The third meaning inside Larry Chiang’s SuperModel pun is the one about who, and what, you model your venture after. Larry’s term for it is the Super-Entrepreneurship Model: don’t build the chasm-crossing venture from raw materials, cross it by attaching to something already proven. The “chasm” is the old startup problem of getting from a handful of early believers to an actual market that pays you.
Most founders try to cross it from scratch, with no distribution, no format, no proof anyone will buy. Larry’s approach is to cross it from the right: from a position that already has credibility built in, because you plugged into it instead of inventing it. That’s the External API move in practice: copy a proven format and change roughly one element, or run your hustle on someone else’s existing audience.
“Tutoring the SAT is an external API to the College Board” is Larry’s own example of borrowing distribution instead of building it. The franchise version of the same idea shows up when a proven concept gets replicated city to city, no new invention required, just a sequel.
Super-Entrepreneurship, in this sense, is not about being extraordinary: it’s about refusing to start from zero when something proven already exists to plug into. The video below is where Larry talks through this side of the framework directly.
“Sell it first, then go make it” is the test for whether you’re actually crossing from the right or just building blind. Cross from the right, and the chasm gets a lot narrower than it looks from the other side.
Details: Watch Larry explain the External API
#SuperModel #ExternalAPI #Web12