Episode 681 | Why Launching a Second Product is Usually a Bad Idea

Startups For the Rest of Us

Rob Walling

Entrepreneurship, Management, Business, Marketing

4.9 • 819 Ratings

🗓️ 3 October 2023

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In episode 681, Rob Walling and Ruben Gamez go deep on the drawbacks of launching a second product. They both generally advise against doing so, as it can distract from the existing product. However they do share some successful attempts, strategic insights, how to approach feedback on second ideas, and the benefits for founders that beat the odds. Topics we cover: 1:31 – When you should launch a second product 5:32 – Ruben’s experience growing Bidsketch and SignWell 9:45 – Responding to market pull, avoid the sunk cost fallacy 12:26 – Dividing attention between multiple products 16:40 – Choosing when to split focus 21:13 – Why a second product worked for Ruben and others 28:54 – Gauging your product intuition and getting outside feedback 32:50 – Avoiding bias when receiving feedback on your ideas 38:21 – Strategies and goals for adding a second product 42:50 – Cross selling multiple products Links from the Show: MicroConf US Tickets are on sale Ruben Gamez (@earthlingworks) | X Episode 499 | The (First) Six Stages of SaaS Growth – Part 1 Intelligent Editing SignWell (@SignWellApp) | X Bidsketch SignWell Stratosphere finchat.io David Cancel (@dcancel) | X The SaaS Playbook If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you! Subscribe & Review: iTunes | Spotify | Google

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back. It's another episode of Startup for the Rest of Us. I'm Rob Walling, and in this episode,
0:05.4	Ruben Gamas comes back on the show by popular demand, and we talk about why launching a second
0:11.1	product is usually, but not always a bad idea. This episode idea comes to us from a listener
0:18.3	who sent in a great suggestion about covering this topic. And it's one of those
0:22.4	topics you could try to cover in six, seven minutes, like a typical listener question, but it deserves
0:28.6	a lot of time. And as you can see, this episode is longer than a lot of our standard episodes,
0:33.1	because there was a lot to fit in. But before we dive into that, tickets to Microcomp US in Atlanta are now on sale.
0:41.3	Atlanta, Georgia, April 21st through the 23rd of 2024, Leanna Patch is returning to co-host with me.
0:49.0	My hope is that she does not fall off the back of the stage again. Rand Fishkin will be speaking,
0:53.9	and it's generally going to be
0:55.0	an awesome event. I hope you can join us in Atlanta, micracomph.comf.com slash US if you want to find the
1:00.4	full speaker lineup and buy your ticket. This event will sell out. All of our in-person events have
1:06.3	been selling out. And so if you think you want to come to Atlanta and hang out with me and a couple
1:10.9	hundred of your other closest bootstrap founder friends, buy your ticket soon. And with that,
1:16.0	let's dive into my conversation with Ruben.
1:25.7	Ruben Gomez. Welcome back to the show.
1:28.0	Great to be here.
1:29.4	Yeah, it's always good to have you.
1:30.5	By popular demand, you're back on the show this time to talk about when we should and shouldn't launch a second product.
1:38.2	And this topic was actually raised by a listener, Daniel Hoyman.
1:43.0	Sorry if I'm mispronouncing your last name,
1:44.6	but Daniel has written many times over the years with great suggestions for the show
	...

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