Book · 272 pages

Play Bigger: How Pirates, Dreamers, and Innovators Create and Dominate Markets

Al Ramadan, Dave Peterson, Christopher Lochhead, Kevin Maney · HarperBusiness Paid Intermediate

The book that gave the discipline its vocabulary (category king, lightning strike, point of view). Read it as the ambitious end of the spectrum, not as a default plan.

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It answers 3 questions

  1. Should we create a new category or just say we are a better version of something that already exists?
  2. When is category creation the right call for us, and when is it just an excuse?
  3. What did HubSpot and Salesforce do that most category attempts do not?

Read with it

  1. The clearest short explanation of why market category is one of five interdependent positioning pieces, with a real... aprildunford.com Article · 12 min read A Quickstart Guide to Positioning April Dunford
  2. Rare conversation that ties category creation directly to pricing power and to reading real product market fit signals in... a16z Podcast · 37 min a16z Podcast: Creating a Category, from Pricing to Positioning Martin Casado, Michel Feaster, Sonal Chokshi
  3. Two marketers who actually built categories (revenue intelligence and customer success) compare notes on the iterations that... [Un]Churned, Gainsight Podcast · 49 min A Masterclass in Category Creation from the Leaders at Gong and Gainsight Josh Schachter with Udi Ledergor and Lauren Olerich
  4. The founders describe coining inbound marketing as an old game versus new game framing, then choosing SMB over enterprise to... Crucible Moments Podcast · 40 min HubSpot: An Underdog Helps Invent Modern Marketing, and Then Takes on Goliath Sequoia Capital with Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah
  5. Deals with the four places positioning work actually stalls, including teams that cannot agree on their competitive... Lenny's Newsletter Newsletter · 18 min read A guide to advanced B2B positioning April Dunford
  6. The five part narrative structure (name the shift, name winners and losers, show the promised land, position capabilities as... Mission.org Essay · 11 min read The Greatest Sales Deck I've Ever Seen Andy Raskin
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