I totally agree. You nailed it! And being a driving force for your cofounders and startup with a vision is probably more important than being a programmer. IMHO.
In my view, taking the portfolio approach is a sign of not having enough faith in any one direction.
Entrepreneurs generally have sound visions in a few specific directions unlike VCs who are generally hopeful about a wide variety of stuff but will never bet on a very select few.
but we all know, that most ideas change significantly. if there is enough capacity of the team, why not launching several things? time is the most expensive resource. when you do a problem - solution fit several directions & products can be tried.
everyone has vision, even people who don't start companies. when you start a company you want it to succeed, because 90% of them fail. sticking with one idea doesn't make sense. maybe it was true 10 - 5 years ago. Now there are so many cloud services, which help to roll out things in days instead of months.
