Stop Listening to the Customer

chapter 6 create the category

The dream for a business is to operate as a monopoly. If you operate as a monopoly within a category that enjoys healthy consumer awareness and demand, the business will thrive. One of the founders of PayPal, Peter Thiel, outlines this aspiration in Zero to One. The theme of the book (and the author's life) is that entrepreneurs should attempt to create an entirely new category rather than compete with an existing brand in a category. It should go from zero to one. If you are the one, you have created a category of one.

The ability to create a new category is rare, but the benefits are enormous. If you ever find yourself in this position, you need to ride it hard and fast because, without a doubt, competitors will come along and breathe down your neck. Let me describe the experience of my mate and former colleague, Rob Perkins, who managed to achieve this feat.

Making sex better

Before he became a Silicon Valley multimillionaire, Rob Perkins worked for me at Naked Communications. Rob is highly charismatic, creative and curious. Before becoming an entrepreneur, he produced some of the world's best-known and most successful advertising campaigns. Rob loves ideas, has a passion for pushing boundaries and is always willing to intellectually go where others do not. This predisposition may have been encouraged in childhood; he is the son of a psychiatrist, as it happens. Rob reckons interesting people have generally been in therapy. It means they're ...