Welcome to 🔥” The Slap” 🔥, the official newsletter of The MisFits, where we dive into what it takes to build a category-defining brands that slap! Visit our website | Listen to our mixtapes | Schedule a call
To the Underdogs, MisFits, and Category Creators,
A lot of founders are posting content without knowing why they’re posting in the first place.
If the goal is just “put content out there,” you’re already losing. What you should be working towards is category authority, not spraying content across the internet hoping something sticks. You want people to associate your name with a category (A great example is the research papers Anthropic has published on AI Safety).
You say smartphone, people think Apple. You say CRM, people think Salesforce.
You say at-home fitness, people think Peloton.
That association didn’t happen accidentally, those companies intentionally occupied mental real estate.
This is why I’m bullish on category before branding. If you don’t know your category, your brand becomes misaligned. You end up posting constantly without actually owning anything in people’s minds.
Honestly, I think too many founders are optimizing for activity over authority.
I’d rather post less and create something that genuinely challenges how people think. At the end of the day, if someone asks for a recommendation in your category and your company never comes up, what are we really building?
—“IRON” Mike
The Category Whisperer
***P.S. If you need help going from zero to one and finding Product-Market Fit, click below.
Be sure to read my flagship piece below. It’s part manifesto, part field manual, and part MBA for the 0.01% of veterans who aspire to build category-defining brands.
MisFits Don’t Get Into Flow, We Cook.
That means you're locked in, head down, and in the zone. To help you get there, we stream the dopest mixtapes this side of the East Coast, thanks to our DJ friends at bunkr.
Additional Resources:
The Category Design Reading Lists
