In the early days of Superpowers, we were proudly U.S.-only.
COVID had just hit. Unemployment was spiking. We wanted to support our country. We believed in creating great jobs here. It felt like the right thing to do.
And honestly? It was – until it wasn’t.
The Story
We launched Superpowers with a belief that we could build a premium U.S.-based assistant company. It aligned with our values: patriotism, professionalism, personal connection.
We imagined sourcing incredible American talent, paying them well, and delivering white-glove support to entrepreneurs.
And in some ways, it worked. We found amazing people. Clients loved them. We were proud of the impact.
But behind the scenes, it was killing us.
Margins were razor-thin. Finding (and retaining) the rightpeople was harder than we thought. The labor pool wassmaller, expectations were higher, and burnout was real.
We kept grinding, believing we could fix it.
We poured in time. Money. Energy. We improved systems. Raised prices. Nothing made the model work at scale. And as the business grew, so did the pressure.
Eventually, we had to face a hard truth: This wasn’t sustainable.
The Insight
Sometimes your business model doesn’t break all at once – it bleeds out slowly.
You convince yourself that if you just tweak this one thing, it’ll all work. But when your unit economics are broken, no amount of “better” solves the problem.
It wasn’t a values problem. It was a viability problem.
And ironically, it was the clarity of our values that finally helped us pivot. If we were serious about helping entrepreneurs thrive, we couldn’t do it with a business that was constantly underwater.
We shifted to global talent, primarily in the Philippines. And everything started to change…
The no-BS Takeaway
Good intentions don’t pay the bills. If the economics don’t work, the mission won’t either.
