Great White Shark

Great white sharks achieve large body size (15-20 feet, 5,000 pounds) through a different ecological strategy than blue whales: apex predation rather than filter feeding. Both animals sit at the top of marine food webs, but blue whales access energy through the base of the pyramid (krill) while great whites access it through the top (seals, fish, other sharks). This creates fundamentally different scaling economics.

Blue whales can achieve larger absolute size because their food source is abundant and energy transfer is more efficient—eating producers rather than consuming through multiple trophic levels. Great whites face the 10% rule: only 10% of energy transfers between trophic levels, so apex predators can never achieve the same mass as basal consumers. But predation provides richer nutrition per unit consumed, enabling faster growth and higher activity levels than filter feeding allows.

The business parallel is platform versus premium strategies for market leadership. Blue whales are like platforms that capture value from high-volume, low-margin transactions at the market's base. Great whites are like premium brands that capture value from low-volume, high-margin transactions at the market's top. Both can achieve market leadership, but through different mechanisms. Platform strategies can scale larger; premium strategies can sustain higher margins. Great whites show that apex positioning is viable even against much larger competitors—you don't need to be the biggest to be the most feared.