Follow the Footsteps to the Source
Find the person or place that already produced the outcome you want, physically go there, and work backwards through everyone who touched it.
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 84%
Shaan ran this play twice with completely different inputs. Wanting to build the next Chipotle out of college, he and his two friends asked where Chipotle started, learned it was Denver, moved there, and opened their sushi concept literally across the street from the original Chipotle. Then they traced the chain backwards: who did Chipotle's real estate rollout, which two brokers, who did the next thing, and they went and talked to each one in turn. That was, in his words, the entire plan. Denver was the right answer for a non-obvious reason he only articulated afterwards: Chipotle, Noodles & Company, Quiznos and Smashburger all started there, so the operators who know how to pick locations and roll out restaurant operations still live there. Years later, wanting to build consumer internet companies, he applied the identical logic to a person rather than a city: Michael Birch had built three or four products with millions of users and sold Bebo for $850 million, so Shaan went and worked for him rather than trying to figure it out alone.
Origin
Born as a naive undergraduate plan to clone Chipotle from Denver, then consciously reused in 2012 to pick an employer instead of a city.
Core principles
- 01The exemplar's location holds its talent pool long after the exemplar leaves.
- 02Proximity to someone who has done it beats reading about how it was done.
- 03Every outcome has a chain of named operators behind it; the chain is walkable.
- 04Copy the process and the people, not the product.
- 05Being naive about the plan is survivable; being far away from the knowledge is not.
How to run it
- 1
Pick your exemplar precisely
Choose one concrete success you are trying to reproduce. Shaan's was Chipotle for the restaurant, and Michael Birch personally for consumer software.
Pro tip A person is often a better exemplar than a company, because a person will still talk to you.
- 2
Find where it was actually born
Research the origin location, not the current headquarters. Shaan found Denver, and noticed the pattern held across Chipotle, Noodles & Company, Quiznos and Smashburger, confirming it was a real talent cluster.
Watch out Confirm the cluster with more than one example, or you have found a coincidence rather than an ecosystem.
- 3
Relocate into proximity
Move there, or take the job. Shaan and his two friends moved to Denver and opened across the street from the original Chipotle. Later he flew from Australia to San Francisco to sit inside Monkey Inferno.
Pro tip Physical closeness converts cold outreach into a normal local conversation.
- 4
Walk the chain of operators backwards
Ask who did each piece and go meet them one at a time: 'who rolled out the real estate, oh, these two brokers, okay, well, we'll go talk to them, and then who did their this, okay, we'll go talk to them.' Each conversation names the next person.
Pro tip End every meeting by asking who handled the next function; that is what keeps the chain going.
- 5
Stay long enough to absorb the operating system
The payoff is the transferable process, not the first venture. Shaan spent six or seven years inside Monkey Inferno running six or seven products before the exit.
Watch out Watch for the point where you have absorbed what you came for. Shaan's signal for leaving each stage was the feeling of 'this can't be it.'
In the wild
Shaan and two Duke friends wanted to build the next Chipotle, discovered Chipotle started in Denver, moved there, took a location directly opposite the original Chipotle site, and then interviewed Chipotle's real estate brokers and downstream operators one by one.
→ The sushi concept ran as a working cloud kitchen and was actually making money, but Shaan concluded it was not the thing and left. The transferable output was the method, not the restaurant.
Wanting to build consumer internet products, Shaan identified a person who had already built three or four products with millions of users and one $850 million exit, and joined his eighteen-person studio rather than starting alone.
→ Six months in he was running the studio, shipped six or seven products including Blab, and eventually exited the youth e-sports app to Twitch owning 20 percent of the business.
Common mistakes
Copying the surface instead of the supply chain
Taking the location across the street was the theatrical part; talking to Chipotle's actual brokers and operators was the part that produced knowledge. If you only copy the visible artefact you get the aesthetic and none of the capability.
Mistaking proximity for a business
Shaan's own tell was that he and his friends called themselves co-founders of a restaurant. As he put it, that should have been signal one that this was not a great idea. Standing near a good business does not make yours one.
Leaving the people you dragged along
Shaan took a $120,000 job in Indonesia mid-venture and told his co-owners he would come back smarter, which he now calls a total jerk move. The method requires you to stay in the chain long enough for the learning to compound.
Is it for you?
Best for
First-time operators with no network in a category, who can move location or take a junior seat to get proximity.
Not ideal for
People who cannot relocate or change jobs, or anyone in a field where the winning playbook has genuinely changed since the exemplar succeeded.
From the transcript
“This is how dumb we were. We were like we want to be the next Chipotle. How do you do that? Well, where did Chipotle…”
“Then we were like, who rolled out the real estate? Oh, these two brokers? Okay, well, we'll go talk to them. And then who did…”
“Monkey Inferno was basically like this guy's done what I want to do. So let me just go work with him.”
From the episode
Shaan's Story: How I Made My First $1,000,000 By Age 31
Shaan's Story