3 Bites & 1 Track: Category creation | 33% growth | Kevin Kelly & David Sivers | Late
1 post, 1 article, 1 show + 1 track, annotated.
Hi there
Here we are for the 2nd edition of 3 Bites and 1 Track - 1 post, 1 article, 1 show and 1 music track.
Each week, I’ll share three insightful links with comments. I’ll give you a few exciting bits to check out, ignore, or build upon. We'll focus on Growth but mix it up to keep it fun and fresh. To spice things up, we end with a music track.
This week, I will rant about category creation, find out what questions we need to ask to grow 33%, (re)discover Kevin Kelly and David Sivers, and find out what I was late for.
If you miss the first one, you can find it here.
To make it better, give me feedback.
Without further ado, let’s dive in.
1 Post
Robert Kaminski and his partner Anthony Pierri form the dynamic duo behind Fletch PMM, a firm specializing in Product Positioning and Messaging. They are regulars on Linkedin, publishing everything they know about their craft - and it is a lot! Usually, you get examples of Good vs. Bad positioning and messaging. But in this post, Robert just made a point on category creation.
I have a pet peeve with category creation, so I bookmarked this on impulse, driven by pure confirmation bias!
But Hugo, what's the deal with category creation, and what’s the problem with that?
Category creation is a strategy that drives you to create a new category instead of competing within an existing category. An example was when Drift created the category Conversational Marketing.
The benefit is, of course, if you create it as your own playground, you can define it and dominate it. But there are several problems with that:
No one knows it, and now you need to create awareness and evangelize for a category that people don’t even understand. This takes time and money. It’s a five-year plan, not this year’s tactic.
Then there’s a market problem - you’re not alone. How many categories will we have if every other new product creates its own category? We already have a bloated market with thousands of products. Does it make sense to have hundreds of categories, each with its funny name, that we, as buyers, need to know and understand?
I am happy to talk more about that, but enough ranting for now 🙂
1 Article
You aren't really trying to grow and I can prove it
Alex Smith is great at distilling and making concepts simple to understand. He goes straight to the point and doesn’t dwell around.
In one of his latest post - “You aren’t really trying to grow, and I can prove it” - Alex explains what it takes to grow 33% and what questions you need to ask.
Sometimes we might try a bit. We might ask ourselves something vague and impotent like “how can I grow this business?”, or “what should my strategy be?”. But these are poor questions, as evidenced by how hard they are to answer.
…
If I had to take a stab at what the necessary components are to release this potential, I’d say something like:… (continue in link)
1 Show (and 2 rabbit holes)
Derek Sivers and Kevin Kelly by Tim Ferriss
I listen to a lot of podcasts. They accompany me whenever I walk Ziggy, the dog. And with time, you start to notice what makes a good podcast.
Not surprisingly, an interview Podcast combines the guest quality with the host's interviewing skills. This means that the host is not just presenting the guests but is responsible for getting the most out of them. Great interviewing skills are not a given. The more I pay attention, the more I value and respect that skill. The best interviewers have both innate curiosity and are not afraid to make “stupid” questions, to go personal, to dig in and ask “why”, “how”, “what do you mean by…”.
Time Ferriss is not only able to attract amazing guests but has also evolved into a good interviewer. I appreciate that even with people he knows pretty well, he doesn’t assume the audience knows anything and takes the listener perspective.
For the podcast's 10th anniversary, he has been re-releasing previous episodes in a combo. In this combo, he shares a short version with a well-known guest and a full interview with a less-known guest.
This time, we have David Sivers and Kevin Kelly. Although they come from different generations and backgrounds, they are both eclectic, with prolific careers and fantastic outputs.
David is a musician and entrepreneur who worked for ten years in a circus and created the largest seller of independent music online with $100 million in sales for 150,000 musicians, which was sold for $22M that he donated to charity. You can lose yourself on his website. This is where I learned he is the guy from the famous TED Talk - “How to Start a Movement”. 🤯
He wrote a book, “Hell Yeah, or No,” in which he challenges us to go all in if we feel “hell yeah!” and drop everything else. That got me thinking.
Enter Kevin Kelly.
I first encountered Kevin Kelly's ideas in his book “Out of Control.” It was around 1993 that I became interested in Complexity Science and Artificial Life. Kevin’s book discusses emergent decentralized systems, like the economy, the brain, ant colonies and so on. Fascinating! That motivated me to study and explore AI systems based on Neural Networks and Genetic Algorithms later.
Kevin Kelly has a long and fascinating career linked to the beginnings of the digital movement and the internet. He was the co-founder and first editor of Wired magazine. He is a prolific writer about the interplay of technology and society. His blog is another rabbit hole worth losing yourself into.
1 Track
I arrived late. I first met them at a friend’s party. Hum… nice. But I was on another wavelength.
By the end of the last millennium, I had given up on guitars and delved into drums and bass, dub and electronic music.
This led me to overlook Radiohead's post-OK Computer and LCD Soundsystem—funny that although they took different roots, they incorporated a good dose of electronic sounds - the same sounds that allured me to another music bubble.
Missing LCD Soundsystem. That should not have happened because they are influenced by two genres featured in my music library: punk rock and electronic/dance.
This week's track comes from their Live Album - The Long Goodbye.
Again, it's another live album.
Music Summer Festivals are all over the place. But I’m not planning to attend any. I prefer to enjoy the recorded live sounds from the comfort of my room. I realized I have a love-hate relationship with Music Festivals and big Live Concerts. I love music, therefore I should also love live music. The problem is that I have a very personal relationship with music - it is a personal thing. Yes, I can share it and enjoy it with a few others. But, when there are thousands, tens of thousands, pushing me around, I end up in the back, staring at a video screen. Not fun. Doesn’t make sense.
Enough talk and winning. Let’s press play.
That’s all for this week. See you next week.
Thanks for reading.
Hugo
❤️ if you like it
💬 comment to share what you think.
♻️ or share with your network
Came for the track and was not disappointed.