Christopher Lochhead
Co-Founding Partner, Play Bigger Advisors. On 1 show, 1 appearance. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
authorhostexecutivefounderinvestor@lochhead ↗LinkedIn ↗lochhead.com ↗
Widely regarded as the godfather of category design, Lochhead co-authored influential business books including Play Bigger, Niche Down, and Snow Leopard. He previously served as CMO at three public technology companies and hosts the business podcasts Follow Your Different and Lochhead on Marketing.
1shows
1appearances
27statements
4resolved
2supported
1contradicted
50%fully supported
8said about them ↓ Everything Christopher Lochhead said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Lochhead: Gong made a critical strategic mistake staying in its micro-niche
“The mistake that Gong made, as well as the vast majority of others in that space, is they stayed in their micro niche. So the strategy in the beginning that was genius and exactly what you should do as a startup All of a sudden, when they didn't expand and set…”
Lochhead: Clari is crushing Gong and all other RevOps competitors
“Clary's crushing everybody in this space right now, and the Gongs and all the other players are now in this horrible position.”
Lochhead: Zuckerberg will blow over $1B on Threads, and it will fail
“Zuckerberg is going to blow in excess of a billion dollars on threads, and it will fail. It already has failed, because you can't take an existing problem with an existing solution, launch exactly the same shit, tell the world it's better, and have the world e…”
Lochhead: VCs will waste $500B on copycat AI startups over five years
“Venture capitalists in the next five years will blow at least half a trillion dollars in the AI space alone on me too. Demand chasing category, existing category competing startups that have a 10 X better product. No one cares.”
Lochhead: Targeting zero-billion-dollar markets is the only path to major startup success
“It sounds medically insane to say what you want is a zero billion dollar market. However, as crazy as it sounds, it's the only thing that leads to meaningful success. And the proof is in the data.”
Lochhead: Grant Cardone and the Kardashians monetize envy by projecting superiority
“One of the things that is insidious about influencers hustle porn stars, part of the business model is creating the perception of superiority. Right. The reason Grant Cardone and Tai Lopez and all these douchebags pose in front of planes and all this garbage, …”
Lochhead: Category designers compete against the status quo, not rivals
“So in category design, we don't compete period, full stop at the brand to brand or product to product level. Category designers do compete. But not against a product, not against a company, not against a brand. Category designers compete against the status quo…”
Lochhead: Next five years will produce more innovation than past 20
“I think all the indicators show that the amount of innovation that is going to happen in the next five years will eclipse the amount of innovation that happened in the last 20 years.”
Lochhead: The category makes the product, brand, and company
“The category makes the product. The category makes the brand. The category makes the company.”
Lochhead: Tech category leaders capture 76% of total category market cap
“In tech market categories, on average, one company earns two thirds, 76% to be exact, of the total value created as measured by market cap and or valuation.”
Lochhead: Categories are created by problems, not better products
“Problems create categories. And you either have to, A, solve a new problem, or B, reframe name and claim an existing problem in a, I'm going to use these words on purpose, very different way. And if you reframe the existing problem such that people see it in a…”
Lochhead: The Company That Creates Category Languaging Wins
“The company that creates the languaging for the category wins.”
Lochhead: The concept of disruption anchors founders to the past
“See, one of the biggest disservices in our industry is this word disrupt. Unless we're going to go disrupt the insurance industry. Well, if you're disrupting something, by definition, your reference point is the something. And when your reference point is an e…”
Lochhead: Competing for existing demand with incremental improvements causes startup failure
“And so this is the mistake that many, many entrepreneurs make. Is they, whether they realize it or not, what they're doing is incremental better. And they're fighting for market share, fighting for existing demand with something that's incrementally better. An…”
Don Valentine backed Apple despite calling their recipe pitch incredibly stupid
“And I sat there with Don Valentine and asked him about why he signed the check to Steve and Steve. And he said it was the stupidest use case he ever saw. The use case was a stay at home mom keeping track of her recipes on the Apple personal computer. This is t…”
Lochhead: Radically innovating or creating new categories guarantees criticism
“Anybody who's trying to do anything exponential, anybody who's trying to break and take new ground, anybody who's trying to radically innovate, anybody who's trying to design and dominate new categories of the way we live, work and play gets criticized.”
Lochhead: Category design does not mean being first to ship features
“Category creation, category design does not equal first to ship a product with a set of features.”
Lochhead: Defining the problem and solution set wins market categories
“The company that designs the space and gets it to tip its scale. And when I say designs the space, what I mean is specifically gets a meaningful percentage of the world to agree with their definition of a problem set, which then leads to their definition of a …”
Lochhead: Category creators capture two-thirds of market economics versus 24% for competitors
“The number one question for any entrepreneur or any creator at all is, do I want to compete for 24% of an existing market category, or do I want to create my own, where if I can execute, I will earn two-thirds of the economics. That's the decision that most en…”
Lochhead: A startup's biggest barrier to growth becomes its current category
“Every entrepreneur, every CEO faces a fascinating moment if they become successful in the first five years or so, which is they realize their biggest barrier to growth going forward is their current category. Because you can only be as big and successful as yo…”
Lochhead: Founders fail by using old language to describe new innovations
“A mistake that a lot of entrepreneurs make is they use old language to describe their new thing. And we can't use so much new language that nobody knows what the fuck we're talking about. So we have to meet the category where it is and bring them forward. But …”
Lochhead: Starbucks Is the Number One Milk Seller in the US
“They're the number one milk seller in the country. They're a milk company, not a coffee company, but that's, again, a whole other conversation.”
Lochhead: Venrock's Brian Roberts says product maturity takes 8 to 10 years
“Well, if you ask smart VCs, if you ask Brian Roberts at Venrock, the number one healthcare tech investor in the world, I believe he says it's eight to 10 years for a product to really have some maturity and be really stable.”
Lochhead: Word of mouth is never included in startup marketing plans
“So I'm a three-time public company CMO. I've advised over 50 venture-backed companies in, in category design and marketing. Guess what I've never seen in a marketing plan ever?
Lenny Rachitsky: What's that?
Christopher Lochhead: Word of mouth.”
The other half of the tape: Christopher Lochhead's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 8 times in 2 episodes across the shows. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Jag Duggal 6Lenny Rachitsky 2
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
Lenny's Podcast 8
2024 7 mentions in 1 episode
2023 1 mention in 1 episode
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Christopher's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| LENNY'S PODCASTLEDGER | Co-Founding Partner, Play Bigger Advisors | 1 | 27 | 50% 2/4 | full record on Lenny's Podcast → |