By Larry Chiang
Pay attention to what got deleted in regards to ‘sequel businesses’. This was first posted in Quora quoted here: https://www.duck9.com/entrepreneurship/the-entrepreneur-bell-curve/
The excerpt, now DELETED, accurately summarizes the concept of sequel businesses. The quora post was written by a non-engineering student undergrad who does not believe in engineering pattern recognition, pattern replication and pattern iteration. He says of my teaching sequel business, engineering concept:
“the parasite of Silicon Valley who vicariously brands himself, piggybacking off people and institutions of real success. One prime example: He once clearly recommended our class to build businesses off of existing businesses and replicate names similar to existing brands. I don’t remember what term he made up for that approach”
It is called “sequel business” and I accept responsibility for not teaching it super well to that particular student. Here is my attempt to take another crack at teaching this via the Quora boards:
– Star Wars (George Lucas has clips from film school leading up to his genius back-to-back trilogy sequels)
– Federal Express (it isn’t as federal like the post office but sounded better than “Fred Smith’s Air and Prayer Shipping Service”)
– WP Engine. Nothing related to Matt Mullenweg’s company wordpress
– Duck9 is a sequel to IMG. Deep Underground Credit Knowledge 9 is a company, business description and name just like International Management Group.
– SalesForce.com is obviously a sequel to Oracle. Marc Benioff, CEO / founder SalesForce, took investment money from Larry Ellison CEO Oracle
– Clara Shih, CEO of Hearsay Social is a sequel to Marc Benioff’s company: SalesForce. Marc invested in Clara Shih too.
– SpaceX is a sequel to NASA
– Tesla is a sequel business to Lotus and a sequel to AC Propulsion (the roadster used both companies products)
It is not just companies… It is also creative projects.
– Mickey Mouse used to be Steamboat Willie, a male senior citizen comic that smelled bad.
– Snow White and the Huntsman (It is not a Disney cartoon… a Universal Studios live action film )
– “Wicked” the Broadway Musical is the sequel pre-quel sequel to Wizard of Oz
It also applies to statistics
– MMPPI is a sequel stat to OBP. MMPPI = ‘mentor mentions per press interview.’ OBP = On Base Percentage.
Sequel-izing also applies to Countries. The Constitution of the United States of America is a sequel document
Think the phrase “Life Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness ” was written by Thomas Jefferson?! Nope. John Locke. John Locke wrote it 100 yrs before Thomas Jefferson copy pasted “Life Liberty Pursuit of Property”
I specifically teach engineers to latch on to “Sequel Businesses” so that all y’all can – pattern recognize – pattern replicate – pattern iterate.
To summarize my failed attempt to teach this during class. – piggybacking is critical because work done in a vacuum does not leverage the previous work already done – original work appears original later.
It starts off as 80% replication. 20% original.
– Set the bell curve for entrepreneurship and pattern replicate.
Oh, btw…”Pursuit of Happyness” was ripped by Will Smith and Chris Gardner.
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