Naming the institution you are attached to can do more selling than any tagline you could write yourself. Larry Chiang’s clearest example is SAT tutoring, an external API that borrows the College Board’s exam instead of inventing a private ranking system. Saying the source out loud, the College Board, the exam name, the score range, is not fine print, it is the pitch.
Citing a recognized source hands you credibility you did not have to build from scratch, and that credibility travels fast in a room. This is the second form of his External API idea: running your hustle on someone else’s distribution instead of building your own audience first. He contrasts this with chasing a sugar daddy, waiting on ads or virality, and calls that the slower, weaker path.
Attack the money, in his words, means asking for the paid gig directly, not for a follow or a share. Once you can name a trusted source, the buyer does less verifying and more deciding, which shortens the whole conversation.
It also works because a specific citation reads as prepared, not promotional, and prepared is what gets trust in person. Larry treats this move as free marketing, the source institution has already spent decades building the trust you are now borrowing.
The discipline is picking a source people already respect and staying precise about what it actually says versus what you are adding to it. Watch Larry explain how citing a real source turns a pitch into something closer to a fact than a sales line.
Details: Watch Larry explain borrowed credibility
#ExternalAPI #BorrowedTrust #Web12