I was recently talking with several entrepreneurs who all were debating some form of the question: should I have multiple products as an early stage company? While each situation may be different, generally speaking I favor keeping laser focus on getting one product going successfully before diverting resources into multiple products.

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Time and money

As an entrepreneur, time and money are two of your biggest challenges. Typically the more products you build, the longer it takes to develop, find the right go-to-market process, and start getting traction. If you have multiple products you are now compounding the challenge and spending more time and money than with just one product. I often hear it is the same product so there is no additional work. In my experience, there are almost always differences in how you build and manage the product, how you sell, the value proposition, and how the internal team spends time across products so I would really challenge that assumption.

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Focus

As I have written before, focus is one of the key traits of successful entrepreneurs as well as one of the reasons I see many startups struggle to make it. Really nailing your ideal customer profile (ICP), value proposition, and sales process allows you to gain traction and earn the right to expand into the next market/product. It is a yellow flag for me in a pitch deck when I see a company with multiple/different products at an early stage. Yes you can be successful with a suite of solutions, but that is typically very hard to accomplish from the beginning as an early stage startup. Instead, be 10x better at one thing versus trying to be good at lots of things.

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How it can make sense

There are models (i.e. freemium) where you have a simple product that people can use and get excited about what you are building, then have a more premium product available for an upsell. In these cases the second product builds on the first and is often selling to the same customer. The free product is often super lightweight and does not require much time and effort to build and maintain.

If you are considering launching multiple products, really check your assumptions on if this will distract your focus from your ICP. Definitely listen when a potential customer is asking for something else; but really make sure that ask is not unique to them and is aligned with your vision. You should hear that multiple times from different people and determine that is the best business strategy before pivoting into a new product.