Active Category Design

Don't compete.
Create the conditions to win.

The way ambitious founders stop fighting for a place in a crowded market and start a category they're built to lead.

Get the free toolkit See how it works →
Category, brand & positioning work across
MarsCloudflareDocuSignWeber ShandwickEdelmanNovamexAPCHubSpotRegard
The belief

Being the better option is a trap. Instead, find the costly problem everyone else missed.

Competing to be faster, cheaper, or a little bit better means playing on the incumbent's terms, in a market they already own. The best you can win there is second place at a discount.

There's another way. Find the costly problem everyone else missed. Design a market around it. Then bring its value straight to the people who matter most.

Most category work stops here
A point of view, a manifesto, a line on the About page.
→
Active Category Design keeps going
Until the category shows up in how you sell, build, and show up.
How it works

From a product to a category, in three moves.

01 · Map & Listen

Find the problem worth owning

Audit the market and survey the people who know your business best, until the real problem, the lateral one no one has named, surfaces.

02 · Design

Turn it into a category

Shape the problem into a point of view, a category, and the architecture behind it, so people understand exactly why you're different and why it matters.

Most category work stops here → Active Category Design keeps going
03 · Activate

Bring it to the people who matter most

Make the category impossible to ignore, then operationalize the point of view across every persona, pitch, and channel, kept on-narrative as you scale.

Download the full process map (PDF)
The toolkit

Take the system. It's yours.

Everything here is free, and there's no email wall. If you're ambitious enough to start a company, you can do this. Start with the map, run the survey, then work the kit in order.

The Method · Overview

The ACD Process Map

The whole method on one page, from mapping the market to the lightning strike. Start here.

PDF ↓
The Method · Field Instrument

The ACDS Survey Guide

The 13-question survey behind the method: who to ask, how to field it, how to theme it.

PDF ↓
01
Audit
02
Compass
03
Statement
04
2×2
05
Agent
01
Pre-Work Kit · Part 1 of 5

The Problem Audit

Map how every player frames the problem today, and find the crowded center you’re leaving.

Download PDF ↓
02
Pre-Work Kit · Part 2 of 5

The Adjacent Possible Compass

Your core problem is the sun. Find the category that orbits it, then decide how far to travel.

Download PDF ↓
03
Pre-Work Kit · Part 3 of 5

The Problem Statement

Build it in layers: context, tension, villain, cost. Then put the problem in a person.

Download PDF ↓
04
Pre-Work Kit · Part 4 of 5

The Whitespace 2×2

Draw your own axes, plot the market, and claim the corner everyone else left open.

Download PDF ↓
05
Pre-Work Kit · Part 5 of 5

The Category Agent Guide

Turn your point of view into a working Claude agent, with a copy-paste training scaffold.

Download PDF ↓
No email required to download.
But if you want the occasional note on category design, plus new tools as they're released, leave it here.
Who's behind this
Mike Bruno

Mike Bruno

I've spent two decades helping companies figure out what they actually stand for, first building and leading strategy teams inside big agencies, then as a partner at a category-design firm where I built the repeatable process behind the category work for companies like Cloudflare, HubSpot, and DocuSign.

Alternative Uses is where I put all of it to work for founders. I started the company on a simple conviction: category design shouldn't be locked in a boardroom or priced like a secret. Any founder ambitious enough to start a company can do this with the right tools and discipline.

So I give the tools away, and I help the founders who want a partner when the stakes are high.

When you want help

The tools are right here, and they work.

But sometimes the stakes are high, a raise, a reposition, a category to lead, and you want someone who's run this process a hundred times in the room with you. That's when founders bring me in.

Start a conversation