The Wall Street Journal covers companies. Pirate Street Journal cover categories.
Each week, we pick three headlines worth paying attention to and break down the category underneath. Live every Tuesday at 7 am PST / 10 am EST. See the news through a different lens. Keep reading in the Deep Dive Reports.
Dear Friend, Subscriber, and Category Pirate,
Here’s what we covered in this episode:
1. A $499 toothbrush in a category that gives them away free
James Dyson spent six years building a $499 toothbrush. When the Wall Street Journal asked how big the market is, he said he had no idea, and no idea how many he would sell. It runs $100 above the top Sonicare or Oral-B. A camera in the head takes 28 pictures a second, finds the gaps between your teeth, and shoots mouthwash in to floss them.
Only 30% of American adults floss every day. A third never do.
Dyson is aiming at the Superconsumer. In oral care, they own the manual brush, the power brush, the floss, and the water pick. They believe in whole mouth health, the idea that a clean mouth protects your heart and not just your breath. To that buyer, $499 buys a heart.
Crest SpinBrush. P&G put a battery in a kids’ toothbrush and sold millions, while Gillette owned the number one power brush and the number one battery.
Oral-B. Charged $7 for a battery brush you throw out in three months, where the dentist hands you one free.
Evian. Sold water in a bottle, after everyone asked who pays for something they get free.
Dyson owns 100% of a company that did $8.3 billion last year, and he built more than 5,000 vacuum prototypes before one worked. We’re predicting that in ten years Dyson will take a disproportionate slice of the dental category’s profit, then sell the data to health care.
2. The stock fell while the miles tripled
Tesla launched the Cybercab with no live stream. The stock fell 5.9% the next day, and federal safety regulators opened an audit into how Tesla self-certified a car with no steering wheel and no pedals. Regulators count about 1,000 Cybercabs built. Only 45 are registered in Texas.
The operating numbers went the other way. Unsupervised robotaxi miles went from about 380,000 in July to more than a million. Driverless Teslas in Austin went from 54 in late June to 128.
Pirate Eddie ran it through the magic triangle, the three parts that have to line up: product, company, category.
Product. Two seats, because 90% of cab and rideshare trips carry two people or fewer. No wheel, no pedals, no mirrors, no brake fluid. It cuts the psychic price too, what a ride costs you in energy instead of dollars.
Company. Unboxed manufacturing builds parts in parallel and snaps the car together like LEGO. Toyota, best in class, finishes a car every 30 to 60 seconds. The Cybercab line takes 10, and Tesla thinks it gets to 5.
Category. Cleaning stations, wireless charging, Starlink in the back seat, and fleet owners who buy the cars.
That last one is capital raising design, building the category so other people fund it. EV companies die when they run out of cash before volume brings the cost down. Tesla opened applications for customers to run their own fleets, on a car it says will eventually sell under $30,000, and tens of thousands applied.
One person cares about your future when you do it all. Tens of thousands care when they own the cars.
3. A group chat did what an agent could not
The average starting kicker or punter in a Power 4 conference makes $225,000 this season. Specialist pay is up about 61%, the second biggest jump of any position in the sport, and the top paid kicker in the country makes $600,000. Most of these guys have known each other since they were 15, from the same kicking camps. Now they trade exact pay numbers in a group chat.
One kicker got offered $40,000. He told the school what a kicker at another program was getting, pointed at his better stats, and signed for $225,000. No agent.
This is the value of your value, what your work is worth to the people paying for it. Almost everybody underprices it, including very successful people with insane track records. The kickers reframed the job, named the market, and claimed the price. This is relationship capital, the trust you build by showing up, turning into money. They trusted each other enough to say the number out loud.
Consulting, law, and banking. Everyone inside knows what the next level pays.
Public companies. The proxy statement lists the five highest paid people, salary, bonus, and stock.
Orthodontists. Top five best paid doctors, three days a week, no weekend emergencies. Nobody tells an 18 year old that.
Last Saturday a Western Michigan kicker scored all 12 of his team’s points and came a Hail Mary short of beating number 16 Michigan. The job with the least status on the field now has the clearest price in the sport.
3 conversations to have about the news with the Pirate Eddie Bot and Pirate Christopher Bot
The bots take this week’s moves and run them against your category. They come with the founding tier and they jam 24/7.
Find your Superconsumer before you size your market. Ask the bots who in your category cares the most and spends the most, and what they believe. Dyson never needed a market size. He needed whole mouth health.
Run your magic triangle. Ask the bots to pressure test your product, your company, and your category as one system. The Cybercab is cheap because the factory and the fleet were designed at the same time.
Price the value of your value. Give the bots your last three deals and ask what the work was worth to the buyer. A group chat of kickers went from $40,000 to $225,000 with no agent.
All three stories are the same story. Somebody set the price before anyone gave them permission to.
Not a founding member yet? You can join here.
Arrrrrrr,
Category Pirates 🏴☠️
Eddie Yoon
Christopher Lochhead
P.S. - Every story this week came down to the same move: find the problem before you go shopping for a solution.
The Category Design Academy is where you do that at the category level. You name the problem only you can name, then design the category around it, so you stop competing on terms somebody else set.
The next cohort starts in October. Apply now to save your seat before it sells out.
