--- title: "Should a Startup Create a New Category? A Web3 Decision Guide" description: "When a Web3 startup should coin a new category and when it should claim an existing one, what market education costs, and how journalists end up filing you." author: "Shilika Jain" date: "2026-10-28T00:45:50.255+00:00" tags: ["positioning", "narrative positioning", "web3 pr", "messaging", "crypto pr"] canonical: "https://www.shilikajain.com/blog/web3-category-naming-create-or-join" --- # Should a Startup Create a New Category? A Web3 Decision Guide By [Shilika Jain](https://www.shilikajain.com/authors/shilika-jain) - 10/28/2026 When a Web3 startup should coin a new category and when it should claim an existing one, what market education costs, and how journalists end up filing you. --- # Should a Startup Create a New Category? A Web3 Decision Guide Most Web3 startups should not create a new category. Claim an existing category that reporters and investors already cover, then win a sharper position inside it. Coin a new category only when no existing label describes what you do, you have the budget and patience to educate a market for a year or more, and you have proof a journalist can point to. Everyone else pays a heavy education cost for a word nobody repeats. That's the short version. The longer one depends on a question founders rarely ask: when a reporter writes about you, which folder do you go in? ## Why is creating a category so tempting for crypto founders? Because the upside is real and visible. The team that names the category often becomes the default answer when people search for it, and every competitor that follows has to use your word. Crypto has also trained founders to expect this. Every cycle produces new labels, and the teams attached to them early get pulled into every story about the trend. So founders look at their own product, notice it doesn't fit neatly anywhere, and decide the answer is a new name. I understand the instinct. I've written that being first is the strongest position you can hold: > building stupid products or copies won't take you anywhere. here's the web3 product approach for the win: - become 1st in your category - if not, try to build a product better/best than the first mover in your category - focus on the best f**kn user experience > > [Shilika Jain on X, 16 May 2024](https://x.com/Shilika_jain/status/1790968532689461639) Read it carefully, though. "Become 1st in your category" doesn't say "invent a category". It says pick a race you can lead. Most of the time that race already exists. ## What does educating the market actually cost? A new category adds a step to every conversation. Before anyone can decide whether they want your product, they have to learn what the category is and why it should exist. You pay for that step in four places. | Where you pay | What it looks like with a new category | What it looks like in an existing one | |---|---|---| | Media | Every pitch needs a paragraph of background before the news | Reporter already has a beat and a mental shelf for you | | Investors | Partners struggle to repeat the thesis to their committee | Thesis slots into a market they've already sized | | Users | Search volume for your term starts at zero | People are already searching for the category word | | Content | Months of explainers before you can talk about yourself | You can go straight to why you're better | The cost isn't fatal. It's slow. A new label usually needs many repetitions across press, founder content and partners before outsiders start using it unprompted, and you're funding all of those repetitions alone until competitors show up to share the bill. ## How do journalists file a startup? By beat. Crypto newsrooms organise around topics readers already follow: DeFi, stablecoins, infrastructure, AI, regulation, NFTs, gaming. When your pitch lands, the reporter's first question is which of those it belongs to. If they can't answer in a few seconds, the pitch tends to go nowhere, however good the product is. This is the part founders underestimate. A new category name doesn't create a new beat. The reporter still files you under something they already cover, and if you haven't told them which one, they'll pick for you. Often they pick wrong. You can see the effect in how the MANTRA Chain raise was covered. CoinDesk's headline described it as raising $11M for RWA tokenization with a Middle East tint. That funding news travelled further because it carried a category word reporters were already writing about, plus a regional angle. No education step was needed. The full breakdown is on the [MANTRA Chain case study](/work/mantra-chain). The opposite failure is common too: > so many EVM rollups and so little differentiation! can someone explain me why? > > [Shilika Jain on X, 18 May 2023](https://x.com/Shilika_jain/status/1659048881961807876) That's what joining a category without a position looks like. You get filed correctly, and then you're filed next to forty identical teams. Joining isn't enough on its own. I go further into differentiation within crowded chain categories in the [L1 and L2 narrative playbook](/blog/l1-l2-blockchain-pr-narrative-differentiation-playbook). ## The category decision scorecard Before you coin anything, score yourself honestly on these five questions. Give each one 0, 1 or 2 points. 1. **Does an existing category word describe at least 70 percent of what you do?** 0 if yes, clearly. 1 if partly. 2 if nothing comes close. 2. **Can you fund education for 12 months or more?** 0 if your runway is short or your marketing budget is thin. 2 if you can keep explaining without needing quick conversions. 3. **Do you have proof a reporter can cite?** 0 if it's all roadmap. 1 for early usage. 2 for numbers, named partners or data you own. 4. **Will others build in the same space soon?** 0 if you'd be alone indefinitely. 2 if competitors are likely to arrive and adopt your word. A category of one isn't a category. 5. **Can your founder carry the idea in public?** 0 if the founder avoids interviews and op-eds. 2 if they're ready to argue for the category repeatedly. How to read the total: - **0 to 4: join.** Use the established word and fight for position inside it. - **5 to 7: join and reframe.** Use the established word as your filing label, then attach a sharper angle that's yours. - **8 to 10: you have a real case to create.** Proceed, and plan the education campaign before the launch campaign. The numbers are a thinking tool, not a formula. What they do well is stop a founder from scoring 3 and coining a category anyway. ## What does "join and reframe" look like in practice? This is where most good Web3 positioning lives. You accept the filing label so reporters know where you go, then change what the label means when it's attached to you. A few examples from campaigns and teardowns I've worked on: - **RARI Chain.** The filing label was a mainnet launch on Arbitrum. The reframe was protecting NFT creator royalties at chain level. That angle took one launch into CoinDesk, The Block and Cointelegraph the same week. More on the [RARI Chain case study](/work/rari-chain). - **Fluence.** The label was DePIN, a category reporters were already tracking. The reframe was argued in public by co-founder Tom Trowbridge, including a CoinDesk op-ed titled "Not a meme: DePIN can take crypto mainstream". Fluence didn't invent DePIN. It made a case for what DePIN should mean. - **Tangem.** In my June 2026 teardown I argued Tangem should keep the hardware wallet label but stop competing on it: > @Tangem shouldn't be fighting @Ledger for market share. It should be fighting @coinbase for mindshare. > > [Shilika Jain on X, 4 Jun 2026](https://x.com/Shilika_jain/status/2062437697978008001) Same category. Different enemy. That move changes which stories a brand can join without forcing anyone to learn a new word. The Limitless teardown made a similar point about prediction markets: keep the label so you're findable, but position the product around foresight rather than trading. The full reasoning is in the [Limitless teardown](/blog/marketing-teardown-limitless-prediction-markets). ## When creating a new category is the right call Sometimes it is. I'd back a founder who wants to create a category when all of these are true: - The existing labels actively mislead. Being filed under them would attract the wrong users or the wrong reporters. - The founder has a point of view strong enough to fill op-eds, podcasts and conference talks for a year. - There's owned proof, ideally data, that makes the category real rather than theoretical. - The team expects followers and is comfortable sharing the word with them. Even then, I'd use a bridge. Pair the new term with the old one in every early mention: "X, a new kind of Y". The old word gets you filed. The new word starts accumulating meaning. Drop the bridge only when people start using your term without it. ## The trade-offs nobody puts in the deck Joining a category has costs too. You inherit its reputation. If the sector has a bad month, you're in the story whether you like it or not. You also cap your ceiling: a team that's only ever "another restaking protocol" will struggle to be seen as more than that later. Creating one has the obvious cost of time and money, plus a quieter one. If the market never adopts your word, you've spent your earliest, most valuable attention explaining a term instead of a product. Rebranding away from a failed category is painful, because your first coverage is permanently filed under it. If you're stuck between the two, the safest sequence is to join first, earn coverage under the existing label, and let your differentiated angle grow until it's big enough to stand alone. Category creation works better as a destination than a launch strategy. My [Web3 narrative and positioning playbook](/playbook/web3-narrative-positioning-strategy-2026) covers that longer arc, and it's the first piece of work in most [Web3 PR campaigns](/services/web3-pr-campaigns) I run. ## FAQ ### Can a company create a category without spending heavily on marketing? Rarely in Web3. Category creation needs repetition across press, founder content and partners, and that repetition takes either budget or a very active founder. If you have neither, join an existing category and save the money for distribution. ### Should the category name appear in my press releases? Use the established category word in the first sentence of your release and your boilerplate so reporters can file you instantly. If you're introducing a new term, place it next to the familiar one rather than instead of it. ### What if my product fits two existing categories? Pick the one with the more active press beat and the audience you most need right now. You can mention the second in the body copy, but your headline and boilerplate should commit to one so coverage stays consistent. ### How do I know a new category name is catching on? Watch for other people using it without your prompting: reporters putting it in headlines, competitors describing themselves with it, users searching for it. Until that happens, keep the bridge to the old word. *Not sure whether you're joining a category or starting one? [Tell me what you're building](/contact) and I'll tell you which folder a reporter will put you in.* --- **Book a 30-min positioning call with Shilika** - https://calendly.com/shilikajain/30min/ Canonical: https://www.shilikajain.com/blog/web3-category-naming-create-or-join