What is Category Pirates?

Category Pirates is the authority on Category Creation and Category Design.

Twice a month, we publish mini-books for the radically different—who want to see, design, and claim the future by becoming known for a niche they own.

Here’s what’s included:

• Mini-books (4,000 - 8,000 words) on Category Design principles, frameworks, case studies, data, and more.

• Stories of some of the world’s most legendary Category Designers of all time (entrepreneurs, executives, investors, creators, inventors, writers, artists, and more).

• Category-defining lessons from Category Kings and Queens, including practical applications you can use to achieve your own exponential business and career outcomes.

Stay up-to-date

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—as well as access to our archive of 57+ mini-books.

We also have several books available for purchase on Amazon:

• The 22 Laws of Category Design

• Snow Leopard: How Legendary Writers Create A Category Of One

• The Category Design Toolkit

• A Marketer’s Guide To Category Design

Understand our unique publishing process

While working on a book together for over two years, it became clear we weren’t really writing one long book—we 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, here’s 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 and Audible books on Amazon.

• We combine certain mini-books into big books and publish them on Amazon as eBooks, physical books, and Audible books.

If you just 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. That’s because you will spend between $20–$40 if you subscribe to Category Pirates for 1-2 months. Or you can spend the same amount and buy several big books.

But if you want to receive new and different category design insights 6-18 months before the rest of the world, you’re better off choosing an annual subscription.

Become a pirate!

“Why join the Navy if you can be a pirate?” - Steve Jobs

Meet The 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 🏴‍☠️.

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 world’s 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 “Make Your Best Customers Even Better” (Harvard Business Review magazine, March 2014) and “Why It Pays to Be a Category Creator” (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 “godfather of category design”.

Lochhead is a #1 Apple Business Podcaster, #1 Amazon Marketing author, a category designer, and coCreator of Category Pirates 🏴‍☠️.

He hosts the award-winning dialogue podcast “Follow Your Different” and award-winning “Lochhead on Marketing” podcast and is co-author of two international bestsellers: Niche Down and Play Bigger.

The Marketing Journal says he’s “one of the best minds in marketing”, Podcast Magazine says he’s “the best business podcaster”, NBA legend Bill Walton calls him “a quasar” and The Economist calls him “off-putting to some.”

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, he’s 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. He’s 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 “influencers” and “hustle porn stars” 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 “Real DEA Narcos” Steve Murphy and Javier Peña, CEO of The Philadelphia 76ers and New Jersey Devils Scott O’Neil, 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.

He’s 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, and a driving force behind the scenes of the Pirate Ship.

Katrina helps manage, write, and publish content, wrangles ideas, engages with subscribers, and ensures the digital wheels keep turning.

As a newly-initiated category designer, Katrina is learning how to unlearn and relearning how to learn. Discovering the radically different business discipline of category design has changed the course of her career, which began in the startup tech world as an editor and a writer. She has collaborated with companies such as HubSpot, Digital Press, ThirdLove, Photographers Without Borders, and of course, Category Pirates. She has spent her entire career diving into words and has brought over 573 articles, 18 mini-books, and multiple books to life.

She is 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 “crazy” one who is constantly on the move. She has since lived and worked in over 18 countries and dozens of cities—and the list continues to grow. 

No matter where she is, Katrina helps creators get their work out into the world.