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Wall Street Journal
Hello, This is Stark Industries. No, We Do Not Make Iron Man Suits
August 2017
Companies that share names with fictional firms from cult movies and shows can get into some stupefying situations. ‘Yeah, great latex salesman.’
Pied Piper, a Pacific Grove, Calif., firm that rates the effectiveness of car dealer networks, was founded 10 years earlier and located 90 miles to the south of the fictional technology startup of the same name in the HBO show “Silicon Valley.” Founder Fran O’Hagan said he was recently “presenting to a room of purchasing managers and one of them asked if we do compression algorithms,” like the company on the show.
The real company had the temerity to rate Tesla Motors dead last in a 2016 survey of dealership networks. The electric auto maker’s chief executive, Elon Musk, tweeted a link to an article mentioning the company to his 10 million Twitter followers saying: “Tesla finishes last in being salesy. Good. Also, I can’t believe there is a real Pied Piper.”
