Play Bigger Authors New Book For AI Startup Founders, Category Designers & Creator Capitalists
Pirates Christopher Lochhead & Al Ramadan back with a new book (after a decade)
(A special note from Pirate Christopher.)
You have friends & family.
Then you have people you belong to.
Who belong to you.
Thatâs Al Ramadan for me.
Today Category Pirates & Play Bigger launch the prequel to the first Category Design book, Play Bigger.
This book is the one we shouldâve written first.
You see.
For almost a decade, somethingâs been bugging us.
We introduced Category Design to the world with Play Bigger.
We talked about all kinds of problems Category Design solves. But we never named the problem in its entirety.
The dudes who preach Frame, Name, & Claim the problem.
Didnât name (the whole) problem.
(Donkeys đŤ !)
We made the same mistake (most) founders make.
Weâre entrepreneurs, creator capitalists, and category designers.
But we made the mistake of falling (too much) in love with our product.
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While preaching fall in love with the problem.
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Call it a blind spot, call it creators loving their creation.
We call it fxcking funny.
But we (finally) saw it.
Welcome to:
The Existing Market Trap.
Itâs what happens when you build something new.
And the market compares you to something old.
$5 Trillion in value was lost during the dot-com bust of the early 2000s.
Our primary category science research shows $13 trillion will be lost in The Existing Market Trap.
(Read that three times.)
More companies, careers, and capital will be lost chasing existing markets in AI. Than in any other new category in history.
It turns out.
You canât create a new game.
Playing someone elseâs old game.
But it happens every day in:
B2B and B2C
Seed to post-IPO
Startups and scale-ups
Itâs what happens when you donât change the way people think about their problems.
And you let the existing market define you.
From the very start, youâre playing a competition game.
From the very start, youâre playing a market share game.
From the very start, youâre shoving your new thing into an old aisle.
And once youâre trapped.
Youâre trapped.
You burn cash without building belief
You fight uphill for attention, leads, and relevance
Your best people leave because they want to work on something that matters
Brilliant teams with world-class products stuck in categories they didnât create.
Fighting.
Losing.
As we revealed in Play Bigger, the Category King earns 76% of the economics.
So, unless you create a new market.
You will.
Get stuck.
Scratching for 24%.
Thatâs The Existing Market Trap.
Like Category Design itself, once you see it.
And to help make the problem as clear as possible:
We mapped it.
Broke it down.
Into 13 Deadly Sins.
(Inspired in part by mini books like: Competition Derangement Syndrome, The Big Brand Lie, & The Big Product Lie)
Patterns weâve seen destroy companies, careers, and capital.
We built a system to help founders, CEOs, execs, and investors escape it.
Based on a lifetime of research, success, and failure working on designing the categories of the future with some of the greatest founders and VCs in Silicon Valley history.
The Existing Market Trap isnât a storybook.
Itâs a belief-building field guide.
A practical diagnostic.
And this one⌠this one is (very) personal.
You see.
10 years after Play Bigger, Al Ramadan and I got the band back together.
Along with two new band members Jason Wellcome and Mary Grice . Published by Category Pirates .
The Existing Market Trap is a labor of love.
Started by two guys who love each other. But it wasnât always like this.
After we launched Play Bigger, Al and I went in different directions.
We let dumb đŠ (and even dumber sh!t heads) get in the way.
We separated.
It sucked.
But the one thing we never lost was belief.
In Category Design, the problem it solves, and the mega difference it makes.
Because like the entrepreneurs we admire, weâre missionaries.
We never lost belief in the mission. Or each other.
Love is powerful.
So is belief.
That word (belief) is the heartbeat of our new Existing Market Trap book.
Belief is the most powerful thing you can build.
And most companies never do.
Belief in a different future is what creates legendary products, companies, & categories.
Most companies ship product.
Not belief.
If youâve ever felt like:
Youâre being compared to the wrong thing
Youâre pushing uphill while others coast downhill
Youâre building something great, but no one gets it
Youâre not alone.
Youâre not failing.
Youâre in the trap.
The book we should have written before Play Bigger.
It already hit #1
Short, sharp, and very real.
(Itâs about 130 pages. You can read it in one sitting.)
Written for founders, CEOs, executives, creator capitalists and investors who want to create different futures.
(You've done dummer things with $20.)
Let us know what you think.
Our dream is that you donât get stuck. That youâre not lost in the $13 Trillion.
And that Category Design helps you create the different future you dream of.
Because the future needs you,
Pirate Christopher
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