Category Pirates

Making a difference, for people who make a difference. Writing, teaching, and podcasting about the greatest (underground) skill in business. Category design. With the legendary Eddie Yoon & Katrina Kirsch.

Co-creator

Airspeed

Helping the Airspeed team cure the Digital Disconnect.

Advisor

Christopher Lochhead Follow Your Different

CoAuthor Niche Down

Podcaster

Lochhead on Marketing

#1 apple business podcast focused on marketing & category creation/design

HarperCollins Publishers

Every entrepreneur looking to alter the landscape and every CEO looking to reimagine their business can learn from this book. Play Bigger provides inspiration and a framework for building companies that transcend gravity.” — Marc Benioff, Chairman and CEO, Salesforce

“Play Bigger is the new how-to guide for entrepreneurs and executives who want to build legendary, enduring companies.” — Jim Goetz, Partner, Sequoia Capital

In this widely acclaimed, farsighted new book, the authors rely on experience, data analysis and interviews to understand the inner workings of “category kings”— companies such as Amazon, Salesforce, Uber, and IKEA—that give us new ways of living, thinking or doing business, often solving problems we didn’t know we had. 

Crossing the Chasm revolutionized how we think about new products in an existing market. The Innovator’s Dilemma taught us about disrupting an aging market. Now, Play Bigger is transforming business once again, showing us how to create the market itself with the new discipline of "category design."

CoAuthor: Play Bigger How Pirates, Dreamers, and Innovators Create and Dominate Markets

HalloApp

Play Bigger Advisors, LLC.

Advised over 30 Silicon Valley venture-backed startups in strategy, marketing & category design.
CoAuthored Harper Collins "Instant Classic" Play Bigger: How Pirates, Dreamers and Innovators Create and Dominate Markets.

co-founding partner

LOCHHEAD Enterprises, Inc.

Advised over 20 Silicon Valley venture-backed startups on Strategy, Marketing and Category Design

Founder

Orchestria

Board Director

Mercury Interactive (Acquired by HP)

I was lucky to be with a great team of people @ Mercury. HP Acquired the company for $5B in November of 2006, after Mercury had grown to over $1B in sales.

Chief Marketing Officer

Ever notice how much content is actually content-free-content?

Thanks for stopping by.  I’m a friend to the different and am  best known for Play Bigger, Category Pirates and being a Godfather of Category Design.
🏴‍☠️

I help startup founders, CEOs, marketers, creators, and ambitious professionals category design legendary markets and careers in a post-AI world.

**Why Category Design & Creator Capitalism?**

Category designers create markets, not competition, capturing **76% of the value** in the spaces they pioneer. 

Creator Capitalists unlock their different **superpower**—that unique edge only they bring—to build wealth and impact in an AI-driven economy. 

Whether you’re launching a company or redefining your career, I’ll show you how to own your niche and thrive.

**What I Do:**

With my partners at Category Pirates 🏴‍☠️ I empower you to:

*Design & dominate new markets through writing, courses, and community.

*Discover your superpower to become a Creator Capitalist, mastering your career in the AI era.

*Build legendary businesses & careers with strategies from our #1 Amazon-charting books.

Join us at **www.categorypirates.com** to start pirating.

**My Track Record:**

*Author: Co-authored 14 #1 bestsellers, including *Play Bigger* (the first book on category design), *Niche Down*, and *Snow Leopard*.

*Podcaster: Host of Follow Your Different* (“Best Business Podcast” – Podcast Magazine) and Lochhead on Marketing (#1 charting).

*Newsletter: Run Category Pirates 🏴‍☠️ Substack (top 0.5% paid business newsletter).

*Career: Former 3X Silicon Valley public company CMO, advisor, and VC limited partner.

**What People Say:**

*Play Bigger is required reading for entrepreneurs altering the landscape.” *Marc Benioff, CEO, Salesforce
*“A quasar of energy and ideas.” – Bill Walton, NBA Legend
*“Off-putting to some, but undeniably brilliant.” – The Economist

*The Future Needs You

If you’re ready to category design a market or unleash your superpower? 

Connect with me or visit **www.categorypirates.com**. 

Let’s build something legendary—together. 
🏴‍☠️

Christopher Lochhead🏴‍☠️

My brother Tushar Atre was murdered 2,228 days ago. Today, we head back to court. This is the third of four trials for the men who killed him.

Christopher Lochhead 🇺🇸🇮🇱🏴‍☠️

“A quasar, a godfather of category design” Bill Walton | “Off-putting to some” The Economist | 15X #1 author Play Bigger & Category Pirates 🏴‍☠️| #1 Charting Apple Business Podcast

My friend brother Tushar Atre was killed 2,228 days ago. Today, we head back to court. This is the third of four trials for the men who murdered him. 

Open article: Walking Through Fire: 2,228 Days Since My Brother’s Murder by Christopher Lochhead 🇺🇸🇮🇱🏴‍☠️ • 4 min read

Walking Through Fire: 2,228 Days Since My Brother’s Murder

Today is Al Ries Day. Yeah, I’m celebrating. And you should too. Because the man earns his own damn holiday. If you care about marketing, entrepreneurship, category design, business strategy, or frankly winning, then you owe Al Ries more than a polite nod. You owe him a standing ovation.

Today is Al Ries Day. Yeah, I’m celebrating. And you should too. Because the man earns his own damn holiday. If you care about marketing, entrepreneur

Open article: Happy Al Ries Day by Christopher Lochhead 🇺🇸🇮🇱🏴‍☠️ • 3 min read

I always love it when people (donkeys) say, “category design is hard”… to which I respond. 

As compared to what?

Building a legendary company. Hard. 

Building a legendary product. Hard. 

Category designing a new market. Hard. 

If you don’t like to do hard legendary things. 

Get a job at the DMV.

Thank you for risking your lives, to save our lives.

No alternative text description for this image

Black Friday Is Stupid. Here’s Why: Every November, companies reenact the same clown show 🤡

•Slash prices. 
•Torch margins.
•Fight for existing demand.

Call it “strategy.”
It’s not strategy.
It’s surrender.

Black Friday is when a business publicly announces:
“We have no real category, no real POV, and no real value… so here’s 40% off.”

If you want to see how this movie ends, just look at Groupon. 
The company that turned Black Friday into a business model.

At IPO, Groupon was worth around $13B.
Today it’s limping along under $1B.

A 95% vaporization of value.
All because it trained customers to only show up when prices were in the basement.

That’s what happens when you live by discounting:

•You become a commodity.
•You teach your buyers to wait you out.
•And you die slowly, on sale.

Every business running Black Friday is doing a Mini-Groupon.

•A little hit of the same drug.
•A little erosion of brand, belief, and pricing power.
•A little “race to the bottom” disguised as “a busy weekend.”

Legendary category designers don’t bribe people to buy.
•They create value.
•They create demand.
•They create word of mouth.
So yeah.

Black Friday is stupid.
And to celebrate the stupidity?

Our new #1 bestselling Lightning Strike Marketing book is $100.
A middle finger to the publishing industry. 🖕
And to the Black Friday discount death cult. 🖕

Be legendary or be discounted.
Pick one.
🏴‍☠️

Most people. Accept the premise. If you want a legendary career, you gotta stop playing by inherited rules. 🏴‍☠️

Most people. Accept the premise. If you want a legendary career, you gotta stop playing by inherited rules. The fastest way to stay average is to acce

Open article: Reject the Premise by Christopher Lochhead 🇺🇸🇮🇱🏴‍☠️ • 3 min read

Most people have no idea how to value their value. And most companies? Even worse. 

They spend 51 weeks out of the year trying to convince the world they’re of value.

Only to torch their own brand. 
In one glorious, annual, self-inflicted ritual of value destruction: 
Black Friday.
🤡

Next week, you will witness the single greatest mass devaluation event in modern commerce.

A global orgy of:
“Please, please, PLEASE buy from us...we’ll do ANYTHING!”
The sad part?

None of the companies doing this actually need to.
They’re just trapped in the herd.

Following the script someone else wrote.
(Like the sad-uniformed donkey's they are)

Here’s the uncomfortable truth no one in marketing wants to admit:
The easiest way to crush yourself is to make your category worthless.

And nothing makes your category worthless faster than telling the world:
“Hey! Remember everything we said about being:

•scarce
•quality
•crafted
•curated
•premium
•advanced
•meaningful
•purpose-built 
•and category-defining?

Yeah. 
Forget all that. 
"Today we’re cheap.”

Once you burn belief. 
It doesn’t (just) grow back.

Legends don’t participate in the annual race to the bottom.
•They reject the premise.
•They set their value.
•Their own rules.
•Their own POV.

And the market comes them.
So please (with whiskey on top) value your value.
🙏

Stop teaching people to expect less.
Stop training your customers to wait for discounts.
Stop telling the world your product isn’t worth what you say it is.

Because if you don’t value your value…
No one else will.
(Read this three times)

And next week, while everyone else is lighting their brand equity on fire for sport?

You’ll be building yours.
Strengthening your category.
And proving what legends already know:

Price isn’t a number.
Price is belief.

And belief, once broken, is hell to rebuild.
Hold the line.

Protect the premium.
And for the love of all things holy.
Don’t Black Friday your future.
🏴‍☠️

Ps. Our new Lightning Strike Marketing book, is the first $100 book to hit #1 on the Amazon Global Marketing Chart.

It will not be on sale next week.
Hit the l!nk in comments to pick up yours.
The book also makes a legendary (not-discounted) gift.
😎

Nick Warner

Element Human

Measure and model what your audience thinks, feels, and says. 

Element Human is building a behavioral AI engine to inform and predict business outcomes. 

Phrased with less jargon, we're turning human behaviors into machine learned empathy.

1.2% of ad views result in a click. We measure the 98.8%.

We do this with behavioral learning models (BLM’s). Like how LLMs ingest language context and predict the next word, BLMs ingest body language to predict behaviors and emotional states.

Product Lead

Together Software

Leading Growth Marketing, main areas include - Social, Events, Community, Customer Marketing, Partnerships, Website, and a dash of Product Marketing.

Senior Growth Marketing Manager

Nickwar.com

Took a breath after 9 years of fast and furious employment. Spent time adding skills, planning and executing a wedding, traveling, and consulting for startups (series B, series A, seed, pre-seed). 

I worked with 4 B2B clients, 2 B2C clients on a variety of work, broad strokes: 
- Created Marketing strategy foundations and GTM architecture.
- Executed in product marketing, content marketing, growth marketing, and marketing analytics.

Fractional Marketing Advisor

ConnectionPoint Systems Inc.

Stood up marketplace Growth function, including full funnel experimentation program, productized first party data, managed acquisition and retention marketing tactics. 

Delivered strategic projects such as: product strategy and positioning, growth loops, marketplace replication factors. 

Implemented product and marketing analytics infrastructure for reporting and optimization.

Director of Growth

SAM Labs

If 6 years at Amazon was the frying pan, this was the fire. When I joined, we had ~9 months of cash left, COVID was wreaking havoc in schools, and our growth rate had been negative for the last 1.5 years. 

We had no marketing or data function and almost no one coming to us saying 'hey, I might want to buy the thing you have'. I worked on building those functions and creating demand for the thing we have. Oh, also creating and launching a software product. 

By the time I left: 2.6x revenue growth rate, 3.1x opportunities, 4.2x leads, 5.7x organic traffic, 3.5x social reach. 

- Stood up Marketing and Data functions, hired and led team of 6. 
- Created GTM and Marketing strategies. 
- Led growth, retention, demand generation, and product marketing. 
- Implemented revenue operations and reporting
- Oversaw company analytics infrastructure buildout
- Managed channel partners. 
- Created PLG motion.  
- Created and launched software subscription product.

Head of Marketing & Insights

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

First taste of middle management and the physical foundation of computing! 

Global category lead for team of 4, owning the automation and energy management category (~$750M spend, 225 deployments). 

Managed partnerships, Data Center projects, capacity planning and spend, category development, and procurement. 

The more exciting stuff, led strategic initiatives from product development to product launch:
- AWS Thor – IOT predictive maintenance for industrial infrastructure.
- Project Poseidon – water monitoring software and data solution.
- Software partnership with Inductive Automation for in-house products and customer solution development.

Senior Program Manager

Amazon

This was a fun role, my first taste of end-end business ownership and triple digit growth. 

Owned strategy and execution of category P/L (~$350M, 90% YoY growth rate): 
- Customer acquisition and retention
- Pricing and promotion
- Inventory management
- Financial planning
- Partner development and negotiation
- Market research and development
- Demand forecasting and buying decisions

Delivered a couple of noteworthy projects along the way: 
- New product ‘bootstrap’ (aka launch) program
- New category pricing model selection
- Emerging marketplace forecasting model optimization

Product Category Manager

Bright eyed and bushy tailed, I was responsible the marketer for a ~$75M category, 30% YoY growth rate. 

Created, executed, and optimized marketing campaigns and programs. Accelerated category growth, improved efficiency, and managed external partnerships.

3 extracurricular projects I remember fondly: 
- Created and launched deal subscription program marketplace wide.
- Reverse engineered recommendation engine for automated marketing campaign targeting.
- Launched mobile site and UX for digital media products.

Associate Marketing Manager

Target

Optimized assortment and merchandising in all US stores, produced customer insights reporting, market research, and supplier acquisition targets.

Delivered promotion strategy and inventory cadence project, +$2.1M in revenue, +$3.2M in cost savings.

Business Analyst

Private Ranch

Ranch Hand

Merchandise Planning Intern

Growing things, understanding why humans do what we do.

Hey there - welcome to the official Nick Warner LinkedIn Profile! 

Professionally, I'm passionate about three things: 
1. Turning great technology into great products and businesses. 
2. Understanding how and why we humans do what we do.
3. Understanding how and why things grow. 

Currently, I prosecute those ambitions as an early stage operator. My sweet spot is where Marketing, Product, Data, and Customers collide - or somewhere without cell service. 

The first chapter of my career was spent at very large and successful companies (Target 1 year, Amazon 6 years). Intrapreneurship grew towards entrepreneurship and I started the second chapter of my career in 2020. Since then, I've led Marketing, Growth, Data, and Product at early stage startups. 

Superpower: Witty remarks
Kryptonite: Filling out forms

When my work laptop is put away, some things I can be found doing: 
Skiing, fly fishing, music, any sort of board/card game, paddling things, watching the moon rise, intellectual cross-training, expanding my mental / physical comfort zone, reading/writing, eating fruit. 


Quotes I like: 
“When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change” - Max Planck
"The hand organizes the mind" - Me :) 

My motto: Think big, act small, change the world
More about me: https://www.nickwar.com/about-me

Short story about how I met the other half of my life partnership (Haley Oleynik), and our journey together: https://www.nickwar.com/post/2-hearts-1-love

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Nick Warner

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