Hywel Carver, CEO of Skiller Whale, shares his company's category design journey and the challenges they faced in defining their offering and how the workshop by Category Design Advisors, along with the book "Play Bigger," helped them create a new category, "Live Team Coaching."

Frederik Hendriksen, founder of Rensair, introduces a revolutionary smart ventilation system tailored for commercial real estate, enhancing energy efficiency and indoor air quality.

In this episode, Lauren Pufpaf, President, COO, and co-founder of Feed Media Group, talks about how she and her team used Category Design to shift gears while upscaling their company.

In this episode, we have a conversation with Brian Schiff on Category Design and A.I. A.I. has created a massive shift in context, and with that comes massive opportunities for category designers, but it also means a flood of competitors into the same space.

Al Ramadan is the CEO of Play Bigger, LLC and one of the co-authors of “Play Bigger”. In this replay of our live AMA event, Discover how shifts in context—ranging from environmental changes to global events like pandemics, wars, or financial crises—can spark innovative solutions.

In this episode, we interview Rebecca Kirstein Resch, the founder and CEO at inqli. Her company is dedicated to helping workplace teams tap into the power of ‘tacit knowledge.’ Listen in to hear the insights sh has unlocked through her founder’s journey and how she’s t

In this episode, Nick Tippmann, former CMO of Greenlight Guru, joins us to break down his journey as a marketer turned investor. Nick shares why vertical SaaS companies should think like category designers and how he evaluates the category potential of early-stage startups.

In this episode, Dan Gottlieb, a Senior Director Analyst at Gartner, joins us. He shares insights on defining categories, how startups can stand out with their unique capabilities, and the right time for them to educate analysts about their solutions.

In our AMA with Sangram Vajre, a top B2B SaaS category designer, learn how he used events and community at Terminus, Peak, and GTM Partners to drive category strategy, and how it's still feasible to build your own category and community.

In this episode, Brad Luttrell joins us to talk through how he discovered category design a year and a half ago, why it was the strategy Holler Commerce needed to adopt, and what he has done to design social commerce as a service category ever since.

In this episode, Ken Rutsky discusses 'category memetics,' explaining how new categories can replicate like memes, spreading rapidly. He shares strategies for creating successful category memes and delves into the research behind his insights.

Strategy and brand design expert Josh Lowman walks us through the three tools he uses to quickly pitch and vet new category ideas, and engages with our community in our monthly AMA.

Scott Albro, co-founder and CEO of Goldie shares his insights on why analyst buy-in is crucial for category success, strategies for effectively communicating your category vision, and real-world examples from his time at TOPO.

Innovative firms must show how their solutions differ from the norm and why that matters. Crafting the right narrative is tough, but a good POV helps. We're joined by David West, CEO of Proscia, who shares how a workshop helped him convey why their pathology breakthrough is vital

Explore category design's diverse applications with Jonathan Gandolf, CEO of The Juice. From software to breweries, he's mastered this discipline. Now, he's contemplating its role in his new venture. Tune in to discover his decision-making process in this insightful episode.

In this episode, Jared of RevGenius discusses intertwining category design with community building. Starting with a small LinkedIn group in 2020, he grew it to 40k members. Highlights: his journey, making unique communities, the need for a shared POV, and category design's role.

In this episode, Pietro Bezza, co-founder of Connect Ventures, introduces the concept of 'minimal viable category design,' aimed at guiding early-stage startups in addressing and promoting their unique solutions.

After co-authoring "Play Bigger" in 2016, Kevin Maney and Mike Damphousse founded Category Design Advisors. Now, with John Rougeux and 40+ clients later, they've reworked their category POV. In this live AMA, they discussed applying their own strategies and the lessons learned.

In this episode, James Carbary of Sweet Fish Media explains his shift from blogging to dominance in B2B podcasting via category design, and discusses pioneering a new owned media category.

Doug Camplejohn was working at Salesforce when the world changed in 2020, and quickly realized that there may be an opportunity happening. That’s when he decided to start Airspeed, a family of apps that help employees feel connected and celebrated.

In this episode, Lauren highlights category design for startups, using Guidewheel’s FactoryOps to attract stakeholders. We discuss sustainability, AI's role in data firms, and valuation impact.

Jared Fuller and Isaac Morehouse pioneered our talk on nearbound, a game-changing GTM strategy. Advocates of category design, they've shaped one of the fastest-growing B2B media brands ever.

This week’s show is with Dan Tyre, a legendary executive at Hubspot. Hired as employee number six, Dan talks about the backstory of the inbound category, how to get sales to support your category design strategy, and the importance of company culture when designing a category.

Fresh off a category design workshop in NYC, Rachel Josepho, Founder & CEO of Mindfull, and Waleed Cope, CEO of The Soap Box, joined us to share their journey as category designers leading early-stage startups.

In this episode, John Rougeux explains why a concept called “category jail” needs to be on the radar of every startup. Category jail occurs when your novel solution is mentally miscategorized by buyers, causing your company to get unfairly written off as another “me-too” product.

In this episode, we chat with Rio Hodges, Principal at Antler. Rio encounters hundreds of startups each year through his firm's accelerator programs, so his perspective is invaluable if you’re in the early chapters of this journey.

Scale Venture Partners’ Craig Rosenberg, Chief Platform Officer at Scale and long-time friend and collaborator of co-host, Damp, chats about category design driving demand, mentoring founders, and stories from the startup and VC trenches.

AI will be create of the largest changes in context in recent history. It's the Gutenberg press reborn. On this episode, we're bringing an expert from the trenches to chat about what this means for category designers.

Kicked off the first ever Category Thinkers Book Club with Eddie Yoon's classic, Superconsumers. Discuss insights that led to the book, how to apply Superconsumer strategy in B2B service companies, and why understanding Superconsumers is key to a profitable community strategy.

On this episode of "Category Thinkers," Kipp Bodnar, HubSpot's CMO, dives into the nuances of category design in modern marketing. He highlights HubSpot's journey with inbound marketing and the transformative role of AI in shaping future categories.

Founders often use category design to dominate markets. However, many encounter it post-founding. CEO Carl Daikeler of BODi, known for P90x & Insanity, faced challenges in digital transition. Using category design, he's now pioneering a new fitness category: health esteem.

Diving deep into Category Design? Books and podcasts help, but firsthand insights are unmatched. Join us as startup founder Hannah Grady Williams of d'Skills gives us a real-time peek into the world of active category creation.

is the former CMO and CRO of Slack. In this conversation, we dive deep into what made Slack the category king of team collaboration tools.

In this episode of #CategoriesInTheWild, we'll examine WWE's development of the "sports entertainment" category. It's a perfect case study that every category designer should learn from.

When founders first start considering a category strategy, they spend a lot of time bouncing ideas back and forth to develop a point of view. That can feel great or it can feel like a battle, but it's impossible to know if it's productive until they share it with someone else.

Mark Kilens has built a career as a marketing leader and category designer with HubSpot and Drift. Now, he's the CMO at Airmeet, the company behind Event-Led Growth.

When Apple launched the Vision Pro, it wasn't just a product launch, it was the launch of a new category called "spatial computing." But did Apple get everything right? Join us as we deconstruct Apple's newest category launch and discuss what we might have done differently.

One of the biggest reasons we knew the world needed the Category Thinkers Community (apart from our own desire to talk category strategy all day) is that there are many misconceptions about the discipline of category design, and who it's for.

The discipline of category design was formally launched seven years ago with the book, Play Bigger. On category design’s seventh birthday, we decided to reunite three co-authors of Play Bigger (Christopher Lochhead, Al Ramadan, Kevin Maney).

Listen to the trailer for Category Thinkers. This isn't just a podcast. It's the launch of a community. A different community dedicated to the understanding and application of category design. Naturally, we're kicking it off with our POV.