"Create your own category — nobody legendary ever competed in someone else's"
Evidence from the Archive
Category Pirates / Play Bigger
Otis: became the category queen of elevators by reframing the problem, not just building a better product
Purell: created the 'hand sanitizer' category by framing the question 'How do I wash my hands in the absence of water?'
Christopher Lochhead is a 13-time number one bestselling co-author of books including Play Bigger and Niche Down, co-creator of Category Pirates on Substack, advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups, and a former three-time public company CMO. He is widely known as the Godfather of Category Design. Their core argument: Create your own category -- nobody legendary ever competed in someone else's. 76% of the economics in any category flow to the creator and leader.
The evidence is specific: Purell: created the 'hand sanitizer' category by framing the question 'How do I wash my hands in the absence of water?'. Furthermore, salesforce: created 'cloud CRM' and waged a public war against on-premise software with the 'no software' logo. Otis: became the category queen of elevators by reframing the problem, not just building a better product.
In Christopher Lochhead's own words: "Do I want to compete for 24% of an existing market category? Or do I want to create my own where if I can execute, I will earn two-thirds of the economics? That's the decision that most entrepreneurs make, that they don't know that they made." (Explaining the economics of category creation vs. competing in existing markets.)