A Second Product Is Usually Avoidance With a Domain
A new repo feels like progress. It is often a way to leave the hard part of the first product unfinished.
A new repo feels like progress. It is often a way to leave the hard part of the first product unfinished.
Solo founders start a second product when the first one needs sales, support, and deletion work. Here is a test for whether the new idea is optionality or an escape hatch.
Starting a second product feels fantastic.
The first one has a messy pricing page, a few customers who need too much support, and a backlog full of things you have been avoiding. Then a new idea appears. The new repository is clean. The landing page looks good. Nobody has complained yet.
That feeling can be mistaken for progress.
Sometimes a second product really is the right move. But for a solo founder, it is worth asking a harder question first: am I starting this because the first business has stopped making sense, or because the difficult part of the first business has arrived?
By the time you have launched something, you have learned things that are easy to underestimate.
You know what customers actually ask for. You know which part of onboarding causes confusion. You know what people will pay for and what they politely call “interesting.” You have support conversations, failed experiments and awkward sales calls.
A new product throws most of that away.
A fresh idea gives you a new domain and a clean codebase, but it also sends you back to zero on the questions that matter most.
That does not mean you should stay with a bad business forever. It means the reason for leaving should be specific.
“The market is too small” is a reason.
“The customers cannot pay enough” is a reason.
“I found a better problem through repeated conversations with users” is a reason.
“I am bored of fixing onboarding” is not.
People often describe a second product as optionality.
For a company with a team, that can be true. For one person, optionality consumes attention.
Every product needs a domain, deployment, analytics, support, documentation, billing and a story. Even a tiny project creates maintenance. You may tell yourself that it only needs five hours a week, but those five hours usually come from somewhere else.
The cost is not visible in a dashboard.
Monday goes to customer support for product A. Tuesday becomes a redesign for product B. Wednesday is spent moving data between the two. By Friday, both products have moved a little and neither has received the concentrated attention needed to move a lot.
A solo founder does not have a portfolio of operators.
They have one calendar.
Write down three answers.
The third answer is the important one.
If it is “I have not talked to customers recently,” you probably do not have enough evidence for a second company.
If it is “I talked to twenty customers and none has this problem at a price that supports the business,” now you have something concrete.
Do the research before buying the new domain.
There is another common trap.
The new idea sounds like a separate company because it deserves a cleaner homepage. But if it serves the same customer, during the same workflow, with the same budget, it may simply be the next feature.
Customers usually do not care that your internal product architecture is elegant. They care that the job gets done.
If several existing customers independently ask for the same adjacent capability, try putting it inside the product you already have.
You can always separate it later.
Splitting it too early gives you two brands to explain when one useful workflow would have been enough.
You do not need a dramatic shutdown announcement.
Freeze new development on the second product. Look at how many hours it consumed during the last month. Then look at the first product and list the work that was delayed because those hours went elsewhere.
Pick one important problem in product one and spend the next two weeks fixing it.
Maybe it is onboarding. Maybe it is pricing. Maybe it is a feature that customers keep requesting. Maybe it is removing something nobody uses.
After those two weeks, run the same test again.
If the second product still has a strong reason to exist, keep going. If it mostly feels attractive because it is new, let it go.
Curiosity is not the problem.
Using a new repository to avoid an old conversation is.
The best reason to build a second product is evidence that the first one should become something else—not relief from having to finish the first one.
For A Second Product Is Usually Avoidance With a Domain, turn the main idea into a small operating decision. Identify the customer or user, the problem being solved, the signal that proves progress, and the next action that can be tested.
problem → evidence → smallest action → result → next decision| Question | Practical answer to document |
|---|---|
| Who? | exact user or customer |
| What? | specific job or problem |
| Signal? | measurable evidence |
| Risk? | likely failure mode |
| Next? | smallest useful action |
This practical section turns the article central idea into something a founder can test, measure, and revisit. It is deliberately separate from the main argument so readers can distinguish the article analysis from the implementation checklist.
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Written by
Kirtesh Admute
Founder
Kirtesh Admute is the founder of IndieFounder, a platform for founders, builders, and people curious about technology. He writes about AI, startups, software, product building, and the lessons that come from building in public.
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