Cloning

No innovation in business could be a good thing.

The company like Wal Mart, Microsoft, Burger King etc are successful because they are good at cloning ideas from other companies.

I like this video from Mohnish Pabrai (he is unbashingly straightforward and candid about his approach). Like what he says about himself, he likes to copy ideas from other people like Warren Buffett. (see here) He basically cloned the Berkshire Hathaway (eg. take 25% above hurdle of 6%, with no management fee).

He advised to simply buy what great investors buy, study what they are buying, and maybe follow what they are buying / selling. In setting up a investing company, the 2 important things are Simplicity + Cloning.

Advice on starting a business / do your own thing:

1. Stay in your job first – don’t quit your job. Work just enough to be not fired.
2. Live close to work.
3. Start young, do it early- preferably when you have little assets. So in case you go bankrupt, you have nothing much to lose – and can start over again in a clean slate.
4. Moonlight – work on your other business outside the working hours.
5. Don’t need an office – in fact he meets most of his clients in Starbucks. Don’t need to input money, need ideas which are more important.
6. “Hari Krishnan” flower model – Human cannot calibrate reciprocate favour. When you give people something, people tend to reciprocate the favour, but they seldom think about the magnitude of their return gestures.
7. Copy what other good companies – shut the brain off. Be a full “Cloner”, copy all on what is good.