The Value of Side Quests

Sometimes, the most important path for a startup has nothing to do with the startup.

As my fellow video gamers know, when you pursue something other than the main questline in a game, it's known as a "side quest." It's a tiny detour that you take to see if there are other riches to be found elsewhere.

In startups, those side quests may feel like a distraction, but in fact, they are often exactly what we need to keep our startups alive.

I'm a giant fan of side quests at startups, partially because my ADHD loves distractions and partially because I've found they pay really well.

The Myth of the Linear Path

The reason we get pushback on taking on side quests is that we seem to keep believing the myth that startups should follow a linear path.

The thinking goes that we have an idea, we start building it, and eventually it becomes successful. As if because we had an initial idea, we must have magically figured out product/market fit from Day One.

That's literally not how building a startup works.

The probability that we've figured out exactly what to build and how to take it to market is nearly zero. Not because we're not smart and special snowflakes, but because there are so many damn variables that we simply have to explore.

The side quests are where we depart from the main path and try new product features, explore new customer segments, and every now and again, test out a whole new business model.

Side Quests Aren't Distractions

We need side quests to be sure that the main path is still the right path.

In 2012 we didn't launch this company as Startups.com. We launched it as Fundable.com, a crowdfunding platform for equity. At the time, the idea that startups would raise from large groups of strangers was new and exciting. But after the first year, we started to realize that most of the people who wanted to use our platform had very little idea how to start a company.

So we started a side quest.

I ran around for a couple of years looking at other companies we could acquire to change our path completely. We bought Launchrock, Zirtual, Clarity, and others to build a massive platform to help launch companies.

We had no idea if those paths would lead anywhere. We were just fishing.

Within 18 months, our side quest had become the main business, which was helping startups launch, regardless of funding. Had we not pursued our side quest because we were so hard-nosed about our initial focus, we would have been in a long-buried graveyard of crowdfunding platforms.

Isn't That Just a Pivot?

No. Pivots are when you change the whole business. A side quest is when you actively explore new directions, in case one of those directions uncovers some hidden treasure.

Side quests are essentially disposable. If they work out, great. If they don't, we stick to the main quest. Our Startup Therapy Podcast, which is over 300 episodes deep and is one of our best conversion tools, was a total side quest. We thought it might be fun to talk about what goes on in Founders' heads, and it turns out, so did a lot of other people.

In fact, most of what has made us an enduring company at Startups.com has been a relentless series of side quests that, frankly, usually turn into a giant waste of time, but every now and again, fundamentally change our business.

Or not.

Sometimes it's a total waste of time, and we have to be OK with that being an outcome too. We can't avoid the exploration because we think it might fail. We have to embrace the exploration because it has a game-changing probability.

The Courage to Explore

I'm not gonna lie. It takes a ton of courage to explore the unknown. Most Founders are so afraid of failing in their main business that the idea of taking on more risk is bananas.

But the best way to de-risk our path is to ensure that there is no other path. To explore the variables so we can confirm what we're currently doing is the right path.
So take the plunge. Try that one product feature you think may flop. Test a new business model that makes zero sense right now.

Your biggest startup risk is not knowing.

In Case You Missed It

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Optimizing for Happiness We do something in our planning at Startups.com that is relatively unheard of in the startup business: we optimize for happiness. Here’s how we do it.

How Do I Design My Startup Around My Life? There’s very little preventing us from designing our startups around our life goals. It starts with us being very clear about what we want to achieve and then taking clear, small steps toward those outcomes.