Conrad: VC advice to focus is wrong; compound startups are the future
Parker Conrad · 20VC: Rippling's Parker Conrad on Why The VC/Founder Marriage Analogy is Weird, Why The Notion of Focus, Focus, Focus is Overrated, Why Narrow Point Solutions Are Not Best in Class Products & The Rise of the "Compound Startup" · Apr 26, 2021 · at 4:37
Parker Conrad, founder and CEO of Rippling, critiques conventional VC wisdom and outlines his core product philosophy of the 'compound startup' vs narrow point solutions.
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“I think, I mean, one of the sort of easiest things for usually investors to talk about is how the secret to startup success is focus, focus, focus. I think it's actually wrong. It might have been true at one point in the past. Today, the biggest problems that, at least in like B to B SaaS, the biggest problems that companies face are often sort of business process problems that span a lot of different business systems, a lot of different parts of the company. Actually, the best way to solve them is to build a set of closely integrated tools. I call it a compound startup to take on a bunch of different things at once and make them work together seamlessly. And the traditional advice to focus is actually really holding back the industry, because it's leading everyone to build these very, very narrow point solutions that don't interoperate, and actually the sort of best product out there would be one where you roll up a couple of these different things into one seamlessly interoperable product.”
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