By Larry Chiang
Ideas are useless because

This theory makes me incredibly popular with connected Silicon Valley rising stars. But the following same theory makes my massively unpopular to the entrepreneurial uninitiated. This theory: Everything’s a sequel.
Every concept that the uninitiated deems “original”, we initiated conclude: Yup, that pitch we just heard is a sequel. Yes, I heard that they’re crossing the chasm because they got timing-market-timing, correct.

They have a shot because they can execute in this vertical
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Larry Chiang (@LarryChiang) |
#MrSelfridge
ep 5. Yup, Selfrifge’s Dept store is a sequel to “Marshall Field’s!” #ENGR145s |
Like Nordstrom!? Google Von Maur.
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Larry Chiang (@LarryChiang) |
Von Maur, the department store
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I hope this explains the phrase you hear on repeat / re-run: “Ideas are useless. It’s about execution”
Ideas are useless because
– the sequel to something that exists is already in a bunch of people’s minds
– like in a dream, the reality distortion field makes you forget how hard sales is
– ideas are useless because you still need to “do things that don’t scale”
Chip Conley is staring at portrait of Hilton founders. Chip started a chain of hotels. He basically bought pieces of turd properties and polished them up.

Andrew Mason said, “Polishing your turds and getting super rich” applies to OPT (other people’s turd)
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Larry Chiang (@LarryChiang) |
#Paris Hilton #SiliconValley “piggybacking off people and institutions of real success.” duck9.com/blog/credit-se…
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