How to become a category pirate | Christopher Lochhead (Author of Play Bigger, Niche Down, more)
Christopher Lochhead (guest), Lenny Rachitsky (host)
In this episode of Lenny's Podcast, featuring Christopher Lochhead and Lenny Rachitsky, How to become a category pirate | Christopher Lochhead (Author of Play Bigger, Niche Down, more) explores design Markets, Not Just Products: Christopher Lochhead On Category Creation Christopher Lochhead argues that legendary companies don’t just build better products; they design entirely new market categories by redefining the problems they solve. Drawing on research and many examples, he explains that in tech markets, one company typically captures about two-thirds of a category’s total value, so competing as “better” in an existing space is usually a losing strategy. Instead, founders should obsess over problems, craft a sharp point of view, invent new language, and “frame, name, and claim” a distinct category—then drive word-of-mouth and demand through focused “lightning strikes” rather than generic marketing. He also challenges popular ideas like product–market fit and positioning, and closes with a call for creators to pursue “exponential different,” because “the future needs you.”
Design Markets, Not Just Products: Christopher Lochhead On Category Creation
Christopher Lochhead argues that legendary companies don’t just build better products; they design entirely new market categories by redefining the problems they solve. Drawing on research and many examples, he explains that in tech markets, one company typically captures about two-thirds of a category’s total value, so competing as “better” in an existing space is usually a losing strategy. Instead, founders should obsess over problems, craft a sharp point of view, invent new language, and “frame, name, and claim” a distinct category—then drive word-of-mouth and demand through focused “lightning strikes” rather than generic marketing. He also challenges popular ideas like product–market fit and positioning, and closes with a call for creators to pursue “exponential different,” because “the future needs you.”
Key Takeaways
Competing within an existing category usually means fighting for scraps.
Lochhead’s research shows that, in tech, the category leader captures about two-thirds of the total market value, leaving everyone else to split the remaining 24%. ...
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Design the category by redefining the problem, not just improving the solution.
Legendary companies start with a fresh articulation of the problem (or reframe an existing one) and then align their product, company, and story around that new definition—like Lomi reframing kitchen waste and composting, or GOJO inventing “liquid soap” and later “hand sanitizer.”
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Avoid the “better trap”: being a slightly better version of what already exists.
Copying an incumbent solution and claiming it’s better—like Threads vs. ...
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Use languaging and a sharp point of view to change how people think.
Terms like “vertical railway” (Otis), “venti” (Starbucks), “energy drink” (Red Bull), and “LLM” (OpenAI) create new mental scaffolding for customers. ...
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Think in terms of backcasting: start from the future and work backwards.
Instead of forecasting from today’s constraints, Lochhead recommends imagining a fully successful future state and then asking, “Standing there, what must have happened to get us here? ...
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Prioritize word of mouth and “lightning strikes” over constant peanut-butter marketing.
Rather than evenly spreading budget across the year, Lochhead advocates for concentrated “lightning strikes” that make you temporarily unavoidable for your super-consumers, driving both near-term revenue and powerful word of mouth in native digital communities.
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Rethink product–market fit and positioning; categories make products, not vice versa.
Fitting a product into an existing market (“product–market fit”) or positioning against competitors often locks you into incremental competition. ...
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Notable Quotes
“Most entrepreneurs make an unquestioned decision to compete for the 24% and they don’t even know they made it.”
— Christopher Lochhead
“The category makes the product. The category makes the brand. The category makes the company.”
— Christopher Lochhead
“You can’t take an existing problem with an existing solution, launch exactly the same shit, say it’s better, and have the world embrace it.”
— Christopher Lochhead
“Thinking about thinking is the most important kind of thinking.”
— Christopher Lochhead
“If you’re lucky enough to make it to the top of a mountain, throw down a fucking rope.”
— Christopher Lochhead
Questions Answered in This Episode
How can an early-stage startup practically identify and validate a truly new or reframed problem worth building a category around?
Christopher Lochhead argues that legendary companies don’t just build better products; they design entirely new market categories by redefining the problems they solve. ...
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What are the first concrete steps a founder should take to craft a compelling category point of view and test whether it resonates?
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How do you know when it’s time to expand your category vision beyond your initial niche, so you don’t get permanently “niched” like Gong?
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In a resource-constrained startup, how should you balance incremental product improvements versus category design work like languaging and POV creation?
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What metrics or signals best indicate that your category design is working—beyond traditional KPIs like revenue or signups?
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Transcript Preview
... the point being now is the greatest time in history to be a creator, to be an entrepreneur, to, to be a marketer. I've been a marketer for my entire adult life. It's never been greater than it is right now. And so here's the big thing that I would share. If you're somebody for whom you want to make an exponential difference, you want to innovate, you want to create new value where there wasn't, you want to have a legendary career where you can look back on your career and go, "You know what? I was part of this and that, and I was on this team." Now's the greatest time in history. And what I would say to you is, the future needs you. (instrumental music)
Welcome to Lenny's Podcast, where I interview world-class product leaders and growth experts to learn from their hard-won experiences building and growing today's most successful products. Today my guest is Christopher Lochhead. Christopher is a 13-time number one best-selling co-author, including books like Play Bigger and Niche Down. He's also a popular podcaster, co-creator of the excellent Substack Category Pirates, and is best known as the godfather of category design. He's also an advisor to over 50 venture-backed start-ups and a former three-time public company CMO. In our conversation, we dig deep into all things category design, including what exactly is category design, why in order to build a legendary business it's so essential to build your own category versus trying to become the best in an existing category, also how to actually go about creating your own category, a ton of examples of companies that did this well and didn't do this well and what we can learn from them, plus a ton of practical frameworks, including something Chris calls the better trap, also why he thinks product-market fit is a very dangerous idea. Chris is such a character, and I had such a blast speaking with Chris. With that, I bring you Christopher Lochhead after a short word from our sponsors. (instrumental music) This episode is brought to you by Mixpanel. Get deep insights into what your users are doing at every stage of the funnel at a fair price that scales as you grow. Mixpanel gives you quick answers about your users from awareness to acquisition through retention. And by capturing website activity, ad data, and multi-touch attribution right in Mixpanel, you can improve every aspect of the full user funnel. Powered by first-party behavioral data instead of third-party cookies, Mixpanel is built to be more powerful and easier to use than Google Analytics. Explore plans for teams of every size and see what Mixpanel can do for you at mixpanel.com/friends/lenny. And while you're at it, they're also hiring, so check it out at mixpanel.com/friends/lenny. This episode is brought to you by Vanta, helping you streamline your security compliance to accelerate your growth. Thousands of fast-growing companies like Gusto, Calm, Quora, and Modern Treasury trust Vanta to help build, scale, manage, and demonstrate their security and compliance programs and get ready for audits in weeks, not months. By offering the most in-demand security and privacy frameworks such as SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR, HIPAA, and many more, Vanta helps companies obtain the reports they need to accelerate growth, build efficient compliance processes, mitigate risks to their businesses, and build trust with external stakeholders. Over 5,000 fast-growing companies use Vanta to automate up to 90% of the work involved with SOC 2 and these other frameworks. For a limited time, Lenny's Podcast listeners get $1,000 off Vanta. Go to vanta.com/lenny. That's V-A-N-T-A dot com slash Lenny to learn more and to claim your discounts. Get started today. (instrumental music) Christopher, thank you so much for being here. Welcome to the podcast.
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