Analogs & Antilogs
Information based off the book "Getting to Plan B" by John Mullins and Randy Komisar. The core principles of building out a business are:
- Don't Re-invent the wheel. When we have a new idea, we start building, but a lot of the components are already out there.
- Learn from others
- Mix & Match but don't just copy. Synthesize new ideas.
Compare your idea with existing businesses and look for analogs and antilogs and by conducting research on CrunchBase, google and other platforms. Take what works, avoid what doesn't, and add improvements to your idea.
Analogs: Consider successful predecessor organizations who are currently doing a great job and are worth mimicking. Look not only in your target industry but also other industries. As an exercise, Identify a few analogs. What can you learn from these analogs?
Antilogs: Predecessor organizations compared to which you explicitly choose to do things differently, perhaps because they are unsuccessful. As an exercise, identify a few antilogs. What can you learn from them?
For example, Apples iTunes and iPod had:
- Analogs
- 30M sold Sony Walkmans Proves that people enjoyed listening to music on their own and are willing to pay for such a device
- 26M Napster users Individual songs are more appealing than albums; downloading music is appealing; Would users pay?
- Antilogs
- Music Net Subscription model by record label; could only listen on the computer; music would disappear, if bill was not paid
- Pressplay You could burn some music on CD but didn't own it. It also only had songs from record label.
- Diamond Media System's Rio MP3 player: Bad UI and only 60 min of music.
Conclusion: Users want to play music on portable device. Users want songs and not albums. Users do not want to rent music but own music. Users want all their music in one place.
Un-tested questions: Will users pay for a site (iTunes) that offered a huge selection of music? Would users pay for hardware (iPod) and software?
Through just secondary research and a deeper understanding of other companies, you can only focus on the untested question that are most critical to your idea, solution or problem space that actually require testing.