One of the most interesting blogs to read at the moment continues to be Tom Harrington’s Atomic Bird blog. Atomic Bird is probably most well known for their application, Macaroni, which gives the end user a lot more control over some of the automated processes which happen in the background on Mac OS X plus giving the ability to strip out Localised code (though this can cause a support nightmare as I’ve found). Atomic Bird recently celebrated their fifth birthday and Tom has been writing about their startup experience. The most recent installment describes his first attempts to expand the product lineup which he describes as being more of an effort to have something to look at other than Macaroni source code.
In effect, starting to build a second and third product was an attempt to build his own cowslayer (a product designed to be the thing that kills your first cash cow product.)
Apple, of course, managed this incredibly well with the iPod mini. They took the mini which was the best selling iPod at the time and refined and re-released it into the iPod nano. They took a cash cow, killed it and made everyone go out a buy their new one. And the latest iPod nano? It looks like a slim version of the mini. I think we’ve been had!
I guess that’s the trick. Find your cowslayer before your cash cow dies of old age.