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Nail Your Category
I spend a lot of time with veteran entrepreneurs. Hell, I get to talk to them all day every day. Matter of fact, I'm sitting across from one as I write this.
Almost all of them struggle with nailing and articulating their category. Trust me, it matters; there's a psychology associated with clear category design.
Last week, I attended a VC conference with people who live and breathe capital formation, including fund managers, LPs, lawyers, and CFOs. One of the sponsors stepped up and delivered the cleanest, sharpest pitch of the day: Stifel Bank
Up until that point, I had never heard of Stifel.
I found out they’ve been around since the 1890s. Their official description reads like corporate wallpaper: “Stifel is a diversified global wealth management and banking company focused on building relationships that help people and businesses pursue financial goals.”
Nothing about the description sounds memorable to me, or differentiated from any other corporate bank. Yet, the team that pitched understood the assignment. They read the room and pitched the following one-liner;
“Venture banking for startups, LPs, and fund managers.”
That’s it. Category + Customer. Boom! Apparently, Stifel formally rolled out their Venture Banking arm in 2022 to go after the space left behind by SVB’s collapse and the shake-ups in startup finance. It was a deliberate carve-out—a new line of business, a new category, with a name that instantly signals who they serve and why it matters.
Here’s why this matters for you:
Most veteran entrepreneurs butcher this. You pitch your startup and no one knows what it is but you. You try to sound clever and innovative, at the sacrifice of clarity. You go down a rabbit hole of features and benefits instead of getting to the brass tacks.
That’s ego talking. It feels beneath you to niche down and sound so basic. It makes you feel small. You have a vision for something grand, something that market has never seen before, but you haven't earned the right to swim up stream yet.
When Stripe launched, they didn’t call themselves “the global infrastructure for the internet economy.” They were, “Credit card payments for developers.”
Clean. Simple. Punchy. And crystal clear.
When going from negative one to one and beyond (what I like to call idea to invoice), you have to anchor in people’s brains exactly what you do and who you do it for. That’s category design.
If you're a veteran entrepreneur, the most important thing you can do right now is the following:
- Define your category. (ex. Veteran Entrepreneurs, Sub-Category: Underdogs & Misfits-Military Veteran Founders/CEOs & Other ones-of-one)
- Nail your one-liner. (ex. I help Underdogs and MisFits—Military Veteran Founders/CEOs and other one of one’s—Go-to-Market with confidence and clarity by designing categories they can actually win.)
- Name your customer. (ex. Misfits who need help with their GTM)
Get people curious first, then you can be clever later.