Before building a second product, Casey Winters recommends first diagramming the existing core product's growth loop: how acquisition, value delivery, and re-acquisition cycle back into each other. Example: Eventbrite's loop is creator lists an event → creator markets the event → attendees buy tickets → some attendees become creators themselves, re-entering the loop.
Mapping this loop is a diagnostic: it reveals whether the loop still has room to simply spin faster before a whole new product is justified. If so, the move is to graft new acquisition-focused mechanisms onto the existing loop rather than build a new product — e.g., revenue-funded paid acquisition, SEO (see SEO's Yo-Yo Effectiveness & Distributing Content into Under-Optimized Networks), partner integrations, or lifecycle emails/push notifications. Only once this grafting approach hits its own ceiling — as it did for Eventbrite when monetization capped out around 10% — does a genuinely new second product become justified.
Apply: map your core loop and try grafting acquisition tactics onto it first; treat a second product as the fallback once grafting demonstrably stops moving the needle, not as the default next move.
Relates to S-Curve Evaluation (Next Growth Wave vs. Enhancer) (this is the tactical alternative to invest in before a second product becomes necessary) and A Second Product Only Needs to Fix One Weak Link.