named Zayo Bandwidth, because producing big chunks of bandwidth would be our only focus. Investors liked that. So did I. Focus. Good.
(Un)fortunately, Zayo Bandwidth didn’t last all that long.
(To be continued…)
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