Made with πŸ’› by Pietro Bezza

Proud founding member and ambassador of Category Thinkers

Category Thinkers

Forget unicorns, play bigger and become Category King.

Introducing Minimum Viable Category Design (MVCD). An agile variant of the Category Design methodology I adjusted to fit the needs of early-stage startups. It combines the Play Bigger playbook with an agile approach.

I did this out of my frustration of seeing many fantastic Opinionated Products get lost in the market vacuum, and many fantastic Founders who are Product-FIRST act as Product-ONLY, by failing to understand the existence of the Category dimension making the product orphan of it.

<aside> πŸ‘‰ "Your Product becomes your own Category only if you intentionally discover, express and deliver the category " - TWEET THIS!

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Want to learn more? I explained my opinion **here.** I also created a reading listπŸ‘‡

Category Design reading list

Category Design in a DIY fashion πŸ”§.

Follow this Guide ****to Minimum Viable Category Design. it focuses on the DESIGN part of the category, from discovery to expression and It is framed in a workshop format made up of two half-day sessions. It requires some up-front initial preparation and the output of this work is the MVCD canvas.

<aside> ❓ Who is it for? Legendary ****product-first founders who want to design their categories at the same time they are designing their products.

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<aside> πŸ”‘ What will you get? Learn how to ****discover and express a new category with high potential that your product can actually deliver.

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<aside> πŸ‘‰ How does it work? It offers a set of questions to help craft the new category discovery, the category expression and the category potential. The more you put in the more you get out πŸ˜‰

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<aside> πŸ“Œ Continuous discovery. A new category and its max potential shouldn't be something you build 100% today. By designing your category you define the true north for your product and GTM. Category and product must be discovered and delivered in a harmonic and balanced way, and in sync with the company resources.

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<aside> 🚧 This guide will be a permanent work-in-progress that I open-sourced. Therefore I will be iterating based on the founder's feedback. Please let me know your thoughts and suggestions here πŸ™

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