The obvious critique
Eight products. One studio. From the outside, this looks like the opposite of focus. VCs would call it distraction. Product purists would say pick one and go deep. They're not entirely wrong.
But the eight products at Octoways aren't eight bets on eight different horses. They're eight expressions of one thesis: that businesses need a connected intelligence layer, not isolated tools.
What breadth actually teaches you
Running multiple products simultaneously forces prioritisation at a level that running one product never does. When everything is competing for engineering time, design attention, and strategic focus, you get very good at knowing what matters and what doesn't.
We learned more about product decision-making from our fourth product than from our first three combined. The constraints were tighter. The lessons came faster.
Breadth without a unifying thesis is chaos. With one, it's a portfolio.
The actual lesson
The lesson isn't that running many products is better or worse. The lesson is that every product decision has a cost that compounds. Features added to one product create maintenance overhead. Complexity in one codebase bleeds into others. The discipline required to keep eight products alive is the same discipline that makes any one product excellent.
Focus isn't about how many things. It's about how clearly you understand the cost of each one.