Your VP of Marketing read "Play Bigger" over the weekend and came into Monday's meeting excited about category creation. "We shouldn't compete in the existing CRM market," she says. "We should create a new category—Revenue Intelligence Platforms. We'll define the category, own the narrative, and become the obvious leader."
It sounds compelling. Category kings capture disproportionate value. Being first to define a category creates structural advantage. Competing in crowded markets is hard.
But category creation at Series A is also expensive, risky, and often unnecessary. Most successful scale-ups win by dominating a segment of an existing category before expanding or creating new categories later.
Here's how to think about category strategy for your stage.
The Category Creation Trap for Early-Stage Companies
Category creation has a seductive logic: if you can't win in existing categories, create a new category where you're the default leader. But this misunderstands how categories work and what it takes to establish them.
Creating a category requires sustained investment over 3-5 years. You need thought leadership that educates the market about the problem, analyst relations that legitimizes the category, demand generation that teaches buyers why existing solutions fail, and PR that creates category mindshare. This easily costs $5-10M annually in marketing spend, dedicated executive time, and opportunity cost from not messaging to proven demand.
Most Series A companies don't have this budget or time horizon. You need to prove product-market fit, hit growth targets, and reach profitability metrics for Series B. Spending years educating a market that doesn't yet recognize it has the problem you solve makes these goals harder, not easier.
The bigger issue: buyers think in existing categories. When evaluating solutions, they search for familiar terms—CRM, marketing automation, project management. They compare vendors within known categories. They allocate budget to recognized categories. Fighting this mental model is swimming upstream.
Most companies that successfully created categories—Salesforce with CRM, HubSpot with inbound marketing, Gartner with Magic Quadrants—did it from positions of strength after dominating existing categories first or having massive funding to sustain multi-year category-building investments.
When to Play in Existing Categories Instead
For most Series A companies, the smarter strategy is dominating a segment of an existing category before attempting category creation.
Position yourself in a recognized category but own a specific use case, customer segment, or approach. You're not "a new category called Revenue Intelligence." You're "the CRM built specifically for B2B SaaS companies" or "the project management platform designed for remote teams" or "the analytics tool for product-led growth companies."
This strategy has major advantages. Buyers already understand the category and have budget allocated for it. You can capture existing search demand instead of creating it. You compete for deals where buyers are actively evaluating solutions. And you can differentiate within the category through positioning, features, or go-to-market approach.
Dominate your niche first. Become the obvious choice for B2B SaaS companies choosing a CRM. Win consistently in that segment. Build case studies, references, and product capabilities optimized for this buyer. Establish yourself as the segment leader.
Once you've dominated the niche, you have options. Expand to adjacent segments within the same category. Move upmarket or downmarket. Add capabilities that broaden your use cases. Or, if the opportunity is significant enough, invest in category creation from a position of strength.
The Signals That Category Creation Might Make Sense
There are legitimate situations where category creation makes strategic sense for Series A and B companies. The key is recognizing when the conditions are right.
First signal: existing categories fundamentally miss what you do. If prospects consistently say "we looked at category X solutions, but they don't solve our actual problem," you might have a category opportunity. The existing category creates the wrong comparison set and prevents buyers from understanding your value.
Second signal: you're creating new demand, not capturing existing demand. If most of your customers weren't actively searching for a solution before discovering you, and you're teaching them they have a problem worth solving, you're already doing category creation work whether you've named it or not.
Third signal: you have the resources and timeline for a 3-5 year investment. This means $5-10M annual marketing budget, executive commitment to thought leadership and analyst relations, and investor buy-in that category ROI won't show up in 12-month metrics.
Fourth signal: there's a fundamental market shift creating an opening. Technology platform changes, regulatory shifts, or workflow transformations create opportunities to define new categories before incumbents adapt. Cloud computing created categories like CDN and IaaS. Remote work created categories like virtual collaboration platforms. AI is creating new categories now.
When all four signals are present, category creation might be the right strategy. If you have two or fewer signals, focus on dominating a niche within existing categories first.
The Hybrid Approach: Category POV Without Full Category Creation
There's a middle path between competing in crowded categories and full category creation: develop a strong category point of view while positioning in existing categories.
This means having a clear perspective on how the market is changing and where it's headed. You articulate problems with existing category approaches. You explain why the status quo fails. You educate buyers about better ways to solve their problems. But you still position yourself in a recognized category for search, budget, and comparison purposes.
HubSpot did this brilliantly in the early days. They had a strong POV about "inbound marketing" as a philosophy and approach. They educated buyers extensively through content and thought leadership about why outbound marketing was broken and inbound was the future. But they positioned themselves in the marketing automation category for budget and buying purposes.
This hybrid approach gets you many benefits of category creation—thought leadership, differentiated positioning, educational content—without the full costs and risks. You're building category mindshare while capturing existing demand.
Develop your category POV through content. Write about the problems with existing approaches. Publish research about market trends. Create frameworks that help buyers think differently. Build educational content that establishes your perspective.
Use existing category positioning for capture. When buyers search for solutions, position yourself in the category they're searching. When they evaluate vendors, show up in the comparison set. When they allocate budget, fit into their existing category spend.
Over time, if your POV gains traction and the market starts adopting your framing, you can lean more heavily into category creation. But you've de-risked the investment by proving demand first.
How to Actually Execute Category Creation If You Commit
If you've assessed the signals and decided category creation is the right strategy, execute deliberately.
Start with category definition. Name the category something memorable that resonates with buyers. Define the category in terms of the problem it solves, not your product features. Create a category framework that shows why existing approaches fail and how your category addresses it. Develop a visual representation—a matrix, quadrant, or landscape—that makes the category tangible.
Invest heavily in thought leadership. Your executives need to become the voices defining the category. Write books or comprehensive guides about the category. Speak at conferences about category trends. Publish research that validates the category need. Create definitive content that anyone researching the category discovers.
Build analyst relations from day one. Analysts legitimize categories. Work with Gartner, Forrester, and relevant industry analysts to educate them about the category. Provide data and customer evidence. Push for analyst reports that validate the category. Get included in emerging category coverage. This takes 2-3 years but creates crucial credibility.
Recruit category evangelists beyond your company. Find customers who will speak publicly about the category need. Work with ecosystem partners who benefit from the category's success. Engage influencers and industry thought leaders who can amplify the category narrative. Category creation can't be just your company talking—you need external validation.
Create educational demand gen, not just product marketing. Your content should teach the category problem before selling your solution. Webinars about category trends, not product demos. Guides about category best practices, not feature lists. Build a community around the category topic. This attracts buyers who are learning about the problem, not just evaluating solutions.
Measure category creation differently than product marketing. Track category search volume growth. Monitor analyst mentions and reports. Measure thought leadership engagement. Survey whether buyers recognize the category name and definition. These indicators matter more than immediate pipeline in year one.
The Timing Question: When to Shift from Niche to Category
Most successful category creators didn't start with category creation. They dominated a niche in an existing category first, then expanded into category creation from strength.
Slack competed as "team messaging" before defining "collaboration hub." Datadog competed as "infrastructure monitoring" before creating "observability platform." Zoom competed as "video conferencing" before defining "video-first communications platform."
The pattern: dominate a clear use case, prove strong product-market fit, achieve market leadership in your niche, then expand the definition to encompass a broader category you're defining.
For most Series A companies, the right sequence is: years 1-2, dominate a niche within an existing category; years 3-4, develop a category POV while still positioning in the existing category; years 5+, invest fully in category creation if the opportunity and resources support it.
This approach de-risks category creation by proving product-market fit and achieving revenue scale first. You earn the credibility and resources needed for category creation by winning in existing categories.
The Decision Framework
When evaluating category strategy for your Series A company, work through this decision tree.
Can buyers find you by searching existing category terms? If yes, position in that category and dominate a niche. If no, ask: do you have $5-10M annual budget and 3-5 year timeline for category creation? If no, find a way to position in an existing category even if imperfect. If yes, ask: are you creating new demand or capturing existing demand? If capturing existing demand, position in the category where that demand lives. If creating new demand, category creation might make sense.
Final question: will defining a new category create a structural competitive advantage, or is it primarily a marketing differentiation? If it's marketing differentiation, a strong category POV is enough. If it creates structural advantage—defensibility, network effects, ecosystem lock-in—full category creation might be worth the investment.
Most scale-ups should focus on dominating niches within existing categories. Build thought leadership and a strong category POV. Capture existing demand while educating the market about your approach.
Save full category creation for when you have the resources, timeline, and strategic imperative to pull it off. Done right, it's transformative. Done poorly or prematurely, it wastes resources you could spend dominating real buyers with real budgets in real categories.