Episodes

On this episode of Lochhead on Marketing, we have a dialogue with Mike Maples Jr. on how artificial intelligence is changing startups and venture capital. Mike Maples Jr. is the co-founder of Floodgate, one of the highest profile early stage venture capitalists. He also has a podcast called Starting Greatness, and it is one of my absolute favorites. By the end of it, we hope that you’ll gain a new way to think about both technical risk for startups and market risk. And why in an AI world, you ...

On this episode of Lochhead on Marketing, myself and Eddie Yun, co-founder & co-creator of Category Pirates, tackle what’s going on with what Elon Musk is now doing at Twitter; specifically, the move to charging people for their Validation Verification– once coveted, now purchasable – Blue Checkmarks. This is part of a new thing we’re doing with our Category Pirates newsletter called Pirate Perspectives. So if you are interested and haven’t subscribed to Category Pirates yet, now’s the best tim...

This Lochhead on Marketing episode is a short one, almost like a bedtime story with Uncle Lochhead. I recently did a post on LinkedIn that blew up in a way that I didn’t quite expect. It was meant to be a humorous post about Marketing, but it seems to have cut quite deep in some, and others found it relatable. I thought it would be fun to read to you so we could share a few chuckles about it. Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category de...

Pirate Lochhead is sailing the seven seas this week, so we’re dropping a legendary conversation that he had recently with Mike Maples Jr. and Ann Miura on the Starting Greatness Podcast. They discuss the recent SVB bank run that lead to a variety of situations and accusations by “experts” on social media. They also discuss what lessons a Founder can learn by studying the cause and effect of such crisis and circumstances. Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcas...

There is a fundamental tectonic change happening in the way work gets done – White Collar knowledge work to be specific. This new technology is creating a new category of worker beyond what has been the sort of top of the pyramid, the Knowledge Workers. There’s a new layer above the Knowledge Worker emerging called the Creator Capitalist – someone who gets paid not simply to apply knowledge, but to create it. And that’s because the value of existing knowledge is dropping exponentially every day...

Pirate Lochhead is sailing the seven seas this week, so we’re dropping a legendary conversation that he had recently with Anna Furmanov on the Modern Startup Marketing podcast. They discuss creative marketing category design, guns, human composting and more. Yes, human composting. Just… listen, trust me. Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind. What does “Creative” mean to you? The ...

It’s been a crazy handful of days in Silicon Valley. But now that the federal government has made their announcements and has the ball rolling, I wanted to spend a few minutes with you just clarifying some things that seem to be creating confusion in the recent Silicon Valley Bank situation. There seems to be more confusion about what just happened with the collapse of the Silicon Valley Bank and what the federal government just did as there was about COVID. So let me see if I can break this do...

Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse went off like a bomb on March 10th 2023. And I want to reach out to you and essentially share with you the conversations that I’ve been having with many friends, many entrepreneurs, many VCs, in the last 24 hours or so. That said, let’s talk about what’s really going on; specifically, what the media talking heads and idiot, ‘thought leaders’ on the internet are getting very, very wrong. Second, we’ll discuss a few ideas on what you can do immediately to shore up y...

If you are in tech, a Silicon Valley type, in a startup, or you’re a category designer working in that world, this podcast is for you. Because today, we’re going to talk about career considerations for all of you. Whether you are planning to climb the corporate ladder or break away from it, we hope that his episode can help you figure things out. Speaking of making a difference, my friends at Acceleration Economy are hosting a legendary virtual event called the Digital CIO Summit. It is not a s...

On this episode of Lochhead on Marketing, let’s talk about what most people are missing about the biggest category battle of the decade: OpenAI & Microsoft vs. Google. Even some of the smartest people in business can’t see what’s happening here, as most people don’t have a category design lens; they have a competition lens. The competition lens is about winning a comparison game with other companies, which at most leads to a small piece of the market share, and rarely leads to being the categor...

On this episode of Lochhead on Marketing, we are going to drop a conversation that I recently had with my dear friend, one of the smartest guys in tech, Bob Evans, on his podcast, Cloud Wars Live. If you work in technology, what Bob and his guests have to say is fascinating, illuminating, and, frankly, agenda-setting. If you’re a regular reader of Category Pirates, you’ll know that we’ve been writing about intellectual capitalists and the emergence of a whole new human category, Native Digitals...

The Wall Street Journal says, “George Lois is the one the only prodigy or fathead, founder of agencies, creator of Legends, George Lewis is a genuine advertising superhero”. George Lois is well known if not famous for designing culture, changing cover images for Esquire magazine, and his “call your cable company and tell them I want my MTV”. That campaign made the music video category and made MTV the Category King. In his life and career, he broke every rule, created legendary categories and br...

Recently, I was a guest with the legendary Sachit Gupta on his fantastic podcast called Conscious Creators, which I highly recommend. During our conversation on his podcast, we unpack Category Pirates’ most recent book Snow Leopard. Our producer Jason DeFilippo heard this podcast and thought it’d be a great idea to drop it here for you. What you’re about to hear is me and Satya go deep on what it takes to be a successful native digital creator slash writer. Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. Th...

In observance of the Midterm Elections in the United States, we will not be dropping full normal episodes of Lochhead on Marketing this week. And if you are American, I do hope you get out and vote. It is, in my opinion, one of the most patriotic things you can do. I also just wanted to read you a little something that I wrote recently on LinkedIn that I think is germane. Because whatever happens in the American midterms, roughly 50% of the country is going to be elated, and 50% of the country ...

What percentage of the total value created in any given market category goes to the category designer or leader? That was a question that we had several years ago. And we thought there would be research about that. Well, when we were writing Play Bigger, we couldn’t find that data. So we had to create it. The number has been an extraordinary insight. It turns out that the company that wins the category earns 76% of the total value created in the space, as measured by market cap and or valuation....

On this episode of Lochhead on Marketing, let’s talk about public relations/communications, and a very different point of view about that. In particular, why your content is your marketing. Towards the end, we’ll talk about five easy steps to consider when building your own direct audience, and bypassing the legacy publications: the old-school, dusty gatekeepers. Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs wit...

On September 15 2022, Adobe announced it was buying startup Figma for 20 billion US dollars. This is one of the largest private company purchases in Silicon Valley history. They paid approximately 50 times Figma’s 2022 revenue, and Wall Street hated it. Skeptics are saying that Adobe paid an “astronomical price” for a company projected to book only 400 million in ARR annualized reoccurring revenue this year. And this is exactly what people who do not understand how categories work. The “experts...

Welcome to a special episode of Lochhead on Marketing, where we dive further into our new book called Snow Leopard. On this episode, we discuss the Content Pyramid, and how one can become a legendary creator, writer, and thought leader. But before all that, we’d like to say thank you very much to all who took the time to read our new book and share it around. It’s also caused a tremendous amount of conversation in the entrepreneur, marketing, and writer/creator world. Because today, more than e...

Peter Drucker is considered the father of modern business management. If there was a Mount Rushmore of business thinking, he’d be on it. Recently on Category Pirates, we’ve begun work on the evolution of Peter Drucker’s concept of a knowledge worker, to what can today be called as the emergence of an intellectual capitalist. So I wanted to look back on Peter Drucker’s ideas that had a huge impact on me, and see if we can apply more of them in our current endeavors. His book, The Effective Execu...

On this episode of Lochhead on Marketing, Matt Johnson and I have a conversation about the book that changed my life. In my case, it was two books in particular that changed my life. We look into them through a category lens perspective in Matt Johnson’s new podcast, One Book That Changed My Life Podcast. Matt Johnson is the founder of PursuingResults.com. Matt and his firm were the original producers of my original Oddcast back in the Legends and Losers days, and he’s taught me a ton about pod...

On this episode of Lochhead on Marketing, our guest Al Ramadan talks about what’s at stake when it comes to category battles, how you can spot the category challengers who can become category kings and queens, and what they need to become category leaders that earn 76% of the economics. There comes a time in every startup’s life, where they face an epic, typically 18-to-36-month category battle. As we reported in our first book Play Bigger, the company that wins that battle earns 76% of the tot...

On this episode of Lochhead on Marketing, let’s talk about how marketing can drive revenue with White Space Analysis. We talked about how to drive short-term revenue via category design a few episodes ago (LOM 151). Today, we provide you with more options to make that cash register sing as soon as possible. Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind. White Space Analysis & White Space M...

The Content Marketing category is almost 700 billion. Almost every company is working on content and increasing their content marketing investments. And yet, when was the last time you got a piece of content marketing and you said that was legendary? Let’s dig into how the marketing world got duped into content free marketing, aka saying nothing everywhere, and why this is one of the largest opportunities hiding in plain sight. We recently launched our newest big book from category pirates. It’...

On this episode of Lochhead on Marketing, let’s talk about how you can be a Thought Leader. More specifically, we’ll discuss how to be a Solo Thought Leader and build yourself up with our guest, Diego Pineda. Diego Pineda is the author of the book The Solo Thought Leader: from Solopreneur to Go-To Expert in Seven Steps. Being viewed as a thought leader is a powerful thing. Becoming known for a niche that you own through leading thoughts is one of the most powerful ways to get there to either ha...