Category Is Almost Everything: A Founder's Guide to Picking a Market That Pulls You Up

Your product idea matters less than the market you point it at. I know that's not what most founder advice says, but I'll back it up.

The usual story is that a great team wins. Work hard enough, execute well enough, and you'll find a way. There's a line I've heard from operators that I think is closer to the truth: when a great team meets a lousy market, the market wins. When a lousy team meets a great market, the market wins. It's only when a great team meets a great market that something special happens.

So before you obsess over branding or your hero SKU, I'd spend the time getting the category right. Here's how I'd actually think it through.

Filter one: is the category growing, or is it zero-sum?

This is the first thing I'd check, and it's the one that quietly decides how hard the next three years feel.

In a growing category, you can win new customers without taking them off anyone. The whole pie is getting bigger, so you grow as it grows. In a flat category, every sale you make is a sale you stole from a competitor, and they fight back. Same effort, completely different result.

Think about the difference between a category growing 20-something percent a year and one growing low single digits. In the first, demand is being created for you. In the second, you're knife-fighting over a fixed pool, and margins get ground down as everyone bids against everyone.

I believe most founders underweight this badly. They pick a category they personally like, or one they happen to know, and then spend years grinding against the market instead of riding it. To put it plainly: it is far easier to look like a genius operator in a market that's pulling you up than to look competent in one that's flat.

So the first question isn't "can I build a good product here?" It's "is this category getting bigger on its own?"

Filter two: durables or consumables (and the trade-off nobody warns you about)

Once you've found growth, the next fork is what kind of thing you're selling. Durables or consumables. They behave completely differently, and most founders don't think it through before they commit.

Here's the trade-off in plain terms.

Consumables have repeat built in. People run out and buy again, so your customer base compounds. That's why investors generally prefer them, and why a consumables brand can keep growing without finding a brand-new customer for every sale. The catch: there's almost no IP. Anyone can copy a supplement or a snack, the formulas aren't protected, and you have to win on marketing and brand because the product itself is easy to clone. More churn at the top, more new entrants, more noise.

Durables are the opposite. There's real IP, real mould cost, real product design, so you're harder to knock off and the top of the category moves slowly. A well-built durable can hold its position for years. But the churn problem is brutal in a different way: someone buys a great version of your product and then doesn't need another for years. So your repeat rate looks fine over a long horizon, but it can't support the business near-term, and you're hunting net-new customers constantly to stay flat.

There's a way to frame this that stuck with me. The intrinsic growth rate of a business is basically its LTV. If most of your customers don't come back for years, then every single year your business is trying to decline, and you have to acquire your way back up just to stand still. For a lot of durables, that's the real game: not growth, but outrunning the decline.

Neither is "better". But you should know which problem you're signing up for. With consumables, the hard part is defensibility. With durables, the hard part is the acquisition treadmill. Pick the one whose hard part you're actually equipped to handle.

Filter three: mega-trend or ingredient fad

This is the filter I see founders get wrong most often, because the thing that fools them is the thing that looks most exciting.

There's a real difference between a mega-trend and an ingredient fad, and confusing them is how brands get built on sand.

A mega-trend is a deep, durable rewiring of how people behave. Things like the shift toward protein, fibre, sleep, longevity, mental health. These aren't going anywhere. They're large, they're slow-moving, and there's room for several brands to win inside each one for years.

An ingredient fad is a single hot input that spikes and fades. A specific ingredient everyone's suddenly talking about, that's all over the feed for a season, then gets replaced by the next one. These make brilliant ad hooks. People are curious, the click-through is strong, the angle feels fresh.

Here's the trap: a great ad hook is not the same as a great brand foundation. An ingredient fad can absolutely sell product this quarter. But if the whole brand is built on that one ingredient, you're tied to its lifespan, and when the conversation moves on, you move on with it.

My take: use the fads, don't be one. Ride the hot ingredient as an angle inside a brand that stands on a mega-trend. That way, when the specific ingredient cools off, the brand underneath it is still standing on something that lasts. Position the company on the trend that has ten more years in it, and let the fads be your hooks, not your foundation.

The honest test before you commit: if this specific ingredient disappeared from every feed tomorrow, is there still a reason for this brand to exist? If yes, you've got a foundation. If no, you've got a campaign wearing a brand's clothes.

Filter four: the channel and the white space

Two more things decide whether a good category turns into a good business, and they're easy to skip in the excitement of picking a market.

The first is channel. A category can be perfect and still not work on the channel you're planning to sell it on. The numbers have to add up where you actually acquire customers. The price point has to support paid social, the intro offer has to make the economics work, the margin has to survive shipping and CAC. A product that's a winner in a shop can be a loser on Meta, and the other way round. So don't just ask "is this a good category?" Ask "does this category work on my channel, at my price, with my margins?"

The second is white space. Before committing, I'd map every competitor already in the category. Sketch the two dimensions people actually use when they buy - price and positioning, say - and plot everyone onto a simple grid. Then look for the gap: a spot where there are clearly customers but nobody's really planted a flag. If you find a real, unoccupied position with demand behind it, you've got a genuine shot. If the grid is crowded everywhere a customer might want to be, then it doesn't matter how big the market is. A huge category with no white space is just a crowded room.

Both of these are where your own data earns its keep, by the way. Your ad account quietly tells you which of these you're actually riding - whether the demand you're seeing is a durable trend or a fad spiking, whether the angle that's converting is something you can build a brand on or just a hook that'll fade. The signal is in there if you read it.

Putting the filters together

So if I'm sizing up a category before committing the next SKU or the next brand, I'm running it through four questions in order.

• Is the category growing on its own, or am I fighting zero-sum for a fixed pool?
• Durable or consumable, and am I built for that one's particular hard part - defensibility or the acquisition treadmill?
• Is this a mega-trend I can stand a brand on, or an ingredient fad I should only use as a hook?
• Does it work on my channel and price, and is there real white space nobody's taken?

Get those four right and you've given yourself the kind of market that pulls you up. Get them wrong and the best execution in the world is just you running hard against a current.

Where to from here

Honestly, the cheapest place to make a category call is on paper, before you've spent a dollar on inventory or a single ad. Once the stock is ordered and the campaigns are live, you're committed to the answer.

So before your next SKU or your next brand, run your own version of these four filters. Map the competitors, plot the white space, and be brutally honest about whether you're standing on a mega-trend or just borrowing a fad's momentum. It's an hour of thinking that can save you a year of grinding against the wrong market.

And if you'd value a second read on the category and the angle before you commit - a look at whether the demand in your account is a trend or a fad, and where the white space actually sits - that's a conversation we're always happy to have. What category are you weighing up right now?