Entrepreneurship: A Way Out, Markets Are (Not) The Weather, & Scooby Snacks
Christopher Lochhead ????????????
14X #1 Bestseller: Category Pirates, Play Bigger, 22 Laws of Category Design |Top 0.5% podcaster |Friend to the different |Subscribe ????
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The Different Newsletter.
Musings for entrepreneurs, marketing leaders, and creators with a different mind.
From Christopher Lochhead .
Sponsored by Bad Tuna Industries.
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For some entrepreneurship is a way up.
But for many, it is a way out.
I started my first business at 18.?
It was a desperate attempt to survive.?
Not some (bullshit) romantic “founders journey”.
Not a glamorous display of polished posts detailing how I “built in public” in front of hundreds of thousands of adoring social media fans.
(The yellow pages are an ancient book with a list of potential prospects & their phone numbers)
So the next time you’re feeling completely disempowered.
Or, you find yourself reading a post about how some founder, went to some super-ding-dong (America hating) Ivy league school, started a crypto carbadingulation AI algorithm company. …And became a billionaire.
Remember that most entrepreneurs are not that.
Most entrepreneurs are regular people.
People who summon the courage to be different. People who commit a radical act of creation.
Often in a desperate attempt to survive.
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Legendary blow-offs
So, I’ve had (at least) two legendary blow-offs during my seven years of podcasting.
The first.
Dennis Rodman.
Yes.
That Dennis Rodman.
In person. At an Oracle trade show.
He (with his 5-6 person entourage in tow) looked me straight in the eye and said, out loud (to no one in particular), “I’m not talking to that guy.”
Walked away.
Legendary.
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The second was last week.
Beyonce’s dad.
His PR firm wanted to book him on Follow Your Different .
He sounded interesting.
So, we say yes.
That’s when it gets weird.
We get an email explaining we now need to fill out a form, for them.
In what clearly is their way to evaluate our worthiness.
(After pitching us, they ask us to prove we are good enough for them?)
We don’t fill out bullsh*t forms.
Beyonce’s dad blows us off.
Legendary.
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Market Categories Are (Not) Like The Weather
(They don’t just happen)
If you listen closely.
The media talks about market categories the exact same way the weather gal or guy delivers the weather report.
Next time you read the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, CNBC, (almost all business media) you’ll be reading the weather.
On May 22, 2024 Nvidia announced a monster quarter .
Revenue rose to $26 billion for the quarter, the company said, a record amount. Net profit was $14.88 billion, up from $2 billion a year before.
Read that again.
Let those numbers sink in.
(That’s the power of a category king in a massive new category).
Now let’s breakdown this WSJ story .
Headline: Nvidia’s Sales Triple, Signaling AI Boom’s Staying Power
Listen to the words.
“Signaling AI Boom’s Staying Power”
As if the “AI Boom” just happened.
Like the rain.
Sub-headline: “Company gives better-than-expected forecast amid hot market for its chips”
Listen to the words.
“Hot market for its chips”.
As if the Nvidia folks we’re minding their own business, out walking to dog, and one day (as if by magic) “the market” got “hot” all by itself.
Like volcanos.
Sometimes shit just blows up.
(Right?)
(Wrong.)
The article goes on:
“Following OpenAI’s runaway success, big tech companies and AI startups scrambled to buy up as many of Nvidia’s chips as they could, leading to a shortage of them that company executives expect to persist through this year and into next year.”
Listen to the words.
(Translation)
There was zero demand of “generative AI” software, before OpenAI category designed the generative AI market.
(New categories create more new categories)
New demand for generative AI created by OpenAI, set the table for a boom in an adjacent tech category called “GPUs” (Graphical Processing Units).
And Nvidia category designed the GPU market.
But, the context the language used by the WSJ sets, gives Nvidia little credit for category designing the market.
There is an undiscussed, unquestioned, unconsidered assumption (accept the premise ) that the market (category) drives the business.
When in fact, it’s the other way around.
Companies make categories.
?Before Salesforce zero market for cloud
?Before Canva zero market for cloud design
?Before OpenAI zero market for generative AI
?Before?DUDE wipes zero market for man butt cleaner
The language used by the WSJ creates the impression that Nvidia (just) got lucky with good weather, “hot market for its chips”.
As if hot markets just happen.
When in reality category designers make markets happen. Category designers createthe winds that carried them to success.
(Now before we go any further, we’re not ignorant of real head winds and tail winds. Yes economic and social conditions can and do have a material impact performance.)
And yet.
The greatest companies of all time create something new.
From nothing.
领英推荐
Category Designers bring the future to today.
And yet, most CEOs believe, “If only we had a better weather detector, THEN we’d be the category leader.”
And category designer CEOs know.
She who creates the category, wins.
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Shalom my Pirate friend,
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(Our real newsletter)
The Different Newsletter contains nuts.
The creator of The Different Newsletter failed cutting & folding in kindergarten.
Copyright Category Pirates, LLC
#NeverAgainIsNow ????
#SaveGazaFromHamas
"AI is a fundamental technology that will determine the future of society.”
- Vladimir Putin, 2019.
The creator of this Different Newsletter is not a universilly admired man.
He also can not find his hat.
"Sharing this Different newsletter (broadly) will elongate your life by as much as a decade." - US Surgeon General
Category Pirates Plunge Into AI: Behind The Scenes Sneak Peek
One of my favorite podcast reviews :
“Uses profanity needlessly”
“If you haven’t changed your mind lately, how do you know you have one”
- Unknown
There are (random) strategically placed spelling, grammar and formatting mistakes in this newsletter.
If you think Kid Rock is training bears in Michigan to take over blue states with lasers on their heads and Bud lights, then consider these strategic mistakes part of a secret code that unlocks Federal Government servers in Bumsquat Youdaho to the files that prove the The Statue of Limitations was created by Aliens.
If you’re not a Kid Rock Bears person, the errors herein exist because Lochhead is lazy… and wants to write in an unfettered, real(ish) time way and an editor would slow the roll.
Please.
Pretty please.
With whisky on top.
Thinking about thinking is the most important kind of thinking.
Marketing is Sales at scale.
California tax payers gave unhoused Californians $24B over five years and the problem got (much) worse.
(up nearly 40% over five yrs)
That's $130K per unhoused person ??
The California government does not no were the $ went? ??
Anyone doing an investigation into how the homeless industrial complex profits?
Asking for a friend.
If (by some breach of your better judgement) you are enjoying this Kentucky bourbon smooth read, with just the right level of AD/HD insanity…
you might get fired up about our real work:
Is this newsletter still going?
Is a business newsletter allowed to have all of this sh*t at the end?
Is he allowed to say shi*t?
The people at LI frown on swearing.
Ya, and they surely frown on the guy who puts this newsletter out.
100%, and please stop calling me Shirley.
Maybe we should report this newsletter to someone?
Gartner doesn’t say sh*t in the Gartner Executive Ding-Dong Quarterly.
This must be over soon?
Surely this is close to over.
Surely it is.
And, please stop calling me Shirley.
Who am I talking to?
He’s making us talk to each other again.
Who’s us?
Can a newsletter cause brain degradation?
This one can.
Everyone has a unique smell except identical twins.
Starfish don't have brains.
Ketchup was once sold as medicine.
(#Category Design)
Sloths can hold their breath longer than dolphins can.
Is for executives that dare to make a difference.
People used to say “prunes” instead of “cheese” when having their pictures taken
Before toilet paper was invented, Americans used to use corn cobs. #CategoryDesign
#Lebowski2024
Thanks for hanging out ‘til the end of (as one reader put it) “the discredits”.
Published by Category Pirates .
Sponsored By Bad Tuna Industries.
Makers of Bad Tuna Man Underpants?
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