Evan's Ten Rules apply to more than startups

Evan Williams' Ten Rules for Web Startups ring true to me, and not just for starting new businesses.

My native industry, newspapers, could learn especially from Williams' insistence on precise focus, for example:

"Focus on the smallest possible problem you could solve that would potentially be useful. Most companies start out trying to do too many things, which makes life difficult and turns you into a me-too. Focusing on a small niche has so many advantages: With much less work, you can be the best at what you do. ... You can much more easily position and market yourself when more focused. ... This is all so logical and, yet, there's a resistance to focusing. I think it comes from a fear of being trivial. Just remember: If you get to be No. 1 in your category, but your category is too small, then you can broaden your scope -- and you can do so with leverage."

Even those newspapers that try to do organic product development online tend to scattershoot. They channel their old role as a locally focused mass distributor to all new ideas. They figure they have to do things online that have mass value right out of the chute.

I'd rather build little vertical products that thoroughly embrace narrow categories of consumer interest. Maybe build them three or four at a time. Kill the ones that don't get air under their wings, and launch the next ideas on your list.

It all comes back to looking at newspapers as a convenience bundle of multiple consumer value propositions. That bundle wasn't assembled all at once, nor should Web products put forth by newspapers assume that same broad appeal of the bundle is the only possible measure of success.