Know Your Superpower
TL;DR: Companies with two genuinely different dominant categories are extremely
rare. What looks like a second superpower is almost always one power applied to a
new market. Know yours, and do not abandon it chasing a second.
Every superhero and every god has ONE superpower, or owns ONE domain. Spiderman,
Superman, the Greek and Roman gods (Poseidon owns the sea, Zeus the sky). Know your
superpower, your own and your company’s, and use it relentlessly.
The sharp thesis: companies with two genuinely different dominant categories are
extremely rare, so do not try to become one. What looks like a second superpower
is almost always ONE superpower applied to a new market. You do not get two
superpowers in two markets. You get one, and you point it at new markets.
Understanding that difference is the whole game.
The gods and the heroes
- The gods each owned one domain. Poseidon the sea, Zeus the sky, Hades the
underworld, Ares war, Athena wisdom and strategy, Hephaestus the forge. Power came
from owning ONE thing completely. - The heroes each have one power. Spiderman: agility and spider-sense. The Flash:
speed. The Hulk: strength. Specialists who mastered a single gift. - Superman is the fictional exception, and even he has kryptonite. The
all-powerful hero only exists in comics, and the writers still had to hand him a
fatal weakness. Nobody is fastest AND strongest AND smartest AND invulnerable in
real life. - Batman and Iron Man have no powers at all. Their superpower is resources plus
intellect, applied relentlessly. A company can win that way too: capital,
discipline, and focus as the edge.
The rule: one superpower, many markets
- One superpower, many markets, not two superpowers. This is the crux. What
looks like a second business is almost always your one power pointed at a new
market. - You get one, not all of them. You will be lucky to have ONE real superpower and
to be aware of it. - You may have one without knowing it. A superpower can develop unknowingly. Not
knowing your power, or never building one, is a mistake. - The bigger mistake: abandoning it to chase a new one. The grass looks greener
on the other side. It rarely is. - Even giants rarely transform twice. A major company might reinvent itself, or
invent a new category, once. Twice is rare. Three times almost never. Many who
chase the second act lose the first and go irrelevant.
The evidence
One superpower, reused across markets (the norm):
- Apple – integrated consumer hardware + ecosystem. iPhone, iPad, Watch, and a
large services business all ride the same power; services is the device base
monetized, not a second domain. - Nvidia – the GPU + CUDA platform. Gaming, then AI datacenters: the same chip
pointed at a new, far bigger market. - Tesla – batteries + manufacturing. EVs and Megapack grid storage both ride it.
Solar (a different power) failed, proof you do not get a second one for free. - SpaceX – cheap, reliable access to orbit. Starlink and the new orbital AI
datacenters are both downstream of one thing: launch.
The rare genuine two-category companies (the exception, not the goal):
- Amazon – retail marketplace + AWS cloud. Two real businesses, though AWS grew
out of Amazon’s own infrastructure muscle. - UnitedHealth – insurance + Optum care delivery. The rare two-domain play in
healthcare.
The warning cases:
- Microsoft – reinvented three times (OS, enterprise, cloud), yet still failed
mobile and is now struggling in AI. Even the rare serial transformer misses waves. - Google – winning the move to AI, but the danger is it cannibalizes its own ad
superpower. A second act can eat your first.
The bottom line
Know your superpower. Use it as much, and as many times, as you can, for as long as
you can. The grass is not greener on the other side; it is just someone else’s one
domain, and you do not own it.