The single-product trap

Single-product companies are vulnerable in obvious ways. Slowing growth in the core, dependence on a single market, exposure to one competitor's moves. The natural reaction is to add a second product. The natural reaction is usually wrong.

The trap

Second products are hard to ship. Most fail. They divide engineering attention and confuse positioning. Worse, they often paper over a problem in the core product — slowing growth that should have been addressed in the first product, not by adding a second.

When to actually add

• The core product is genuinely saturated, not just slowed.
• The new product serves the same buyer with a related need.
• You can afford to invest at the level a real second product requires (years, real headcount).
• Leadership has bandwidth to give it executive attention.

Most second products fail because they were added to escape a problem in the first one. Fix the first, then earn the right.