4 ms·
Every time there's a post on HN about a new business that's the new hotness but which is not available outside the US, there are a bunch of posts asking why. He
by runako 15y ago
Every time there's a post on HN about a new business that's the new hotness but which is not available outside the US, there are a bunch of posts asking why. Here are some possible answers:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3027066 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3027066
Another way of looking at it is that by creating the [insert country here] clone of [insert cool service here], you could probably start a niche business pretty quickly by serving the need unmet by the service you're cloning. This worked great for LoveFilm in the UK, who cloned Netflix.
- rmoriz 15y agoRules of Business: If there is a market in Europe, some european copy cat will fill the gap if the US based company is too slow.
- danmaz74 15y agoAddendum: And then very likely the most successful European copycats will get acquired by a the same US company when it really wants to expand abroad...
- mhd 15y agoIf they did something interesting, i.e. are worth acquiring. More likely, they still sit on a month-old feature set of the original and then are sued out of business – or just ignored.
- rmoriz 15y agonever saw that "sue out of business" in Europe. There is just no way to protect "your business idea" unless you deliver + expand fast. If the German copy-cat industry is faster, you just lost and have to pay a lot (groupon). I personally don't like copy-cats but that's the way it currently goes.