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Most successful companies are not category creators - even though they may look like that to folks that come from large companies. Startup should be very, very wary of advice they get around this. 1/
I've had two startup come to me this week talking about "category creation" when what they are really doing is carving out a clearly defined niche in an existing market. This is good! How do you think most big companies got their start?? But is is not "category creation" 2/
Niching in an existing category is not category creation. Category creators need to sell the problem - no awareness of the problem, no category, no sales. Nichers just have to prove that there are folks in a category that are underserved that they serve better - much easier 3/
The beauty of NOT creating a category when you are small is that you can drift off of what customers already know about a category without having teach folks why a whole new category is needed. Once you get big then you can really throw your weight in and re-define a category. 4/
There are many, many examples of category creators that were playing well in a niche when they were sub $100M. An incredibly small percentage of startups make it to $100M revenue. Reminder: The majority of the products you use and love today make less than $100M 5/
I read a claim that less than 35 companies had successfully created a category between 2000 - 2015. Yet silicon valley consultants come to my local accelerator and tell a room full of sub-$500K revenue startups that that's the only way to build a company. NONESENSE! 6/
Having a point of view on a market and a plan to differentiate and win a well-defined group of customers is called Positioning. There is no magic category voodoo pixie dust that lets you skip doing this work. 7/
Nonesense = one lever lower than nonsense #neveredit #makeupwordssoundsmart
