Sell Superpowers

Leore Avidar’s business plan was based on getting paid enough to leave work early and play video games. If that’s not a noble pursuit, I don’t know what is. But, in the interest of his own efficiency, he stumbled onto the magical business of making others more efficient. Avidar’s goal became to “Sell superpowers.”

While working for Amazon, they built a method for sending mail out to a massive list. Through the grapevine, they heard Microsoft was doing something similar but in a very old-fashioned, tedious way. So, they offered to build Microsoft a similar tool.

To Avidar and his friends, it was extra money to take the afternoon off. But, to Microsoft, it was a superpower. If these companies needed help, surely there must be others. Their business was born.

In our work, we want to know what superpowers we bring to the table. Just like we want to make the customer the hero of the story, we want to think about what superpowers we can offer them. Superpowers sell.

At their essence, superpowers are a matter of efficiency. Mere mortals need a helicopter to go over a building, Superman does it in a single leap. Our question is what do mere mortals do one way but our clients, with the superpower we’ve provided, now do in a single leap?

The focus belongs on tasks, efficiencies, and impacts. We want to find the job-to-be-done, and make it look, and feel, easy.

Lob, Avidar’s current company, focuses on direct mailing solutions. I’ll skip the details, but basically, if you need to get a bunch of paper mail printed and shipped, they’ve got you covered. It’s a simple and impactful superpower. Avidar’s a very interesting entrepreneur, listen to his full interview with Patrick O’Shaughnessy on the “Founder’s Field Guide Podcast” here.