The difference between legendary category design isn’t the stage of a company, it’s the quality of their point of view.
The difference between legendary category design isn’t the stage of a company, it’s the quality of their point of view.
To people familiar with category design this may seem obvious, but the truth is it hasn’t been easy for early-stage founders to find much help doing it. They can read Play Bigger (a great read, if you ask us!), follow podcasts and maybe even reach out to us for some advice. But outside of that, the options have been limited. There was no category design method from Play Bigger tailored to their needs and financial status.
Then something interesting happened. As the tech world took a hit along with financial forecasts in the summer of 2022, we - oddly - found ourselves fielding an ever growing number of customer inquiries. But they weren’t from our traditional late stage, pre-IPO companies. These calls were from pre-seed, seed and series A founders as well as investors eager to orient their early stage companies around a new category from the very beginning.
This gave us an idea: what if we created a new type of approach designed exclusively for these early stage founders and their investors? A fast-paced, economically feasible, but nevertheless complete category design process to give these start-ups everything they needed to build something legendary. A spark, so to speak, that could ignite the path to design their company and product through the lens of the category they would need to create and occupy.
As a result an entirely new service oriented towards these companies was born, called - fittingly, we think - IGNITE.
The outcomes have been pretty powerful so far. Here’s what some of our early Ignite companies had to say about it:
"The Ignite program was instrumental in developing a clear and cohesive way to communicate and execute our vision. The category work has been foundational to how we operate as an organization." - Thomas Fuller, CEO & Co-founder, Adoreal
“It’s not about just being a player in the market, it’s about being the market itself. This experience with Play Bigger has been more than educational—it's been an alignment of vision and purpose. It's given us clarity, yes, but more importantly, it's given us a renewed sense of mission. The path to becoming category kings has presented itself.” - Kimal Singh, CEO & Founder, evoSonic
So how does it actually work?
Ignite covers all the core steps that exist in our premium Immerse method, but in a condensed package. Wrapped in a financial commitment and fast paced format ideal for the size and stage of pre-seed to series A companies.
We use simple, yet powerful new tools like Mural and Loom to rapidly onboard and collaborate with our companies. The process is a true partnership, with founders and their teams architecting the initial drafts of work coupled with ongoing support from Play Bigger category designers. It’s organized around five working sessions and a series of check-ins in between where we tune the category artifacts needed to effectively move through the process, including the problem, the solution (+ category name), the category blueprint, POV, and an initial Lightning Strike approach.
Once the initial strategy work is complete, our Ignite companies receive ongoing advisory support and are given priority access to Play Bigger services moving forward, including the ability to skip the line for future category work.
We're looking for daring founders to join the growing class of Ignite alums. If you have a category defining company we’d love to hear from you.
Let's explore how Ignite can set your journey to category champion ablaze.
Disclaimer: this article was human-generated, except for the last line - CTA gold courtesy of ChatGPT 🤖
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