Focus :- Start-ups need to focus

I like to track developments in the start-up world and while doing that, I come across many interesting start-up companies. Electric vehicles, web technologies, mobile applications and many other innovative ideas are introduced by start-up companies every year. I have observed that many start-ups begin their journey with a unique customer problem. Start-ups do a wonderful job in identifying customer needs but then sometimes they try to do too much too soon. Companies lose focus and start solving many problems at the same time. Mentors and Angel investors do advice start-ups to have a laser sharp focus, but I think the definition of focus is not clear. I have read many articles on web, advising early stage companies to have a laser sharp focus on products and customer problems. These articles also suggest that start-up companies should not waste their energy on pursuing activities which are not core to their mission. I see a problem with this approach, because focus can also make you irrelevant. Defining the meaning of "focus" is very important and I am trying to come up with my understanding of focus.

In my opinion, start-up companies should focus on a single customer problem they wish to solve. For example if any company is solving a problem X then it should only focus on solving that problem. Combining solutions for different customer problems into one product is just going to make your product expensive and unsuitable for the mass market deployment. So according to me, the focus should be on the problem the company is trying to solve and not on products, sales and market segments.  Let me give you an example, let us imagine a start-up company "XYZ auto" '(I am not suggesting any company here but my thought was influenced by one company I came across in real world) is trying to solve a mobility problem of senior citizens and differently-able  people. They have created a nice innovative product to help people move from point A to point B without hassles. Now the primary problem the company solves is "Mobility". So the company should only focus on solving that problem. Now while designing the product, the company will have many choices such as, whether to use high end material, whether to use electric batteries instead of gasoline engine and whether to have low speed or high speed vehicle etc. The company should choose the technology and the product design which effectively solves the primary problem and once they have chosen the technology for that, the next step should be to cut costs, make the product available to entire market and make it affordable for entire target audience. There may be different opinions of experts on this topic, but for me, solving the customer problem and making the product available to everyone who faces that problem is far more important than making cool product. Profitability is important but that should never be the driver for the product design decisions in the beginning.

Reason why I think defining the focus is important, because start-ups face a huge risk of being irrelevant. The technology is reshaping landscapes of all industries. If the start-up is focusing on some technology without paying attention or without evaluating different options, then there is a huge risk of failure. Many people believe that start-ups should never diversify as it takes more money, efforts and time to diversify. But I think start-ups should always work on associated technologies which will enable them to make quick adjustments to products in case of failure of selected technology. This approach will help them achieve the mission with which they started their journey.  

So the statement "Focus is very important" is true, but how you define the focus is also critically important. My simple approach is to focus on problems and try to solve only one problem at a time.

Let me know what you all think, write your opinion in the comments section. I will love to read your point of view.