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His point about copycat companies is well taken; one of the shortest paths to failure is to slavishly imitate someone who is already successful.

by olefoo 18y ago

babul 18y ago
imitate then innovate? Many businesses start successfully (first mover advantage) but are unable to maintain it allowing competitors to overtake them.
mechanical_fish 18y ago
I agree only with the strong form of your statement -- the one that requires us to define slavishly imitate as "with no distinguishing special feature, and targeting the same market". But I think the weak form of your statement is wrong. Here's Eric Sink, urging you to start a company in a field where there are already competitors: http://www.ericsink.com/Choose_Your_Competition.html http://www.ericsink.com/Choose_Your_Competition.html "The big problem with avoiding competition is that you are also avoiding customers. The existence of a competitor indicates the existence of paying customers. If you can't find anyone who is making money with your idea, you really need to wonder if there is any money to be made there at all." Let's consider the original article's example: cloning Flickr. There may be lots of good reasons to clone Flickr. It's a really new idea, and we haven't had much time to explore the space. For all we know, there might be all sorts of niche markets for Flickr-like services: Flickr for amateur baseball, Flickr for fashion designers, Flickr for medical illustrators, Flickr for architects. Each of these apps might have slightly different features (perhaps Flickr-for-architects would allow you to estimate the sizes of rooms by pointing at the corners of various objects in the photo, or provide various easy-to-use UI elements for matching photos with locations on a floor plan), and each would certainly be sold to a different market (or else they would likely fail -- in the Generic Photosharing market, they risk being crushed by Flickr itself). But there's no reason why they should not all coexist, just as the existence of Starbucks does not, in fact, doom all other coffeeshops everywhere to extinction. Now, if you clone Flickr but don't add a differentiator, that's probably a mistake. And if you clone Flickr but don't have a revenue model that will keep you afloat, that's a mistake. [1] But there's no reason to expect successful businesses to be novel. Novelty is irrelevant. Only making money is relevant. [1] This is the real reason why it's easy to laugh at many of the Flickr clones: Many of them have also cloned Flickr's revenue model, which involves being acquired by a company that has deep pockets and a large number of servers. It seems unlikely that this plan will work out for everyone...
- olefoo 18y ago
  I put the adjective in to restrict it to the strong sense, imitation isn't necessarily bad, intelligent emulation of successful strategies is the basis of progress; but it's a mistake to think that you can succeed as a follower. The thing I see is that there are a lot of bright young things out there who want to be entrepreneurs but who have not the disposition or the discipline to be creative as entrepreneurs and who for whatever reason don't take a critical look at their goals and methods. Leaping on to the business model of the week becomes a substitute for self-assessment and critical reflection. And of course there is the "ooh that's cool, I want to build one of those!" factor to be considered.

His point about copycat companies is well taken; one of the shortest paths to failure is to slavishly imitate someone who is already successful.

by olefoo 18y ago

His point about copycat companies is well taken; one of the shortest paths to failure is to slavishly imitate someone who is already successful.

babul 18y ago

imitate then innovate? Many businesses start successfully (first mover advantage) but are unable to maintain it allowing competitors to overtake them.

mechanical_fish 18y ago

I agree only with the strong form of your statement -- the one that requires us to define slavishly imitate as "with no distinguishing special feature, and targeting the same market". But I think the weak form of your statement is wrong. Here's Eric Sink, urging you to start a company in a field where there are already competitors: http://www.ericsink.com/Choose_Your_Competition.html http://www.ericsink.com/Choose_Your_Competition.html "The big problem with avoiding competition is that you are also avoiding customers. The existence of a competitor indicates the existence of paying customers. If you can't find anyone who is making money with your idea, you really need to wonder if there is any money to be made there at all." Let's consider the original article's example: cloning Flickr. There may be lots of good reasons to clone Flickr. It's a really new idea, and we haven't had much time to explore the space. For all we know, there might be all sorts of niche markets for Flickr-like services: Flickr for amateur baseball, Flickr for fashion designers, Flickr for medical illustrators, Flickr for architects. Each of these apps might have slightly different features (perhaps Flickr-for-architects would allow you to estimate the sizes of rooms by pointing at the corners of various objects in the photo, or provide various easy-to-use UI elements for matching photos with locations on a floor plan), and each would certainly be sold to a different market (or else they would likely fail -- in the Generic Photosharing market, they risk being crushed by Flickr itself). But there's no reason why they should not all coexist, just as the existence of Starbucks does not, in fact, doom all other coffeeshops everywhere to extinction. Now, if you clone Flickr but don't add a differentiator, that's probably a mistake. And if you clone Flickr but don't have a revenue model that will keep you afloat, that's a mistake. [1] But there's no reason to expect successful businesses to be novel. Novelty is irrelevant. Only making money is relevant. [1] This is the real reason why it's easy to laugh at many of the Flickr clones: Many of them have also cloned Flickr's revenue model, which involves being acquired by a company that has deep pockets and a large number of servers. It seems unlikely that this plan will work out for everyone...

olefoo 18y ago
I put the adjective in to restrict it to the strong sense, imitation isn't necessarily bad, intelligent emulation of successful strategies is the basis of progress; but it's a mistake to think that you can succeed as a follower. The thing I see is that there are a lot of bright young things out there who want to be entrepreneurs but who have not the disposition or the discipline to be creative as entrepreneurs and who for whatever reason don't take a critical look at their goals and methods. Leaping on to the business model of the week becomes a substitute for self-assessment and critical reflection. And of course there is the "ooh that's cool, I want to build one of those!" factor to be considered.