Do the Best Entrepreneurs Optimize for Quality or Quantity?
Some entrepreneurs are obsessed with quality. Others want scale. Which is better?
Quantity versus quality — it’s one of the great debates of the startup world. When you’re a resource-strapped entrepreneur, do you spend more time/effort/money/etcetera on fewer, higher quality outputs? Or should you spread those resources as thin and far as possible in order to chase the benefits of volume?
The interesting thing about this debate is that it touches nearly every aspect of entrepreneurship.
For example, it relates to fundraising and how many investors to contact:
“Should I focus on talking with as many investors as possible, or should I spend lots of time finding the most likely investors?”
It relates to sales and marketing:
“Should I send thousands of generic cold emails to lots of potential customers, or should I cherry-pick the people who best fit our customer profile and send personalized emails?”
It relates to social media content creation:
“Should I post to TikTok/Twitter/Instagram as often as possible, or should I focus on fewer, higher quality posts that take longer to make?”
It even relates to human resources and hiring:
“Should I spend money hiring multiple low-level people, or should I put all the money into one person’s salary and try to hire a rockstar?”
To be fair, nobody will be able to definitely tell you whether quantity or quality is more important in startups. But I can tell you which is better in basketball, and maybe that’ll help.
The most important stat in basketball
In case basketball isn’t your favorite sport, don’t worry. Every sport has the same basic concept I’m about to discuss, and it’s equally valuable no matter what game you’re playing. I’m only using basketball to explain this particular stat because I teach at Duke University, and, if you know anything about Duke, you know basketball is like a religion, and framing concepts in relation to basketball is usually a good way of helping my students understand complex entrepreneurial topics.
For those of you who aren’t as familiar with basketball as my students, the only thing you need to know in order to appreciate this analogy I’m about to make is that the most popular statistics to track in basketball are: points; rebounds; and assists. They’re the most popular stats because they’re: A) easiest to track; and B) most interesting to watch.
While the three standard statistics I’ve shared are all meaningful, I’d argue that none of them are as interesting as a stat called shot attempts per game. As the name suggests, shot attempts per game is a stat that tracks how many shots, on average, a given basketball team takes during each game.
Shot attempts per game isn’t a particularly sexy statistic, but it’s the most important stat in basketball because it’s the foundation for lots of other important things. In other words, lots of the stats people care about more — stats like the aforementioned shots, rebounds, and assists — can’t happen without shot attempts, which is why shot attempts per game is so important. Simply put, increasing the number of shots a team attempts each game should — theoretically — increase all the other stats. For example, someone who shoots 50% and takes 20 shots per game is always going to score more points than someone who shoots 50% and takes 10 shots per game. Because of that, you’d rather take 20 shots per game than 10.
Yes, I realize the math I’m using doesn’t work as perfectly as I’ve described since taking more shots might mean taking more bad shots, but, at scale, the principle seems to hold up because, historically, the basketball team that takes more shots is also the team that’s more likely to win.
For what it’s worth, this isn’t just true in basketball. It’s also true in soccer, which is why people track “shots on goal.” It’s true in baseball, which is why batters will always try to “extend the at-bat” by swinging at questionable pitches. And, on a macro level, it’s even true in sports like golf. Sure, golfers don’t want as many strokes as possible, but they do want to enter as many tournaments as possible because entering more tournaments gives them a better chance of winning.
The most important stat in entrepreneurship
To be fair, “shot attempts” (or “shots on goal,” “tournaments entered,” or whatever the equivalent stat is in your sport of choice) isn’t a perfect measure for success. Plenty of teams win with fewer shots. But I like playing the odds, and the odds in sports favor the teams that have more opportunities to score.
I’d argue the same is true in entrepreneurship, and that’s why I’m using a basketball analogy to answer the question of whether entrepreneurs should focus more on quality or quantity. Yes, just like teams that take fewer shots can still win games, entrepreneurs who rigorously focus on quality over quantity occasionally build incredible companies — Steve Jobs being a famous example — but that doesn’t mean it’s the better choice.
Instead, quantity seems to be more important than quality because quantity increases the opportunities for good things to happen. For example, talking with lots of potential investors is generally preferable to talking with a few. Emailing lots of potential customers is generally better than emailing a few. Posting lots of lower quality content is generally going to get more traction than a few high quality pieces. And so on.
To be clear, I’m not arguing quantity is the only statistic that matters. After all, even in basketball, a significantly better shooting percentage is going to trump taking significantly more shots. But, if we’re trying to figure out which is better — quantity or quality — the odds favor quantity.
Remember that as you’re building your startup. Yes, producing high quality outputs is valuable, but be careful not to waste too much time perfecting things, especially if it comes at the cost of getting more things done. Quantity is important, too, because the more shots you take in the startup game, the more likely you are to win.