How To Create A Category Of 1

Nicolas Cole
8 min readFeb 2, 2021
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Your goal is to create a Category of 1 for yourself.

What does that mean?

I started learning about the art of Category Creation a few years ago, when I began working on a co-authored book project with the two GOATs of Category Design: Christopher Lochhead (author of Play Bigger & Niche Down) and Eddie Yoon (author of Superconsumers).

They are now my fellow collaborators in our other weekly newsletter, called Category Pirates.

Category Creation and Category Design is how you achieve true differentiation.

None of this “hey-I’m-slightly-cheaper-slightly-faster-slightly-cooler-slightly-more-refreshing” stuff. That’s a rat’s game, and forces you to live in a constant state of competition.

Christopher and Eddie were the ones who taught me the best way to grow is to CREATE a new category — not to compete within an existing one.

Aka: create a category of 1.

(Where you are the only option and there is no next-best alternative.)

The easiest way to achieve this is to do what Christopher calls Niching Down:

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Nicolas Cole

100M+ Views | 5x Author | Co-founder of Ship 30 for 30 | Want to start writing online? Get the Ultimate Guide: https://startwritingonline.com