80% of what?

I’m a big believer in the 80-20 Rule. If you haven’t heard of this, it’s the idea that almost everything you do yields 80% of the benefit with the first 20% of effort. Similarly, you’ll find that 80% of your sales come from a 20% subset of your offerings. Stuff like that.

Sure, it’s a back-of-envelope rule of thumb sort of deal, but still a useful planning concept. (I love heuristics.)

On Monday, I blogged to the effect that non-software startup companies be satisfied with commercial off-the-shelf software that satisfies 80% of the functionality they require… because that’s so much cheaper than embarking on a new project when you are already hard up for cash.

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