Dropbox's shrinking revenue illustrates a key strategic risk. Despite being an iconic product, it became a feature within larger ecosystems like Google Workspace and Microsoft Office. Its failure to expand into a defensible, multi-product platform (e.g., failed Mailbox and Carousel acquisitions) led to its current stagnation.

While product differentiation is beneficial, it's not always possible. A brand's most critical job is to be distinctive and instantly recognizable. This mental availability, achieved through consistent creative, logo, and tone, is more crucial for cutting through market noise than having a marginally different feature set.

The slow growth of public SaaS isn't just an execution failure; it's a structural problem. We created so many VC-backed companies that markets became saturated, blocking adjacent expansion opportunities and creating a 'Total Addressable Market (TAM) trap'.

Stop viewing brand as a top-of-funnel activity. For elite companies, brand isn't a precursor to selling; it is the selling. It creates inbound demand that bypasses traditional conversion tactics like search ads or affiliate marketing, making it the most powerful and sustainable growth engine.

The key to effective portfolio entrepreneurship isn't random diversification. It's about serving the same customer segment across multiple products. This creates a cohesive ecosystem where each new offering benefits from compounding knowledge and trust, making many things feel like one thing.

A founder of an athletic underwear brand faces a classic strategic choice. One path is to focus narrowly to dominate a niche, like Spanx did. The other is to expand into adjacent products (like sports bras) to create a complete brand system. This highlights the core tension between operational focus and building a broader brand platform.

To grow an established product, introduce new formats (e.g., Instagram Stories, Google AI Mode) as separate but integrated experiences. This allows you to tap into new user behaviors without disrupting the expectations and mental models users have for the core product, avoiding confusion and accelerating adoption.

A brand's strength can be measured by its "durability"—the permission customers grant it to enter new categories. For example, a "Nike hotel" is conceivable, but a "Hilton shoe" is not. This mental model tests whether your brand is defined by a narrow function or a broad customer relationship.

For a mature company like Square, the primary marketing challenge is not building awareness but correcting an outdated public perception. Many customers still associate them with their original 'little white reader,' unaware of the full product portfolio, requiring a strategy focused on education and perception shift.