skip to content

← back to the plays

independence5 unconnected · 2 more authors in those circles
applies to

b2b, no audience needed

mixed results

confidence

high

evidence

19 claims · 9 articles · 4 receipts

window

2010-04-12 → 2026-06-25

5 builders who never spoke to each other

Enter a category buyers already recognise

Naming a new category means paying to teach the market what you are before you can sell anything, and the inventor is rarely the one who collects. Taking a practice people already follow and doing it visibly better keeps the explaining short and the demand pre-existing.

The method

  1. 01

    Bootstrappers should resist the urge to invent a category, because you don't have the time, money or energy to teach the market what your thing even is.

  2. 02

    Even the celebrated visionaries were riding momentum in an existing category; look for the pattern of a widespread product that everyone owns and nobody enjoys, and attack that gap.

  3. 03

    Pick an established category that is still trending upward rather than a novel one; commoditised is acceptable, shrinking is not.

  4. 04

    Assume you cannot manufacture demand; almost every successful product is an iteration sitting on demand that already accumulated in its category.

  5. 05

    Look for demand that is already in motion and build for where those people are heading, rather than trying to start the movement yourself.

What it returned

  • 2010

    Jason Cohen on WP Engine (WordPress hosting, started 2010): bootstrapping the first 18 months would have gone badly with any other CMS; the size and growth of that market was critical.

  • 1888

    Kodak's 1888 camera itself built on earlier iterations, and every camera innovation since has ridden the category's growing demand.

  • 2000

    Xerox PARC produced the mouse, Ethernet, the laser printer and the windowed interface and profited from none of it; Bell Labs produced Unix, C and the laser with the same result; the companies that laid the fibre backbones went bankrupt in the 2000 crash.

  • Cell phones as the existing category, universal ownership as the momentum, general dislike as the opening for the iPhone.

Sources

the second source

Three plays a week, for the phase you are in

No roundup of links, no news. Three tactics more than one builder arrived at separately, with the numbers each one returned and the disagreements left in.

One email a week. Unsubscribe in one click, and the address is used for this and nothing else.

More in positioning

all positioning plays

the second source

Three plays a week, for the phase you are in

No roundup of links, no news. Three tactics more than one builder arrived at separately, with the numbers each one returned and the disagreements left in.

963 corroborated plays to draw from · 3 a week

One email a week. Unsubscribe in one click, and the address is used for this and nothing else.