If you like to start companies, have resources, and have many ideas, it's tempting to not want to limit yourself to a single opportunity. Call it "parallel entrepreneurship" or the "studio model," the idea seems increasingly popular.

I’ve always been attracted to this notion and have tried it more than once. Lately, I'm valuing focus more and more. Curious from those doing it what they see as key—and, from others, if they think it might be a trap that keeps people from doing bigger things.

What we have done at betaworks is define focus around a vertical instead of around a single implementation or idea, or corporate entity. Focus is vital to what we do. I see this as a key difference between the studio model and an accelerator / incubator / startup school. The job of the later is to maximise throughput -- ie: the # companies they help create. Our job at betaworks is to build and invest in what we hope will be great things, within a vertical.

I believe for this model to work you have to create value at the studio level, and always have management on each individual company. Otherwise the temptation to dive too deep and take over an individual business will eventually lead you to abandon the studio and go to a singular focus.

From the studio perspective - I believe there are quite a few benefits that allow individual startups to grow faster within this ecosystem - increased focus on strategy and product, reduced time spent on operational overhead, financing, etc. Ability for the studio to attract higher quality talent vs an individual startup - ability to share high-quality and expensive tactical resources across a narrow set of businesses, etc.

And having a senior experienced team provide oversight on the businesses allows perspective of when to adjust concepts, recognize when things are or are not working, resource as needed. Frankly seeing how fast our companies work now within this structure makes me question why I would ever fund a company outside of this structure.

Mike, do all your projects have defined leaders/CEOs when they start?

Yes - if not a direct CEO, a product-minded CTO. We also have internal portfolio managers that look after different businesses.

Interesting. At betaworks projects have a lead, who is more often than not the lead engineer or product person.

Question? Is Evernote backing its self into the studio model? First the Skitch acquisition and then the launch of Clearly and Hello app: and then I saw the following comment from Libin: “We’re making the transition from an application to a platform for your memory ... Our goal is to make each of the individual applications very simple and beautiful. They each do something very straightforward and from there, it’s a gateway to the rest of the Evernote experience.” nyti.ms

Interesting post re Evernote: It's funny, in my experience, it takes so many years to build out the vision for one product of substantial size, it's hard to imagine a successful company expanding to multiple products.

But maybe that's just me.

Also: Google has seemingly gone the opposite way in recent years -- fewer products, more features.

I think this model puts into question the strength of the concept vs the strength of the team. We are betting we can guide both with strong oversight.

I think it's so hard to get just one thing that has real impact in the world that most awesome entrepreneurs will feel strong gravitational pull towards "the one that works". So it seems to me that it takes very unusual team to be (1) awesome, (2) low ego, (3) able to attract world class entrepreneurs and then let them go work on the interesting project.

Seems very possible, but only a few teams in the world likely to really make it work - unusual mix of characteristics.

Fred, you've wrote about this a few years ago: avc.com Any thoughts since then?

Ev. I was thinking today about your note re: Google. I think Google has taken the blue pill -- the integration of all of its products into a single seamless whole is been driven by business priorities not by users needs. Its the portal all over again. Hardware is a valid point of platform integration -- but think the web or more specifically the browser is not.

Although my own attempt at a parallel model did pretty well on an ROI basis (called MRLV, it spawned Yelp and Slide, in addition to a few failed or semi-failed ventures), when I shuttered it to focus on Slide full time, I was thrilled -- several things about running it made me downright miserable, and I was glad to be rid of them. And yet, I am back for more -- the new one, HVF, is essentially an attempt to re-imagine this model, taking out the parts I loathed, and amping up the ones I loved.

Max: Would love to hear more about what you loathed and how you're tweaking it if you care to share.

When I was doing Obvious 1.0 (which, granted, never really got off the ground) and decided to focus on Twitter, I was similarly thrilled. My brain craves focus.

I think there are people that add absurdly high amount of value in high-energy, low-frequency episodes. With these, the high cost of context-switching, and the likely organizational flux are still, on the margin, worth the new insights and ideas. Creating an environment for multiple projects to move forward very rapidly and with great determination while leveraging such people is a key to success for parallel developments. But having one person running more than one project is key to failure.

Ev: before do that, it's worth stating that I have come to believe that these multi-project approaches are very deeply personal undertakings, reflective of the entrepreneur's personality, and can scarcely be codified and replicated. Therefore, my attempt to expand on this below should be seen as a very personal version of the answer, not more.

Max: Fair enough. I agree.

I've seen people who can context switch very easily and who's brains work differently than mine. Mike and John, are you guys like that?

I agree, I thrive in high frequency, high intensity, context switching environments. It is one of my favorite things about distressed situations like MYS, where you are dealing with multiple problems and opportunities in parallel. The people that work with me at the Sci TopCo level function in the same method. The people who I have tried to work with that do not function that way, don't work with me well.

I too love the studio like environment that Max describes. I tried to do it with my first web company back in 1995, and we are doing it again at betaworks. It is about how your brain works, how you work and how you define focus. It isn't for everyone. But my belief is that as the web becomes more platform interdependent this model will become more prevalent. At some level I see the loosely coupled design of the studio model as the most efficient mirror to the platform we are all building on.

And note there is a fork in the road that I think you need to be clear about when you start. Are you trying to create a sustainable multi project platform / studio OR are you doing a couple of things in order to find the one thing you want to focus on? Both work but you need to structure and resource things differently depending on which path you opt for.

If you're building a multi-project platform, does that mean you don't take on super-ambitious projects? Is it a lower-risk diversification strategy that is less-likely to lead to the NEXT BIG THING?

Message Bus devoured our incubator.  I do like what Mike is trying to do with Science--channeling people's passions (e.g. Pham and fund raising) and recognizing different skill sets.

My big issue, however, is that none of this is static and I think that those of us who have had the luxury of experimenting with these models do so in order to ultimately satisfy our own personal needs not necessarily some business need or higher goal (though Obvious does have a mission statement).

Relentless optimism blinds people to the fact that a basic functional product is still a minimum of one-years worth of hard work.  A viable business 3-4.

Ev, feels less like a studio trap than a lot of rationalized experimentation. ;-)