This week on The First Round Review, we’ve rounded up the advice we’ve collected from product leaders on the topic of expanding your product suite.
The Guide to Going Multi-Product: 11 Tactics for Tackling Your Next Bet
Startup leaders know all too well that there isn’t really a steady state in company building. You don’t have much time to stop and admire the view once you’ve hit a big milestone — you immediately start climbing toward the next growth rung.
After finding strong traction with your initial solution, the subsequent goalpost on the path to widening your TAM and compounding revenue is launching a new product. (In our view this is a critical but often overlooked step in truly unlocking what we call "extreme product-market fit.")
But it’s daunting to introduce an entirely new product to your roadmap. Three strategic questions typically pop up when pondering a jump into multi-product:
- When is the right time?
- What should we build next?
- How can we execute this new product organizationally?
Across our digital pages and radio waves, founders and operators have weighed in on these thorny questions in bits and pieces, so we’ve compiled their learnings into one in-depth guide on going multi-product. It’s full of actionable takeaways on what they got right (and wrong) when launching new bets. Here’s a preview of their advice:
- Wait until it feels like you’re pedaling at half speed, says Max Rhodes, CEO and Co-Founder of Faire.
- Data isn’t always a crystal ball, says Tara Seshan, early product lead at Stripe.
- Divvy up resourcing for new bets according to risk, says Noah Desai Weiss, former Slack CPO.
Thanks, as always, for reading and sharing!
-The Review editors
Recommended resources:
-Ben Lang, former Head of Community (and early hire) at Notion, on how to find and join a breakout startup
-Marketing psychology lessons from Rory Sutherland
-How managers can be more explicit about their expectations