Maybe this is kind of the point you were making, but I think it's very likely that Ev wasn't trying to claim he "lacked focus" during the Odeo epoch, with or without false humility. It sounded like he was contrasting the more recent part of his career with the earlier period in which he lacked focus, discipline, and people skills.

I first met him in 2001, at Blogger's low point, so I don't know what he was like four years earlier.

You're right, he only said that the first company (pre-Pyra) was unfocused.

I filled in the rest based on the comment above and on memories of people calling Odeo unfocused. I just wanted to kill any notion that Ev's successes come from being unfocused. Really, it was Ev's focus, keeping us from getting tied down by biz dev deals and refusing to settle for a middling success even when we got positive feedback, that set the groundwork for Twitter.