I know its a lot of work, I know its a crazy question, But what I mean is did anyone try running two small startup/sideprojects at a time. Doesn't matter alone or with a team<p>Did you make money? was it the right thing or would you have been better off focusing on one thing at a time
TL;DR - I've done it. One had a successful exit, the other bombed. Spend all your time, energy and passion into one and make it win.<p>I used to run two startups in parallel - 1) an online b2c startup - review and recommendation site for local businesses and 2) manufacturing and installation of bird spikes.<p>Not only were both businesses completely different in all aspects, they were also run out of two different cities. I used to run the online businesses, while the manufacturing one I handed over to a friend and would touch base with him very week to check progress and help troubleshoot sales, marketing etc.<p>The online startup was a roaring success. We exited successfully in just 3 years of starting up. The manufacturing one failed - the friend lost interest, I couldn't manage the day to day affairs and it ended up being a disaster.<p>So don't do two things in parallel.
Tried that recently. Doesn't work. A product needs all the attention, and switching between two is very difficult, specially during the early stages which are critical for customer development and growth.<p>There's a reason why successful startup founders with a wide portfolio are called serial entrepreneurs, not parallel entrepreneurs.
Maybe too soon for me to be answering, but I'm running two now, though one is not-for-profit. The for-profit one I founded in part to generate a percentage of profit to seed the not-for-profit.<p>I say too soon because I haven't released the for-profit one to the world yet (still coding). The nonprofit has generated substantial interest in its field, despite minimal funding to date, and netted me one full-time job offer at the pinnacle of the field, and likely played a role in some other contracts I've had since.<p>But I don't know that two at once is right for most people. It's pretty insane, and probably only works for now because the nonprofit is in partial operation (advocacy) and the for-profit is in development. But then both are seriously big-scale in terms of their aims, so maybe that doesn't help, given that you said both of yours are small.
I'm running four projects - usehuman.com, octopus.org, mostvaluablepro.com and thecloudforum.com. They're all side projects but eventually I'll have to focus on one for sure. As others have said, dividing your time between things divides your ability to focus.
the general advice is to focus on one project at a time. However, I can't do that.. I am currently working on 3-4 projects, besides my one-man consultancy business.
I can't say I'm profitable with any yet though.