Cinchy’s Category Hijacking Playbook: Intercepting Existing Demand to Build Something New
Creating a new category is hard enough. Creating one while generating immediate revenue is even harder. In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Dan DeMers revealed Cinchy’s unconventional approach: instead of waiting for perfect category recognition, they “hijack” existing market demand and redirect it toward their vision.
The Category Hijacking Strategy “We are designing a category, we are naming it, framing it, claiming it,” Dan explains. “But we are doing what we call category hijacking, which is we’re going to surf whatever the biggest wave is, but intercept that demand and redirect it.”
The Mobile Phone Analogy Dan illustrates this strategy with a powerful analogy: imagine introducing mobile phones to a world that only knows cordless phones. “You can intercept that demand because guess what? A mobile phone is also a cordless phone. But a cordless phone is not a mobile phone,” he explains. “So you can skip the generation and go right to the end.”
Understanding User Intent The key is understanding the fundamental desire driving current market demand. As Dan notes, “The reason you’re looking for a cordless is you want freedom, right? It’s a freedom. You’re not attached to a base, you can go anywhere you want.”
The Short-Term and Long-Term Play Cinchy’s approach involves parallel narratives. “Our go to market is there’s a long term inevitability that we want to showcase,” Dan explains. “And the short term though is the way to enable the shift in the world to create that future where people control their data is the movement away from copy based integration towards access based collaboration.”
This dual approach serves different buyer motivations: “Which coincidentally is a huge efficiency play because half of the IT budget of any organization on earth that has any degree of complexity is wasted building integrations and the maintenance of that.”
The Evolution of Category Messaging The way buyers understand and talk about the category has evolved. “There’s definitely nuances to how it’s defined, but it is converging,” Dan shares. “It’s quite simply it’s the avoidance of copies… that term zero copies and integration, free data sharing, these are all just different variations on the same core concept.”
Building Infrastructure Around Demand To support this market redirection, Cinchy established the Data Collaboration Alliance. “Rather than Cinchy Inc. pushing for standards, it’s going through the alliance, where we’re working with other organizations and data privacy experts… it creates a lot less friction and anyone can join.”
The Different vs. Better Framework Critical to their hijacking strategy is understanding when to emphasize difference and when to emphasize improvement. “Different, not better, is amazing at getting attention, but it doesn’t translate to immediate sales,” Dan explains. The solution? “We are different, not better is the hook. But when it comes to a sales process, we are actually better because we are different.”
Lessons for Category Creators Cinchy’s category hijacking strategy offers several key insights:
- Identify existing demand that aligns with your long-term vision
- Frame your solution as both an evolution and a revolution
- Build infrastructure that legitimizes the redirect
- Use difference to attract attention, but better to close sales
The strategy works because it doesn’t require immediate market education. Instead, it leverages existing pain points and desires, redirecting them toward a more comprehensive solution.
For B2B founders creating new categories, the lesson is clear: you don’t have to wait for the market to fully embrace your vision before generating revenue. By understanding and intercepting existing demand patterns, you can build your category while driving immediate business results.
As Dan puts it, “It’s an inevitability. There’s no other way.” The key is finding ways to accelerate that inevitability while building a sustainable business in the present.