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Former Google VP Kai-Fu Lee Got a Nickname, Start-Copy Lee
- Hipchan 15y agoAs much as it pains me as a person who values intellectual property, I have to admit that copying is a valid and important strategy. At least half (anyone know of a more educated number?) of the development in Asia since the Meji Restoration consists of pasting Western ideas. I hope this means that all startups take the internationalization seriously from the beginning. Hopefully we can get some sort of solid services / startups / processes that can help internationalize companies much earlier on. The current crop of localization services are frankly inadequate.
- metageek 15y ago>pasting Western ideas. There's a difference between ideas and the expression of those ideas; that's why patent and copyright are separate. What's being complained about here goes beyond copying ideas, into copying expression.
- tyng 15y agoI'm not against stealing ideas and methods from other companies, internalising them then IMPROVE upon them. That's part of innovation. But blatant copying?! Even the UI?! C'mon Kai-fu, I'm sure Innovation Work can do better than that. The whole purpose of Innovation Work (which is itself a copy of YC, for those of you who don't know) is to spur entrepreneurialism in the region, but all I see is setting up a very bad example. I can't imagine how the founders feel OWNERSHIP in their startups. It's more like a gold rush.
- HardyLeung 15y agoI'm disappointed with what Kai-Fu Lee is doing; I guess I expect more from him. Disappointment aside, though, this strategy works. Take something that works, and apply to the China market. Why reinvent the wheel? But I'd argue that they should do a better job with "copying" -- you don't really want to invite criticism for no gain, unless the blatantness of copying is part of the strategy (to show investors that they literally and successfully cut-and-paste working startup businesses, like an assembly line). Hmm, now that I think about it, perhaps that's the whole point.
- barista 15y agoThis guy was formerly at MSFT. The same guy who when quit, Ballmer threw a chair at him. Not sure if he was worth the chair now. http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2005/09/1106.ars http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2005/09/1106.ars
- elq 15y agodid you read that link? Balmer went nuts when http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Lucovsky http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Lucovsky quit
- iantimothy 15y agoI can't remember where I got this quote from, but early on I learned that there are basically three ways to beat the US in technology: 1. The Japanese Way - Innovate By Leapfrogging. 2. The Indian Way - Innovate By Piggybacking. 3. The Chinese Way - Innovate By Copying. Looking at how things have been over the years, China isn't going to stop a strategy that has worked across industries.
- plinkplonk 15y ago"I can't remember where I got this quote from, " probably this paper?( by the Lemelson-MIT program - warning pdf) http://web.mit.edu/invent/n-pressreleases/downloads/sustainable.pdf http://web.mit.edu/invent/n-pressreleases/downloads/sustaina... "Innovation to help achieve the goals of sustainable development can start in many ways, including: “copy-catting” (i.e. Japan, Korea and China first mimicking manufacturing techniques and then becoming world leaders.); “piggy-backing” (i.e. India performing service work for rich countries and adapting information technology to local needs); and “leap-frogging” (skipping over technologies that are inappropriate in a given place and time and adopting more sustainable solutions). .................... “Copycats” imitate ideas, technologies and techniques from other countries and improve and adapt them. During its first few decades, the United States took the key secrets of the Industrial Revolution from England, Scotland and France and launched its own industrial economy. Two centuries later, Japan and then Korea developed by adapting American manufacturing, raising the quality and lowering costs. These days, China is doing it with much success, moving up the innovation ladder at a rapid rate. “Piggybackers” ride on the backs of rich nations by doing more and more of their manufacturing and service work at far lower costs. India is practicing the art of piggybacking right now, using advanced computing and communications technologies to perform software development, tele-services, and even high-level innovation at a fraction of the labor costs compared to performing the same jobs in the United States or Western Europe. A recent study showed that one in ten U.S. software jobs will be exported to places like India and China over the next five years. Finally, “leapfrogs” skip over inappropriate technologies and embrace new ones, such as Finland’s sudden break from Soviet domination and its rapid adoption and development of new inventions like wireless networks. "
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- wcsun 15y agoIronically, Sequoia Capital invested both in DianDian and Tumblr. Great Firewall is really good for copying and monetizing startup businss. http://fan.renren.it/a/ITxinwen/hulianwang/20110325/79864.html http://fan.renren.it/a/ITxinwen/hulianwang/20110325/79864.ht...
- holdenc 15y agoTumblr will have the last laugh here. There's practically no market for tasteful online advertising or paid software in China. So, while he might rack-up users it will be hard to monetize this.
- shii 15y agoNot really, since Tumblr doesn't have any ads either. Come to think of it, besides selling premium themes, how else does Tumblr make money? Surely all the trust-fund hipsters on the site don't bring in wheelbarrows of money with their ironic 1-gear eco-bikes, do they?
- sil3ntmac 15y agoYou were downvoted for adding a snidey remark to a decent question. Next time just ask the question. Since I'm curious as well, how does Tumblr make money besides themes? Does anyone know their monetization strategy?
- riffer 15y agoExit
- edw 15y agoMeta: I come to HN not because it is a logical syllogism server but because it often has thoughtful, interesting comments. I own a couple of single speed bikes--for all we know shii does too--and I didn't get offended by his comments. While I'm against viciously abusive attacks on people, I think there's a danger in trying to create a Disney World like atmosphere where no one poops or says things more caustic than "gosh."
- shii 15y agoYeah, sorry I forgot Hacker News was all srs bznss where no humor is tolerated whatsoever. On the Tumblr monetization front, TheStartupist[1] covers a good portion of their story. Checking Crunchbase[2] shows that they've gone through pretty large funding rounds, with their last one (D) at $30M the largest. I've been trolling Tumblr for the last year and half, and the only things I've been able to scrounge are the $9 Directory listing under your category of choice and the premium themes. They're still growing massively, as all the cool kids congregate there to post their Instagram-faded pics of teenage angst, but are hemorrhaging money like Twitter. And like Twitter, advertising is viewed as pure evil[3] and not a viable solution to generate revenue. Twitter realized the inevitable and started Promoted Tweets recently, and Tumblr will have to do something similar soon as well. Maybe they make enough from the themes, but that seems a little quixotic. [1]: http://thestartupist.com/2011/01/the-hypothetical-monetization-of-tumblr/ http://thestartupist.com/2011/01/the-hypothetical-monetizati... [2]: http://www.crunchbase.com/company/tumblr http://www.crunchbase.com/company/tumblr [3]: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2010/04/tumblr-ads.html http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2010/04/tumblr-ad...
- nikcub 15y agoThe entire Chinese startup scene fascinates me - we don't peer into it often enough
- est 15y agoNow Kaifu-Lee's http://innovation-works.com http://innovation-works.com itself got copied http://aodaren.com/copy-works http://aodaren.com/copy-works
- staunch 15y agoYou've got to love their name: "Innovation Works".
- joelandren 15y agoInnovation works, but genius steals.
- helwr 15y agogood coders code, great reuse
- zackattack 15y agoDo you really believe this.
- ikbear 15y agoIn China, I really believe this.
- ethanhuynh 15y agohe steals something and make a fortune from it then he's a genius. he steals something and fail to make money from it, then he's just a robber
- patrickk 15y agoIf "Good artists copy, great artists steal", then China must be full of good/great artists!
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- jyothi 15y agoInnovation works, copying strikes!
- ddkrone 15y agoThis is just plain smart strategy.
- erikstarck 15y agoWhile this example is a little extreme in its similarity with the original, copying a startup idea and implementing it in another market than an English speaking is not just done in China. Here's an article about a bunch of european startups doing the same: http://www.businessinsider.com/what-do-ebay-facebook-and-groupon-have-in-common-these-guys-cloned-them-and-got-rich-doing-it-2011-1 http://www.businessinsider.com/what-do-ebay-facebook-and-gro...
- lindsayrgwatt 15y agoI've often wondered if one of the (many) reasons why there are so few successful startups coming out of Europe is due to the copying. I visited Berlin a while back and my buddy was telling me about a bunch of guys who've built a successful business (dozens of engineers) just cloning 'hot' American products. It's got to reduce the number of people working on brand new ideas. (I'm not suggesting that you can't build a great business by copying somebody else's work, but you won't build a world-changing, super innovative company doing so)
- gaius 15y agoHeh, that may be a factor, but I doubt it's the main one. Lots of American HN users seem to be pretty Liberal in their political outlook, and that's fine. But consider Germany, with a welfare state that looks after you from cradle to grave. If you want to start a startup there then you'd better have your EUR 20,000 in capital minimum, and you'd better do all the paperwork and comply with all the regulations and have the right certificates and diplomas... The activation energy is just so much higher in Europe, two guys hacking in their garage can't just go for it without a lot more preparation. If you fail you won't starve of course, the State will look after you but that's a two-edged sword - not only is it harder to get started, there's less hunger to succeed, and everyone will be used to working only 35 hrs/week...
- justwrote 15y agoWe actually have an idea in an area which is - if I read posts on HN - pretty well funded. VCs and Angles have a lot of interest. But in Germany, people don't see it - the ones with money even less. And its really hard to start a business, as you already summed up. We even think about moving to the US, but as a foreigner it's also not "easy" (well, noone said it would be easy to start something on your own - but you get what I mean)
- michaelpinto 15y agoSomething that we tend to forget is that we learn by imitation — and industries are no different than individuals. Chinese firms will start to evolve their software to local tastes and will slowly set themselves apart from mere clones that don't translate well. That will be followed by free form borrowing of the best ideas from multiple sites — and that will be followed by local innovations. And at that point China will begin to export their software as the world wants to talk to them (much the way you'd join LinkedIn from abroad if you wanted to do business with Americans).
- raymondhome 15y agoWell, the Chinese have no shame. If copy-paste your competitor's UI isn't shameless, I don't know what is. Seriously you raise funding and yet wouldn't spend some of it on a good UX designer?
- guard-of-terra 15y agoMany Russian internet businesses (can't call most of them startups) copy parts of interface, ideas or business models from American [ex]startups. They never seem to copy the whole experience as a whole, as it seems to be with Chinese ones - but useful bits here and there. On the other hand, when they don't copy they are accused of that anyway because for some reason Russians value precedence in tech highly. In all the world the problem seems to boil down to: If there is a business model that works and the niche is vacant in their market, why innovate?
- happywolf 15y agoMS Windows 'borrowed' alot from Mac's UI, and nowadays most smart phones are copying iPhone's concepts. I feel the hidden interest in this thread is more on Chinese/China bashing rather than intellectual property.
- bryne 15y agoDid Windows clone the Mac UI right down to the color and pixel and then replace the Apple logo? I think the bashing here is well-deserved, above and outside the discussion of whether China has a demonstrated economy of copying (it does). Also, there's a special place in hell for people who can't just come out and call a clone a clone.
- JoachimSchipper 15y agoI agree with your first paragraph, but "a special place in hell"?
- bryne 15y agoFor many years I've dealt with clients who were incredulous when I told them "no, we can't/won't just clone Yahoo/Facebook/etc" when a pixel-for-pixel copy was precisely what they wanted. There's an important creative and IP distinction between stealing concepts and cloning every aspect that some people just don't grok.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- btcoal 15y agoI'm not sure why the question mark here. Are you questioning the meaning of this phrase or its applicability? If the former, then it is a reference to Dante's The Divine Comedy. If the latter, then in The Inferno, there is a special place reserved for thieves and betrayers. In a way, if you are a hacker and you blatantly rip-off the work of another member of the community, you are betraying said community. So the innermost circle of hell is reserved for you with Brutus, Cassius and Judus.
- eneveu 15y agoBad Hackers Copy, Great Hackers Steal...? ( http://vimeo.com/4763707 http://vimeo.com/4763707 )
- msy 15y agoWell I'll certainly look at Sequoia a little differently now. The legality and there's ethicality, I look for both in business partners.
- yannickmahe 15y agoInterestingly, the Chinese word for learning, 学 (xue) also means to imitate/to mimic.
- est 15y agoI am confused, how else can you learn by NOT imitate?
- ckuehne 15y agoDiscovery. Trial and error. Observation of nature.
- adolph 15y agoThe recent post "Teaching binary to 3rd Graders using the Socratic method" is a good example of a non-imitation teaching/learning method. http://news.ycombinator.net/item?id=2446316 http://news.ycombinator.net/item?id=2446316
- btcoal 15y agoWhen I was first learning the piano I numbered the notes from Beethoven's Fur Elise, then numbered the keys on my keyboard to match. Then I just pressed the keys in order. Eventually, through muscle memory, I could play the piece pretty well. But I had not learned anything. I just imitated.
- sradnidge 15y agoOne wonders if the likes of Google and Microsoft employed Kai-Fu Lee so that he would be less inclined to fund / promote clones of their products in China.
- dclaysmith 15y agoThese copy cat sites (and similar ones in Europe) are an interesting test to the "idea" vs. "execution" argument. I bet that there are other nearly perfect clones of Tumblr in China yet this one has risen to the top. I'm sure Kai-Fu Lee is looking beyond the ideas and at teams behind them. Cloning might not be the most ethical way of building a product but clearly DianDian identified a market that wasn't being served in China and had the ability to bring a product to that market. I love that the discussion of cloning was happening on "Zhihu, a clone of Quora".
- tstyle 15y agoIn general cloning is pretty bad. If I ripped off a popular iphone app, threw it on the app store, I'd be dilution the profit of the original creators and confusing users. I profit at everyone else's expense. But there is a pretty good chance that Tumblr and Quora will soon be blocked in China. (All it takes is one blurb by one user on a sensitive issue, which is how Posterous and blogspot got blocked). So if we assumed that 1) A product like Tumblr creates value for it's users 2) Tumblr will never be able to profit from China without the government/network connections then cloning Tumblr seems like a win win scenario for everyone involved. If doing a startup is about creating something users want(that doesn't exist yet or is not accessible for whatever reason), and the spirit of startups is to do things as efficiently and cheaply as possible, then isn't Diandian(the Tumblr clone) doing exactly what they are suppose to? Disclaimer: I founded a startup in Beijing a few months ago, and actually received seed funding from Kaifu's Innovation Works. I don't work for them, nor am I trying to defend anyone's actions(Come on guys... even the ICONS?). Just offering a different perspective from the other side of the the great firewall of China. ^^
- raymondhome 15y agoSince when is cloning another website defensible? Look, if you want do a Tumblr-like startup, sure by all means go ahead. But why do you have to clone the original website? Competition is good. Friendster begets Myspace begets Facebook. When Facebook was first launched in 2004, do you think people say,"Another Myspace clone."? No, they say, "Another Mysapce-like startup."
- delackner 15y agoI'm kind of surprised that anyone is actually surprised or offended by this kind of stuff. The US would be a backwater farming colony if it hadn't wholesale stolen the technologies that allowed New England to compete in the textile industry. That is only the most obvious example.
- gyardley 15y agoTumblr's not alone -- Innovation Works also has a pretty decent copy of my last start-up, Flurry, called Umeng. (For the curious, compare the product at flurry.com and umeng.com.) I've been watching Umeng for a bit and the services have slightly diverged, presumably because Umeng's learnt a bit more about the Chinese market and adapted its product. But the initial product was just a straight-up clone. I am a little surprised to see this from as respected a person as Kai-Fu Lee, who I'd expect to be innovating, but you just have to shrug. This sort of thing happens in business, and it's not worth getting too excited about.
- raymondhome 15y agoWell, we can just about write off inovation in China. If a heavy weight like Lee, who has worked in Silicon Valley for 2 decades and named his incubator Innovation Works, is cloning Silicon Valley startups shamelessly, what hope is there?
- brown9-2 15y agoWhy is Google mentioned in the headline? They have nothing to do with this story. Might as well list all of the schools this guy attended in the headline as well.
- RickHull 15y agoI have never heard of Kai-Fu Lee, and I gather he made his name via Google, so the context was useful for me.
- tszming 15y agoIdea for a weekend project: A social directory for copycat websites.
- kragen 15y agoSome other important look-and-feel clones: Windows (copying MacOS) Lotus 1-2-3 (copying VisiCalc) GNU/Linux (copying Unix) Gosling Emacs (copying ITS and Multics Emacs), which eventually became GNU Emacs Excel (copying Lotus 1-2-3, to the point that VisiCalc slash commands still work in Excel last time I tried them about five years ago) OpenOffice (copying Microsoft Office) C compilers everywhere (copying the original Unix C compiler) Compaq's clone PC (copying the IBM PC, and giving rise to the entire IBM-compatible market) Friendster (copying Sixdegrees) Facebook (copying Friendster, somewhat less faithfully) Every modern IDE (copying Turbo Pascal) Every modern search engine (copying Google) MS-DOS (copying CP/M and a little bit of Unix) MercadoLibre (copying eBay) Intel's current x64 CPU line (copying AMD) Netscape (copying Mosaic) Internet Explorer (copying Netscape) Wordpress (copying Movable Type) (I'm not sure who to credit with the modern blog, with its comment threads, "after the jump", and permalinks. Pyra?) Being able to copy the look and feel of competing products is crucially important to allowing innovation to continue. If Personal Software Inc. still had a monopoly on spreadsheets, it's a good bet that the spreadsheets we use today wouldn't have progressed much from where we were in 1984. The interface designs that seem innovative and unique today are either faddish crap or the baseline from which tomorrow's innovation begins.
- guard-of-terra 15y ago"I'm not sure who to credit with the modern blog, with its comment threads, "after the jump", and permalinks." LiveJournal had them all, no idea if it was the first (as you show, it doesn't matter much).
- kragen 15y agoLJ and Blogger were contemporaries. Frontier's blogging features were a little earlier. Among the three, not sure which ones invented the things I identify above as "the modern blog".
- elliottcarlson 15y agoThough there is something wrong with directly copying UI elements with just a text change - that should be completely frowned upon and called out imho. Other than that - competition is good, and imitation should be seen as you are doing something good, now just make sure you can keep up or do it better consistently unless you want your competition to take over the market share.
- BrandonM 15y ago> His first open letter in year 2000 to students titled About honesty and integrity. This is the author's big conclusion? He just had to go snarky with it? The guy once wrote about honesty and integrity. That was TEN years ago; it's not some big scandal that he has now taken a couple products that were not available in the Chinese market and brought them to market as quickly as possible. If you can get away with it, why not make your minimum-viable product a near-clone of an existing product that works but not in your market? That seems like a very sound strategy to me. Once he gets some traction and begins to see what improvements he should make in the context of his market, the product will begin to diverge. If Tumblr wants to localize to China with an all-new Chumblr, then we can start fighting over IP theft. Until then, the guy is simply doing a service. Blogs used to be superior to mainstream media because they gave the straight facts while avoiding the sensationalism that plagues modern day media. It's too bad the latest wave of bloggers are all wanna-be journalists.
- shareme 15y agoOne of the points missed by the HN knee-jerk crowd: by Kai-FU funding knock off clones rather than investing in something new that takes VC money away from other potential successful startups in the startup scene in China.
- VladRussian 15y agomy understanding may be wrong and whoever knows better please correct me if so. The copying in Chinese culture isn't a "vice of stealing", it is more like a "virtue of modesty and respect to the masters". I.e. taking a clean canvas and trying to paint something original is like an arrogant statement that one can come up with something better than using that canvas to make a good copy of a great work of a great master. And only when the one has perfected his skills and craft, it is appropriate to make original contribution, say add/modify a couple of details to the copy of the great work.