3 ms·
I'm thinking about the YC question, "why would your project be hard for someone else to duplicate? My partner and I could duplicate any given YC company, featu
by npk 19y ago
I'm thinking about the YC question, "why would your project be hard for someone else to duplicate? My partner and I could duplicate any given YC company, feature-for-feature, quickly. So, to first order, the answer to this question is, "It's not hard."
But just duplicating can't be the real worry here. Is the underlying question, "Why won't your competitors quickly duplicate what you're building?"
- amichail 19y agoIt's hard to get users, particularly if you are not the first in a given area.
- npk 19y agoIf someone wants to copy a YC company that's m months old, a copy-cat site could be build in ~ m months. None of the YC companies seem to have a "secret sauce" that would take years to develop. (And I'm not saying they should.) Since the answer to the duplication question is universally "no", why put it on the application? What is the subtext that I am missing?
- davidw 19y agoTo get people thinking about it?
- ido 19y agoWhat they can't easily copy from a month old YC company is the huge amount of free publicity/contacts that comes from being a YC company.
- juwo 19y agoEvery VC wants to know if you have invented something unique - that you can patent. NP Holdings vs. RIM = 600 M
- akkartik 19y agoRelated question in the YC app: "What do you understand about your business that other companies in it just don't get?" http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=17628 http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=17628