What is your superpower?

In one of the excerpt from the book No Filter: The Inside Story of Instagram, Kevin Systorm explains to Ashton Kutcher why Instagram blew up. It was not because of network effects. There were no network effects on day 1. It was not because of celebrity users. It was not because they rode on Twitter and Facebook graph of users. All of these happened later. Like most B2C products, it started as a single player use case: How to make your photos more beautiful, and shareable

To quote one of my seniors, “I have been thinking about the concept of superpowers a lot. Brian Norgard is known for talking about giving your users superpowers. The ability to super like a person on a dating app is a superpower. And Norgard’s advice is to monetize by charging for these super powers, which is what most dating apps do. But I think the superpower concept can be extended even further. Instead of a normal feature vs monetizable superpower feature, think of how you can give ordinary users super powers though your product”.

Listed below are other superpowers that I think can make you a superhero in the 21st century. Perhaps, a few business ideas for future entrepreneurs:

1. Speedreading : Helping users read 500 - 1000 wpm with ~ 90% retention
2. Ability to learn and write code quickly (Ultralearning model by Scott H. Young)
3. Ability to understand and create design
4. Ability to let users network (Different from LinkedIn in the sense that the network is a community rather than just a number)
5. Apps that let users meditate deeply
6. Saying “no” without feeling guilty
7. Critical reasoning : Thinking from first priciples
8. Financial literacy and maximizing ROI through investments in equities and public markets
9. The most important skill of the 21 st century : Learning how to learn