Ask HN: I want to start a new company, but I'm CEO at a funded startup

If a plan has 'but it worked for Elon Musk' as one of the important underpinnings that will almost certainly work against you. (Unless, of course, if you're Elon Musk.)

After 10 years being CEO for online marketplace, I found us in the position where our profits from the existing business (which support a team of 50) were not best allocated to the product we spent the last 10 years building. After reading Warren Buffetts “The Snowball,” I became convinced that we were best off channeling our profit into the highest ROI opps, regardless of whether they were directly relevant to our marketplace.

Judging by the other responses here, I’m in a distinct minority to claim that you could consider building both businesses.

The jury is still out on whether this will prove to be a sound idea, we started building two separate projects last year and only one has been soft launched thus far (StaticObject.com).

That said, a couple relevant takeaways from our work to date:

1. The only way a multi product company can possibly work is if you’ve accumulated an inner circle that can stand in for you. You’re not going to do a great job building two things at the same time. You’ll need to find others who can pick up your slack 2. Our arrangement was pursued in part cuz we’re almost entirely self-funded, which means less VCs to encourage/force us to follow the path more traveled 3. A single, great developer can get as much done on a project as a team of 5 developers by virtue of reduced communication cost, and (hopefully) less tech debt. There is meaningful leverage available by splitting great devs onto separate projects.

A lot depends on what stage you are at - Series A/B/C? Do you have VCs or angels?

But the worst thing you can do is to come across as unreliable or a cheat, so if you are having doubts - talk them over with your investors. After all they are your partners, and are equally interested in seeing your company succeed. If you screw them over chances are you will be banned from the VC community for good, which ruins any chances a new startup would have. Talk the idea through with them, they will have insights that will prove useful. If they get equally excited you will find a way out together that makes all parties happy. If they don’t - perhaps the opportunity isn’t as great as you think, otherwise they’d want to be a part of it too. Treat them like you would want to be treated yourself.

Ask no one but you. My 2 cents, do it. This is you, not other people. And there are examples. Every CEO of GE or other is running 20 firms. Plus...

Jack Dorsey Twitter and Square Carlos Ghosn, Renault and Nissan Elon Musk, Tesla and SpaceX Warren Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway and Salomon Brothers Steve Jobs, Apple and Pixar Deion Sanders, National Football League and Major League Baseball Bo Jackson - same

Post your idea here, with an honor-based ask for a seat at the table/retainer in exchange for contacts to get it off the ground once you've vetted that you are not dealing with clowns. You could be nicely surprised. True innovators are in this together. Cheers.