Assume the position
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The document discusses how to design a new product category at the early stages by outlining key components including defining the problem and market size, exploring new technological possibilities, establishing ownership over the category, achieving product-market fit, and articulating your unique role in bringing the vision to life. It emphasizes that clearly defining an emerging category helps align stakeholders around a shared vision and is important for a startup's success.
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Assume the position
- 1. Assume the position Category design at the early stage
- 2. Agenda Why? What is it? Design? 5 key components Workshop Conclusion
- 3. Who am I? @epowell101 A political economist in start-up land A few time successful enterprise infrastructure entrepreneur An advisor, investor, board member and fan of entrepreneurs everywhere Husband, Dad, vestry member, voracious learner now focused on machine learning and the future of the enterprise A grinder who got lucky
- 6. Why? Daniel Kahneman, Nobel Prize Thinking Fast & Slow ~ 50 cognitive biases Anchoring effect, Choice supportive bias
- 7. “Category thinking works because it’s the way our brains work”* * Play Bigger
- 8. Why? Ann Miura Ko, Floodgate “Of the 4 powers of a start-up, often the most important”
- 9. Why? Creativity You are an artist
- 10. “A clear view of an emerging category ties you, your team, your product, your partners, your customers, your competitors, analysts and your investors together w/ a shared vision.”
- 11. What is a category? Is it the same as a market? Is it our vision? “A category, AKA a space, can be seen as a total product addressing user needs in a new way. It should address each of the 5 Forces in a differentiated way, reflecting changes in needs and technologies.”*
- 12. Total product* Customer corridor The customer starts using your product when they hear/read your company name or maybe see your code or your APIs.
- 15. ➔Problem & size ➔New possibilities ➔Ownership ➔Product market fit ➔You
- 16. New possibilities enabling new categories Oldies but goodies: Moore’s Law Metcalfe’s Law Newer: IoT and mobile Everybody a developer
- 17. Ownership
- 18. Product market fit It isn’t enough If you have to ask… Improving unit economics over time One secret approach is to build something that works Vertical vs. horizontal? How high in the stack? How much of the total product?
- 19. You Why you? What is your “I” story? How did you come by your “unconventional truth”? Can you mold the brains of millions AND build a great product, and team, and deliver?
- 20. “A clear view of an emerging category ties you, your team, your product, your partners, your customers, your competitors, analysts and your investors together w/ a shared vision.”
- 21. Let’s do it! (frenetic whiteboarding)
- 22. Example Unique IP that ties together memory into a persistent tier ➔ Problem & size ➔ New possibilities ➔ Ownership ➔ Product market fit ➔ You
- 23. Victory “Our basic plan of operation is to advance to to keep on advancing regardless of whether we have to go over, under, or through the enemy.”
Notes de l'éditeur
- Excited about being here. I’d like us to have a little fun. And maybe to sharpen a skill I think we all have - which is to see the future and to see the future in sufficient detail that it matters.
- Here’s what I’ll cover. I really want you to come away from this feeling more confident in your ability to do category design.
- What I’ll be talking about tonight has changed my life. Now this is a ‘beta’ talk. It is the first time I’m trying to really communicate what has always been a secret power. Turns out categories are now popular as you’ll see. Let me given you one example from my past - open storage. We designed a company, called Nexenta, to build and own an open storage market. And it worked to the tune of hundreds of millions raised, thousands of customers, and a life changing amount of capital appreciation. And who are you?
- These are not throw away slides. This is your chance to change the mental model of the viewer and to share with them your unconventional version of the truth.
- Tonight I’m going to talk about designing your category - as I think it is crucially important if you want to breakout as a company that you do this now. So put as much care into your category design as you put into product design. Actually - I’ll argue that you cannot really do one without the other. Also, note the word design. What I’m getting here is that the feel of your company - from your vision of the future through who is on the team to the font on your web site should HANG TOGETHER.
- How many of you are engineers? So when you are interfacing with and hoping to control a complex system - how important is it to know how that system responds to stimulae - how it acts if not how it works? Pretty important, right? Well this guy won a Nobel prize in part by pointing out that human rationality is inherently limited. And while the typical explanation for this refers back to the savannah when our ancestors were being chased by hyenias and hippos and we needed to manage risk instinctually - psychologists actually point out that in fast moving areas of life - for example, technology - that we again and again fall back on earlier means of making sense of the world.
- In short…..
- Another reason is that investors - especially investors in the earliest of stages -> your stages - invest in part in companies that they think can define and dominate a space. Here is where we can talk about businesses that gain 85% market share while retaining 50%+ margins. You want to be that company. You want to be a Thunder Lizard; apparently. And while Floodgate has done a good job articulating the 4 powers of a start-up and the importance of Category Power, countless others talk about wanting to share with the investors a view of how the future will look. The point of category design is use this vision of the future as a chance to design a playing board for your company.
- A lot of what it takes to win as an entrepreneur is grit and determination. For me, I’ve always flipped the manic switch - and attacked relentlessly until the momentum builds. In such a state your ability to chart a 2-3 year vision is often limited. Plan the work, work the plan.
- So - you should own the category just as you own your product. Don’t just do the lean start-up on your product, do it on your definition of the space. And understand that it is the total solution or total product is what solves the needs of customers. You need to own that - even if you are only a part of it - in order to insure that you address the customer needs.
- I have not seen anyone else point this out. Maybe this is an unconventional truth. Or maybe it is just BS. For me, though, the total product is crucially important. It gives you a way to show how the other pieces of the evolving ecosystem are going to address and assist you. In my case, we saw that Intel was going to want to grow from PCs into servers and into other spaces like storage. The result was hugely powerful for us.
- Think through how legacy companies will try to play this out. And these days really think through how Google, Amazon, Apple and of course Facebook and others will do so.
- I’ll discuss problem & size here. Thing enormous. And the rest I’ll discuss in turn.
- So - you should own the category just as you own your product. Don’t just do the lean start-up on your product, do it on your definition of the space. And understand that it is the total solution or total product is what solves the needs of customers. You need to own that - even if you are only a part of it - in order to insure that you address the customer needs.
- I want to hear a lot of WE from my leaders. Except when they tell me why they see the world the way they do. That’s a personal moment. Say I.
- Man in the arena could fit here as well :)