Sahil Lavingia is the founder and CEO of Gumroad, a web platform where creators can sell products directly to consumers. He started the company while working at Pinterest in San Francisco, raised venture capital and ascended to the elites, but eventually, changed his trajectory, fired everyone and relocated to a small town in Utah. Why this was the right path for Sahil, and why venture capital is not a fit for everyone, it's all in this episode.

The difference between wealth, money and status. This is the first interview between Naval and Nivi on How to Get Rich.

Have you heard of crossing the chasm, an inevitable jump that every startup has to make? Mike Maples, an investor from Floodgate, explains why startups have to go through this process and how starting small is the only way to get it right.

Being the “face” of a startup can be very intimidating for some founders, which is why a lot of prefer to not approach marketing this way. However, being a public CEO or founder can be a very effective way to market a startup. Today on The Startup Chat, Steli and Hiten talk about whether you should be the face of your company.

Do you want to get inspired? This episode is for you.

Jason Calacanis is a serial entrepreneur and angel investor. He was one of the early believes in Uber, Calm, Robinhood and many others. He is a host of the show This Week in Startups, and the author of Angel, a founder of Launch.co, Inside.com, and a friend to many rich and famous folks in Silicon Valley.

On this episode, Jason shares his views and wisdom, advice that he's accumulated throughout his career, and lessons learned from other successful entrepreneurs like Elon Musk, Mark Cuban, and Jeff Bezos.

In this bonus episode of EconTalk, economist and Nobel Laureate Paul Romer discusses the coronavirus pandemic with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. Romer argues that the status quo of shutdown and fear of infection is unsustainable. Returning to normal requires an inexpensive, quick, and relatively painless test. Such tests are now available. The challenge is in relaxing certain regulations and then creating a supply chain of production and availability. Romer then explains how such a test could ease a return to something like normalcy for many sectors of the economy. The conversation concludes with a discussion of the dynamics of the labor market in the current situation.

In this episode, Christopher Lochhead discusses why category creation is the new growth strategy for legendary marketing.

Great companies do not focus on incremental growth, rather, they focus on being exponentially different. These leading companies introduce people to new businesses and provide them with new ways of doing things.
Making A Different Future
Legendary companies shape our lives and design a different future. They are on a mission to make the future different. Further, these companies create something exciting ⁠— a new way of living, thinking and doing business ⁠— category creation. Through category creation, these companies are pioneering the way to the future.
“Many times they are solving a problem we didn’t know we had—or a problem we didn’t pay attention to because we never thought there was another way.” - Christopher Lochhead
These legendary companies make ordinary companies run for their lives. These ordinary companies want to profit from the world for offering it the same set of products and services.
Big Es and Small Es
Lochhead cites different big enterprises as well as small enterprises as an example. Huge companies now started as small when they changed our way of thinking. Companies such as AirBNB, Google, Amazon, Palo Alto Networks, Cisco and Salesforce not only created great products⁠—they created a good company and a great category.
“They had to courage to stand on their own to create a new category of products / services they niched down. And by designing a different niche, they got to own it.”  - Christopher Lochhead
Category First, Brands Come Second
Categories make the company, not the other way around. In relation to this, if we carefully examine big brands, there are no legendary companies in a bad category. There will be no customer-recall of brands if these brands are not tailored to cater to a category.
“Brands only matter if they dominate categories that matter. Category design is a new lens, play with it!” - Christopher Lochhead
To hear more about Category Creation as the new growth strategy and more relevant information from Christopher Lochhead, download and listen to the episode.
Bio:
Christopher Lochhead is a Top 25 podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger.

He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur.

Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist.

In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive ⁠— which was acquired by Hewlett-Packard in 2006 for $4.5 billion.

He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; was the founding CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient, and served as head of marketing at the CRM software firm Vantive.
Link:
Lochhead.com

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Lochhead on Marketing™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and subscribe on iTunes!

Do you have tactics that can be deployed to help manage during a crisis? In this episode of Startup Therapy, Ryan Rutan and Wil Schroer talk on the crisis’ they’ve dealt with in the past, what works in managing during those instances, and beneficial communication tactics.

Being a startup founder can be very stressful, and It’s very common for founders to struggle with sleep. Not getting enough sleep can not only affect your productivity, but it can also be detrimental to your health. In this episode, Steli and Hiten talk about how founders tend to struggle with sleep and some challenges that keeps founders up at night, how there’s a science to sleep, and how tools like Headspace, Clam, or Brain.fm can help you.