Category Pirates is the authority on Category Creation and Category Design.
Several times per month, our writing band publishes mini-books and insights for the radically differentâentrepreneurs, executives, marketers, and creators who want to see, design, and claim the future by becoming known for a niche they own.
How?
By learning how to see the world through âa category lens.â
That means understanding and applying the principles of category design and category creation.
What is Category Design?
Category design is a business discipline that helps companies earn the majority of market share (up to 76%) in a specific category of products or services.
It involves educating the market about a new, often ignored problem and providing a solution. Thatâs why itâs often associated with a breakthrough product or service. When category design is done successfully, you:
Become known for a niche you own
Attract a loyal following of high-spending Superconsumers
Earn the majority of market share
In other words, you make it impossible for someone else to âdo what you do.â So, you become the Category King. And ultimately, you change the world AND create exponentially more value for both shareholders (and the entire market) in the process.
Our research shows the Category King of a given market captures 76% of the economics.
Itâs a winner-takes-all game.
But most marketers, entrepreneurs, creators, and investors spend their entire careers competing for only 24% of the value opportunity of a given category. Theyâre not the Category Kingâand they donât even know it. As a result, they waste time and effort competing over demand instead of creating new demand.
To help you create that future, we publish several âmini-booksâ every month that educate you on how to use category design to exit the fight for âdemand captureâ and enter the game of âdemand creation.â
Hereâs whatâs included:
Monthly mini-books (4,000 - 8,000 words) on Category Design principles, including new frameworks, case studies, data, and ways of thinking.
Category-defining lessons from Category Kings and Queens, including practical applications you can use to achieve your own exponential business and career outcomes.
Inspiring stories about the worldâs most legendary Category Designers of all time (entrepreneurs, executives, investors, creators, inventors, writers, artists, etc).
Every new mini-book goes directly to your inbox.
Free subscribers receive a preview of the new edition, and paying subscribers receive the full edition and access to our archive of 74+ mini-books.
New here? Start with our most popular mini-books:
A note on our unique publishing process
While working on a book together for over two years, it became clear we werenât really writing one long bookâwe were writing dozens of mini-books. And we felt, instead of trying to cram all the information together into one big dense stack of paper, our readers would be better off consuming these ideas, frameworks, and new ways of thinking about category design piece by piece, week by week, digitally.
So, hereâs how our publishing process works:
We publish all new mini-books to the Category Pirates Substack.
A few weeks after Substack, we publish certain mini-books as eBooks on Amazon.
We combine certain mini-books into big books and publish them on Amazon as eBooks, physical books, and Audible books.
If you want to read one mini-book (and want to save money), you might be better off waiting and buying it as an eBook on Amazon. Thatâs because you will spend between $20â$40 if you subscribe to Category Pirates for 1-2 months. Or you can spend the same amount and buy several big books.
âď¸ Snow Leopard: How Legendary Writers Create A Category Of One
âď¸ The Category Design Toolkit: Beyond Marketing: 15 Frameworks For Creating & Dominating Your Niche
But if you want to receive new and different category design insights 6-18 months before the rest of the world, youâre better off choosing an annual subscription.
A few words from readers â¤ď¸
"Every Category Pirates edition is of immense value. Seriously, itâs like a $100,000 MBA with every read." - Steven Olsher, Founder of Podcast Magazine
âLet me start by confessing that Iâm a Category Pirates Superconsumer. I devour each and every essay they write since Play Bigger came out. I could not recommend it more highly.â - Gina Bianchini, Founder and CEO of Mighty Networks
âI love the way you all think! Go Pirates! The world of value creation and value communication viewed through the lens of Category Design looks very different than Marketing, Selling, and Brand Management.â - Kim C Korn, Creator of Regenerative Managing
âEvery single person is unique in their own way - why do they then need to get 'branded'. You Pirates continue to produce rock-solid, well-backed, funny, and deeply informative material. Keep going! đâ - David Loewen, Author of Box Cutter Co. Substack
Join 27,000+ category designers, marketers, & entrepreneurs learning how to think different!
âWhy join the Navy if you can be a pirate?â -Steve Jobs
Meet The Category Pirates
Eddie Yoon has written more for the HBR on category strategy than any other person.
Eddie is the founder of EddieWouldGrow, LLC, a think tank and advisory firm on growth strategy. And a co-creator of Category Pirates đ´ââ ď¸.
Previously he was one of the senior partners at The Cambridge Group, a strategy consulting firm. His work over the past two decades has driven over $8 billion dollars of annual incremental revenue. In particular, 8 of his clients have doubled or tripled in revenue in less than 8 years. Eddie is one of the worldâs leading experts on finding and monetizing superconsumers to grow and create new categories.
He is the author of the book, Superconsumers: A Simple, Speedy and Sustainable Path to Superior Growth (Harvard Business School Press, 2016). His book was named one of the Best Business Books of 2017 by Strategy & Business. He is also the author of over 100 articles, including âMake Your Best Customers Even Betterâ (Harvard Business Review magazine, March 2014) and âWhy It Pays to Be a Category Creatorâ (Harvard Business Review magazine, March 2013). Additionally, he has appeared on CNBC and MSNBC and been quoted in The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, and Forbes and has been a keynote speaker in the U.S., Canada, Kenya, Australia, New Zealand, Denmark, the UK, and Japan. Eddie holds an AB in Political Science and Economics from the University of Chicago. Having been born and raised in Hawaii, he went to the Punahou School in Honolulu. Eddie lives in Chicago with his wife and three children.
Christopher Lochhead is co-author of Play Bigger and Niche Down and a âgodfather of category designâ.
Lochhead is a #1 Apple Business Podcaster, #1 Amazon Marketing author, a category designer, and coCreator of Category Pirates đ´ââ ď¸.
He hosts the award-winning dialogue podcast âFollow Your Differentâ and award-winning âLochhead on Marketingâ podcast and is co-author of two international bestsellers: Niche Down and Play Bigger.
The Marketing Journal says heâs âone of the best minds in marketingâ, Podcast Magazine says heâs âthe best business podcasterâ, NBA legend Bill Walton calls him âa quasarâ and The Economist calls him âoff-putting to some.â
Lochhead has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups, is a venture capital limited partner and a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO (Vantive, Scient, Mercury Interactive), and entrepreneur.
Lochhead is a dyslexic paperboy who got thrown out of school at 18. With few other options, he started a company.
Over 35 years in the entrepreneurial foxhole, heâs experienced the bliss of winning, the pain of losing, made a lot of friends and a few enemies, and learned to laugh about the whole thing. Heâs raised venture capital, taken companies public, helped create billions in market cap, been part of countless M&A transactions, served on many boards, been on the cover of few magazines and has failed a lot, been publicly criticized, humiliated, and fired. A bunch.
He thinks George Carlin was right, whisky is a good thing, The Ramones are legendary, Tom Waits is a gift, K.D. Lang and Leonard Cohen are angels, and that social media âinfluencersâ and âhustle porn starsâ are a scourge on the earth.
Lochhead lives in Santa Cruz, California with his wife, a flock of hens, and three wild cats.
He has shared the microphone and stage with a wide range of legends like:
President Barack Obama, General Colin Powell, NBA Legend Bill Walton, General Stanley McChrystal, Navy Seal Chris Fussell, Billionaire Zoom CEO Eric Yuan, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Olympic Champion Kerri Walsh Jennings, #1 Legal Escort Alice Little, The âReal DEA Narcosâ Steve Murphy and Javier PeĂąa, CEO of The Philadelphia 76ers and New Jersey Devils Scott OâNeil, Netflix Founding CEO Marc Randolph, #1 technology analyst Ray Wang, UFC Champion Luke Rockhold, Category Creation Guru Eddie Yoon, 1st blind person to summit Mt. Everest Erik Weihenmayer, billionaire entrepreneur Jeff Hoffman, baseball legend Darryl Strawberry, billionaire entrepreneur Tom Golisano, Former #1 adult entertainment star Mia Khalifa, Stanford Prof. Margaret Ann Neale, Stanford Prof. Tina Seelig, NBA legend Andre Iguodala, 1-800-Got-Junk Founder Brian Scudamore, Cards Against Humanity Founder Max Temkin, Strava CoFounder Mark Gainey, billionaire entrepreneur Tom Siebel, UFC Hall of Famer Bas Rutten and, best-selling authors Dushka Zapata, Kim Scott, Hal Erod, Ken Blanchard, Tucker Max, Sebastian Junger, Kevin Maney, Amy Morin, Safi Bahcall, Scott Galloway, Jerry Colonna, Jules Pieri, Joe Pine, Ryan Holiday, Courtney Carver and countless others.
Heâs been featured in/on:
Harvard Business Review, CNBC, CNN, Fox Business, Associated Press, The Economist, CBS News, Fortune, Forbes, Business Insider, and countless podcasts.
Katrina Kirsch is the Head of Operations & Publishing for Category Pirates (aka, the navigator of the Pirate Ship).
An editor who helps self-publishing entrepreneurs develop their books, Katrina Kirsch has worked behind the scenes for Silicon Valley founders and multi-million dollar tech startups. She has collaborated on 500+ articles and several books for B2B, B2C, and non-profit clients such as HubSpot, Photographers Without Borders, Digital Press, M1 Finance, and more.
Discovering the radically different business discipline of category design has changed the course of her career.
Today, sheâs helping run the Category Pirates Ship and the Category Design Academy. Sheâs also the founder of Editpreneur, where she helps self-publishing business leaders develop, edit, and publish their books.
Born and raised in Chicago, Katrina began traveling the world at the age of eighteen. After a brief battle with traditional office life in 2015, she switched to a remote work lifestyle and became known as the âcrazyâ one who is constantly traveling. She has since lived and worked in over 18 countries and dozens of citiesâand the list continues to grow.Â
Wherever she is, Katrina helps creators get their work out into the world.
Thanks for checking out Category Pirates. We hope to see you around the Pirate Ship.
Arrrrrr,
Category Pirates
