Introducing Lean Category Design

Rapid Resolution For Category Design Dilemmas

Differentiation Is the Foundation Of Traction.

There’s a good reason I write about differentiation, positioning, and category design so much.

If you accomplish only one thing in your quest for traction,
it should be establishing absolute clarity about why you're different.

And when it comes to understanding and articulating why you're different—not just "better"—there's no more effective method than Category Design.

As one of the few people who have been practicing Category Design for over 8 years, I've learned firsthand that creating a truly different offering is the difference between being considered or ignored, between competing on price or escaping comparison altogether.

Category Design is Hard Without Help

If you’ve read Play Bigger,

Category Pirates 🏴‍☠️

or heard of category design from a friend, you’ve likely been energized by the potential of creating a category of your own, but have found it difficult to execute in practice.

Maybe some of the Category Design concepts are still a little fuzzy for you?

Perhaps you have an idea for a category name - or multiple ideas - but are not quite sure which is correct?

Or maybe, like one of my clients, a you have a 200 slide deck of quality category thinking amassed over a couple of years, but can’t quite resolve it into a single direction?

The truth is that while Category Design is a very powerful concept, the methodology of how you execute it in practice is still a work in progress - for just about everyone.

This is especially true at the earlier startup and scale-up stages because most literature and advice seem tailored for big companies.

• But how do you state assertive points-of-view while you are still learning and iterating every day?

• How do you look for “weird data” when you have no data at all?

• How do execute a lightning strike with no money or resources to create a splash with?

Most people just need a little help from someone with some category design experience to help them get unscrambled and over the line.

But BIG Category Design Can Be Inaccessible

As demand for Category Design has grown, so has the supply of agencies and advisors to help you with it.

But I regularly hear of clients being quoted more than $100k for projects (even $250k from the biggest guys) and several months of elapsed work.

This is not unreasonable, it’s just for a different category of client, which may not be you.

Big Category Design Is Expensive For A Good Reason

There are many fair reasons why these big-name consultancies recommend high-priced projects to big clients.

Executing category design for a big, mature company is genuinely expensive because:

• Reaching the perfect naming and languaging takes time
  Often the perfect names and soundbites don’t arise in a meeting room. They arise while you’re brushing your teeth, walking the dog, or surfing. That makes it risky for consultancies to quote for, so they need to pad the project with enough time for this to happen

• Building internal consensus is slow
  Category design requires whole company alignment to be effective in execution. So if you are a big company, you have lots of opinions to consider and buy-in to win. This means more time, and more iteration to plan for, and charge for.

• Executing a lightning strike at scale is a ton of work
  Making a major, big budget splash into the market that’s big enough to move the needle for a big company is a gargantuan task. So it’s important it is done right, and not wasted. This means lots of planning, alignment, measurement, and more, which of course needs to be paid for.

• You need to be right at launch
  Category design means going out on a limb and making a very public commitment to your POV and positioning. So when you are big enough to have a brand and reputation to protect, you need to invest in extra prep and assurance to make sure you get it right.

All of which means more risk, more time, and therefore more dollars to spend.

But What If You Don't Need All That?

If you’re a startup or post-chasm scale-up, you can’t afford the luxury of hundred grand, 3-month long big category design projects.

But you also don’t have the burdens of big brand recognition to protect, or big, bloated organizations of people to build consensus among. So you don’t need to pay for a Big Category Design process either.

The Lean Approach to Category Design

I’ve been a practitioner and superfan of the Lean Startup methodology for a dozen or more years.

(I was even previously an advisor to Eric Ries’ Lean Startup Company and the host of the official Lean Startup podcast for some time.)

As far as I know, I was the first to identify that Lean Startup and Category Design are actually complementary methods, as I wrote in…

The Invisible Intersection of Category Design and Lean Startup

But the real opportunity is not just to use the two methods in parallel, it is to meld them together and create a category design process that is intrinsically lean in itself.

Now. “Lean” doesn’t just mean “Cheap.”

True to the real virtues of The Lean Startup, Lean Category Design is:

• Rapid

• Testable

• Iterative

But by applying this process, it does also end up being cheaper too. 🙂

How it Works And Why

I've been developing and refining this process throughout my 8-year journey in Category Design. Recently, I've put it to the test with half a dozen clients, fine-tuning the process before unveiling it to you today.

The Process

Lean Category Design breaks down into 5 core steps.

1. Category Prototype
   A rapid, non-consensus pass-through category design to discover your category with about 80% accuracy.

2. Customer Prototype
   Applies your category strategy to example customer-facing touchpoints to help you experience it as a customer would (Web landing page, Product Hunt tagline, PR Boilerplate)

3. Investor Prototype
   Executes category strategy as investor-facing deliverables to uplift fundraising storytelling (Pitch deck slides, cover email)

4. Testing & Validation
   Deconstructs category strategy into underlying assumptions, provides strategy to validate hypotheses & prototypes

5. Lightning Strike Launch
   Plan how to launch the category POV at the scale you need and start bending the market to your vision

I’ll expand on each of these in future content, but for now let’s focus on why it works.

Why It Works

Through 8 years of practice, I’ve encountered many unwritten ways that category design projects can become stuck, expensive, or fail completely. So I created Lean Category design as an antidote to these common problems.

Here are some of the most common traps and how Lean Category Design avoids them.

Don’t Start With The Category Name

When most people first hear of Category Design and start applying it for themselves, they typically jump straight to trying to think of a new category name for their product.

And that’s where they get stuck.

It’s easy to think of cool category names, but it is very difficult to know if they are right for you, if they will work in the real world, and how to connect them to a consistent narrative across your business.

In fact, the category name, and the “languaging” or messaging around it is just the tip of the iceberg. Sure, it is the visible and memorable part that gets all the attention, but it is the unseen effort beneath the surface that defines its success.

Lean Category Design solves this by working through a structured process that builds up to the right category name.

The Lean Category Design Prototype Process

1. Purpose
   Start by uncovering your motivations and passions for creating your offering, reflect on your founding anecdote, and distill your core purpose

2. 3P Analysis
   Define and analyze the Problem you want to solve, Person you are solving it for, and the Product that solves it. You workshop which is your primary motivation to lead from, and collect problem and customer insights, and product engineering insights on the way.

3. Point Of View
   Next, you complete some exercises that help you condense these insights and opinions into a refined, compelling, and assertive POV statement that forms the basis of your narrative. This is comprised of

   1. The consensus context
      that makes it easy to agree the problem is real and valuable

   2. The contrarian insight,
      that conveys what you have come to believe about the problem, that others don’t “get”

   3. The solution mandate
      which is the new category of solution that is therefore needed, given the contrarian insight.

4. Category Bisection
   This is the fun part: where your category magically names itself.
   Now that the POV has defined the need for a new type of solution, it acts like a razor that cuts the entire market into just 2 categories:

   1. A collection of solutions that DO agree with the POV (Your new category)

   2. Everything else that does not. (The anti-category)

   
   Then you just need to put a name on “a”.
   When something does agree with the POV, what is it called?
   

5. Messaging
   Finally, you’ll transpose highlights from the previous exercises into a messaging grid that will resolve your hierarchy of messages, what to say, and crucially, what not to say.

The real unlock here, is that you don’t just throw cool category names at a wall to see what sticks. You work through a logical flow that leads to a sharp POV statement, then that POV is what defines whether or not the category name is correct.

I can’t tell you if your category name idea is right,
But my process can.

The 80-20 Rule

Lean philosophy is fairly easy to apply to mostly left-brained domains like engineering or product development where testable hypotheses and pivots are commonplace.

But it is harder to apply in the more instinctive, left-brained, and taste-orientated field of Category Design.

So instead of billing contingency time for consensus building and inspiration strikes, Lean Category Design advocates short bursts of work on focused workshops that you do pay for, plus ample ambient thinking time in between that you don’t pay for.

In other words, you pay for the 20% of the work that gets you to 80% of the right answer. Then you cover the last steps on your own time and dime.

Even more importantly, Lean Category Design separates WHAT you want to say, from HOW to say it.

• WHAT to say
  is a logical, strategic rationale that is either right or wrong, and can be solved in a predictable amount of time. (20% of effort, 80% of outcome)

• HOW to say it
  is a creative, unpredictable exercise that is more nebulous, open-ended and liable to overruns (80% of effort, 20% of outcome)

Lean Category Design will get you on the dartboard for the right answer,
From there you can find the bullseye.

Non-consensus assumptions

Unlike Big Category Design, Lean Category Design is not a consensus process.

Lean Category Design is practiced by the CEO and a maximum of one other person working together with a guide. Together they make assertions and assumptions on behalf of the rest of the company and keep moving towards a category prototype.

You do not attempt to build consensus from colleagues or customers as you go. You make note of your assumptions and come back to test them once you have a coherent prototype to respond to.

Once a prototype is created, we can move to testing it, gathering validation that will help build internal consensus.

Don’t just be agreeable,
Be successful.

Prototypes and Testing

Now that you are free from the Big Category Design process, you don’t need to keep everything secret until you unveil it in a high-stakes lightning strike. You now have the opportunity to rapidly test, learn, and iterate.

You’ll create customer and investor deliverables to prototype standards that you can test and validate before betting the farm on.

You’ll also learn how to separate testing the underlying hypotheses and assumptions that need to be correct, from testing the creative execution, which is more subjective.

You’ll fail little and early, drive the risk from the process, iterate, and improve.

If it doesn’t resonate,
it’s not great.

How To Get Started With Lean Category Design

I introduce Lean Category Design today not just as a service from me, but as a process that you will be able to follow on your own if prefer.

You Can Go It Alone

Having considered books, PDFs, seminars and more, I think the most efficient way to enable you to practice this yourself would be via a digital course.

This would allow a combination of text, videos, templates and other media, which I believe are needed to explain the methods.

Before creating a fully functional interactive course, I plan to experiment with an email based course, which will be free.

I don’t have a timeline for creating this just yet, but will judge it based on demand. If you are interested in trying the course while it is free, please drop your email on this page here to be notified when available.

Or Let Me Be Your Personal Coach

Over the last few months I have been quietly testing offering Lean Category Design Coaching with half a dozen clients.

It has been a huge success.

With just 4 workshops over 2-3 weeks, these clients have all successfully reached a compelling category prototype that has clarified their thinking and filled them with enthusiasm.

Best of all, by limiting my paid time to just those few workshops and doing the “homework” between themselves, they have saved even more money compared to my full service offering, reaching a strong category prototype for just a few grand.

Here’s what a couple of them had to say:

• "Chris was able to help create structure around something that is otherwise elusive and amorphous. As a founder navigating uncharted terrain, the Lean Category Design method is a solid process and lead us to a great outcome."
  Sam Hatoum. CEO: Narrative.

• "Thank you again for all of your help in working with us. We are extremely happy with the results thus far on our category design journey!"
  Adam Matyja. CoFounder: Soilflo

Visit my Lean Category Design Coaching page to learn more.

Free Office Hours Consultation

I am also now opening up my office hours to anyone who wants to dump their category conundrums on me and pick my brain for 30 minutes. Totally free and no obligation - click here to book.

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