9 ms·

How Three Germans Are Cloning the Web

115 points by brodd 15y ago

minikomi 15y ago
The same thing happens in Japan too .. http://camp-fire.jp/ http://camp-fire.jp/
ThomPete 15y ago
In some of the earlier episodes of Stack Exchange Podcast Jeff and Joel were debating whether to localize. Just to put some of this into perspective.
subpixel 15y ago
Copying ideas and execution just happens. Look at other industries - there's a Chipotle clone, frozen yogurt clones, etc. And many luxury sedans seem to be about 90% the same design, at least on the outside. The reason the Samwer story is so weird is a) there's so much damn money in their game (Groupon, Facebook, etc.) and b) they're generally regarded to be ruthless, cut-throat, slave-drivers. I know I'd feel differently about the phenomenon if they seemed less like idea-pirates and more like contributors to innovation.
justincormack 15y ago
Ripping off the design is not cool. But otherwise, well it is like being the guy who opens the second restaurant, the first one might get annoyed but in a few years there will be thousands. Sounds like great execution too.
- helipad 15y ago
  From what I see, the Samwer brothers don't have great execution. They copy a site, claim a userbase in Germany/Europe, then sell the site back to the people they imitated. It reeks of "go away" money.
  - Argorak 15y ago
    So how about Zalando being the biggest player in his field in Europe?
    - cburgas 15y ago
      Was Zalando founded by them? I always thought they just invested in it.
      - Argorak 15y ago
        No, like most of the companies mentioned in the article. Zalando was a Rocket Internet incubator participant.
- xd 15y ago
  Interesting point you make about ripping off the design. I'm not a designer, just a humble developer .. why is it OK to rip of a product idea but not the design of a product?
  - riffraff 15y ago
    I am not sure if this is defendable, but I would imagine it boils down to a difference that is often perceived between an idea (astract, possibly conceived by different people in similar ways) and it's realization. People generally won't argue when good ideas are cloned between competing products, and praise the competition. In the same way it's ok to write a theatre play in which the love between two people is contrasted by their families, but putting "wherefore art thou Romeo?" in the dialogs would seem bad.
  - drostie 15y ago
    Well, let's first scope "OK": Among artists it's a professional courtesy that the medium is public and the realization is private. It recurs in plenty of spaces -- for example, in comedy it's okay to joke about airports, but it's not okay to steal someone else's joke about airports. So the scope of "OK" here is "professional courtesy among artists." Now we can answer why it is that way. Why do these comedians shun peers who steal jokes? Well the first reason is that it leads to crap. So, this sometimes happens with movies that are intended as comedies: ten different creative voices all try to push the jokes in a certain direction, and what you get is not extremely funny to 10% of the population -- which would be success -- but is only a little funny to 100% of the population -- which is a failure. So by taking someone else's joke and mixing it into a hodgepodge of other material, it stops being so funny as when it appears in the context that it's supposed to be in. But I think a second reason is that we nurture ideas. It takes effort to turn an absurd concept into a good joke, and it takes effort to take an abstract idea like "coding with other people" and turn it into GitHub. When a comedian tells someone else's joke, there is a false pretense that they have spent all of this work to develop that joke for themselves -- and they haven't done any of it. When Eddie Izzard says, "This is my friend's Christopher Walken impersonation, and I'm nicking it, and he knows that," he's disavowing this aspect of the joke, and therefore it's more acceptable and can be used in his routine without too many eyebrows raised. The frustration is with people who steal almost every joke and achieve success with that -- not with people who steal one or another joke when they think it deserves to live on.
moadeel 15y ago
I have a few German friends, I understand them to be quite risk averse. However, what Samwers have accomplished in Germany is something far far more important and bigger than a clone industry - it is the spirit of taking risks, a willingness to aspire to be something other than traditional careers and a strong stance/philosophy on a type of entrepreneurship (clones) - stances such as these almost always lead to an ideological opposition and make way for others to engage in similar realms with differing philosophies. You can see that in Project A ventures, which is a reaction to Samwer's philosophy, and that reaction is good for Germany's start-up culture.
- itmag 15y ago
  Tell me more? I've never heard of the Samwers before and am eager to learn more.
  - moadeel 15y ago
    Don't know much more. I read the article and recalled convos with a few German friends in Accenture when I was consulting with them.
- Roritharr 15y ago
  As a German I've never viewed it this way, but its true. I'm working on creating a better Startup Community end Environment in my surrounding, not only because i'd like that to be here, but also because i'd like to show that there is a another, if not better, way to do this.
  - moadeel 15y ago
    Bingo
- rbanffy 15y ago
  > it is the spirit of taking risks Erm... I don't think copying successful business is very risky. You can, of course, bork execution, but the key part - exploring the "needspace" and finding a viable business model - is already done. And even executing, when someone executed before, is rather easy.
limmeau 15y ago
I had completely missed that the Samwer brothers were in the web copying business. Last time I heard of them, they were busy selling teenagers ringtone subscriptions ("Jamba").
- cygx 15y ago
  They were in the copycat business first, selling alando.de to ebay for millions, ~100 days after launch. They have a history of making money by, if not illegal, at least morally questionable means, and got in trouble with the unions about treatment of employees...
robinjfisher 15y ago
I think this says a lot about the English-language focus of a lot of startups. Failure to cater, through language options, to individual countries will result in a demand for services that do and the Samwer brothers are meeting this demand. Is the price that companies such as GroupOn pay equivalent to the cost of localising their own offering? Maybe so and it may be a good deal.
- com 15y ago
  Actually it's not just language, a lot of startups are US focussed which can be frustrating when you'd love to be their customer, don't mind using English etc. Of course, with things like deals sites and so on, you might need to have localised sales organisations busy in each supported market. But I wonder how many startups simply choose the English language/US market to minimise complexity and risk? (Nothing intrinsically wrong with that, but it does open the door to copycats)
ig1 15y ago
It's funny how Fab complains so much about having their business model cloned when Fab itself is just one in a long line of flash sales businesses with a landing page style that is so common you can get it as a SaaS.
- joering2 15y ago
  +1. The only thing funnier to me is Facebook shutting down or legally going against anyone that scrap their data and get any traction, while the major reason why there are where they are is in part because of the co-owner's hackers past...
blumentopf 15y ago
Being German myself I think the Samwers are an embarrassment. Unscrupulous copycats like them should be outlawed by the German startup scene.
- vijayr 15y ago
  I'm not sure I understand why it is so bad. Yes, it is in bad taste, and yes it is wrong to copy layouts (probably illegal to copy layouts). But copying the business model itself? what is wrong with that, especially when the 'original' companies they are copying from, are not operating in Germany (and other countries the samwers are expanding to)?
- moadeel 15y ago
  Well, with the arrival of Project A ventures, you may not have to worry about getting them outlawed - now that an alternative exists you will probably have more people siding to the route of original ideas anyway.
- patrickk 15y ago
  It's just capitalism pure and simple. I personally think it's distasteful to rip off a website design directly, but if they can launch a proven business model in Europe quicker than the American originators (or because the American company can't/won't go international), why not? Imitation is the greatest form of flattery and all that.
- kellysutton 15y ago
  As an American living in Berlin for the time being, I find it remarkable how often the Samwer brothers are cursed by startup founders. But, I agree: invent your own businesses :)
- Roritharr 15y ago
  Embarrassed german here too. It's just like the saying i once got told by a friend from the valley. "In Germany you won't find venture capitalists, just capitalists." And the Samwers seem to have taken this really literally.
itmag 15y ago
“There are pioneering entrepreneurs and execution entrepreneurs, and maybe we belong more to the execution entrepreneurs,” says Oliver, who speaks at a rapid clip, frequently punctuating thoughts with a rhetorical “ja?” “I think the most admirable entrepreneurs are those with original ideas, ja? It’s a unique gift that you either have or you don’t. Just as we might have a very good gift of execution, others have a unique gift for the purest form of innovation.” The constant mantra of HN is "ideas are useless, execution is everything". So why the hate against these guys?
- untog 15y ago
  Because I think these guys are copying both ideas and execution. It's one thing to say "I want to make a site where people can rent out their spare rooms, I saw some other site do it", it's quite another to say "look at airbnb.com, copy that". When the exact execution is the same (even down to page layouts) you're not actually contributing anything yourself.
  - ThomPete 15y ago
    There are thousands of Mexican, Italian and French restaurants out there all of them more or less copying each other. The point of having a business is to make money, not to save the world or be original. Thats a luxury of very few people. So without trying to defend the guys, I would say. Welcome to the real world.
    - joering2 15y ago
      > The point of having a business is to make money, not to save the world or be original. yes, but in todays world if you are not solving a problem ("save the world"), then your business most likely will not make money.
      - ThomPete 15y ago
        And yet here we are discussing a company that apparently have no problem doing exactly that. Just like most other companies out there. Is Facebook solving a problem out there? Or are they solving a problem they created themselves. Many businesses are build around this concept and the lines between solving problems and creating a demand are rather blurry.
untog 15y ago
I think there is a lot to learn from companies that operate in multiple languages- I used to work for one myself (until they, too, got a little copy-happy). Internationalisation is a huge market, and almost all US startups ignore it entirely. We had our original sites running in French, German, Spanish, Portugese, Hungarian, Russian... you name it. We weren't number one in any country- we were usually number 2 or 3. But none of our competitors operated outside their home country, so we managed to be very successful by occupying a lesser spot in multiple countries. Don't get me wrong, there is a large overhead in doing this- but there's plenty of opportunity, too.
- vidarh 15y ago
  One of my first startup was a webmail service available in 17 languages a few months after launch. The focus on being able to internationalize it easily was a big deal in terms of getting traction, and once we had the infrastructure, rolling out new languages was trivial. We even launched a Catalan version, and the cost of doing a translation was well worth the PR it generated for even (or maybe especially) a minor market like that.
  - pbreit 15y ago
    Where is that service now?
- gchucky 15y ago
  Can you (or anyone, really) recommend some places to learn how about how best to do internationalization? It just seems like such an overwhelming topic, and any knowledge on how to best approach it would be most helpful, I think.
spinchange 15y ago
This reminds me of what you so see many small Chinese and Asian firms do with hardware and other physical goods in their local markets.
jedc 15y ago
Yes, they're copycats. But those of us who live in Europe sometimes get absolutely infuriated by US-based startups who go for years ignoring potential non-US customers. I'm sure Fab.com would have eventually rolled out to Europe, but in the meantime I'm happy that someone else built a product that solves the same problem. Sometimes this is a real regulatory problem, like anything to do with banking/payments/etc. But oftentimes it's just because businesses don't seem to like taking on the extra work/complexity of thinking internationally. So while I don't like their pure copycat methods (down to page layouts), I think they're serving a valuable purpose in the marketplace.
- maigret 15y ago
  Working often with american programmers, I can tell they often have a hard time including globalization in their code. On the other side, they are usually also quite capable folks, and once they get it they apply it consequently and efficiently. But possibly the culture is not there yet at the beginning. Still I don't get why not expanding aggressively globally, as the code base exists and the cost of delivering in additional countries should be marginal for most. Too much VC money flowing in maybe?
  - jolan 15y ago
    It's not necessarily marginal. The EU has 2.5x the population of the US but 20x the languages, address/phone formats, cultural differences/expectations, etc. When things are changing rapidly and getting new features, localizing and testing that many locales is a large time sink.
    - Radim 15y ago
      I guess it depends on the application, but since we're discussing web app copycats here -- where do you see this monumental time sink? I'd say l10n and i18n are handled pretty well by pretty much all major web frameworks. Extra work yes, extra testing yes, but unless you've built your app in some insanely obscure way, I can't imagine how localizing it would be more costly than acquiring a copycat competitor, 6 months later? I believe the obstacles must be more political and operational, not technical.
gulbrandr 15y ago
single page link: http://www.businessweek.com/printer/articles/10778-how-three-germans-are-cloning-the-web http://www.businessweek.com/printer/articles/10778-how-three...
TDL 15y ago
If you are not willing to meet demand, someone else will be.
pg 15y ago
"There are pioneering entrepreneurs and execution entrepreneurs, and maybe we belong more to the execution entrepreneurs." What doublespeak. Startups are 99% execution. All successful startup founders are "execution entrepreneurs." All that really distinguishes the Samwers is that they copy existing ideas, and there are already names for people who do that.
- namesb 15y ago
  Fast Followers? Here's a Steve Blank article noting that the fast-following has some substantial advantages over being the first mover: http://steveblank.com/2010/10/04/why-pioneers-are-the-ones-with-the-arrows-in-their-backs/ http://steveblank.com/2010/10/04/why-pioneers-are-the-ones-w...
- ckuehne 15y ago
  "there are already names for people who do that." Honest question: What name is that? (English is not my first language.) And since I cannot quite interpret the tone of your comment I have to ask bluntly: Do you find it okay what the Samwers do?
  - staunch 15y ago
    Copycat is the most unambiguous word I can think of.
  - mode80 15y ago
    For what it's worth, I'm a native English speaker and wondered the same things.
  - pg 15y ago
    The term I was thinking of is "knock-off artists." I don't like what they do. It's ok to take an existing idea and adapt it. E.g. to try to make a web-based version of a desktop app. But there is something contemptible about copying something so literally that you even copy the mistakes.
    - 15y ago
johnrob 15y ago
The communist regimes of 50 years ago were more than happy to protect our (American) ideas from foreigners. I suppose that in fighting so hard to undue this, we thought they would buy our products but not clone them.
ktizo 15y ago
Perhaps if you don't have the capability to deal with a territory, try and find locals who do and franchise to them before you get copied there.
yaliceme 15y ago
Most of the discussion seems to be about whether or not it's "bad" that the Samwers are "copycats." I was more struck by the culture at Rocket, which sounds quite nasty judging by the article. (“team meetings are full of insults, non-performers openly bashed in meetings as well as via e-mail.”) At least one top Rocket employee is cited as leaving due to the "climate of aggression" (the bad, inwardly directed, self-destructive kind). Don't we at HN usually say that it's the people that are most important? If culture is destiny, then the Samwers' copying of website layouts is the least of what's wrong here.

115 points by brodd 15y ago

The same thing happens in Japan too .. http://camp-fire.jp/ http://camp-fire.jp/

In some of the earlier episodes of Stack Exchange Podcast Jeff and Joel were debating whether to localize. Just to put some of this into perspective.

subpixel 15y ago

Copying ideas and execution just happens. Look at other industries - there's a Chipotle clone, frozen yogurt clones, etc. And many luxury sedans seem to be about 90% the same design, at least on the outside. The reason the Samwer story is so weird is a) there's so much damn money in their game (Groupon, Facebook, etc.) and b) they're generally regarded to be ruthless, cut-throat, slave-drivers. I know I'd feel differently about the phenomenon if they seemed less like idea-pirates and more like contributors to innovation.

justincormack 15y ago

Ripping off the design is not cool. But otherwise, well it is like being the guy who opens the second restaurant, the first one might get annoyed but in a few years there will be thousands. Sounds like great execution too.

helipad 15y ago
From what I see, the Samwer brothers don't have great execution. They copy a site, claim a userbase in Germany/Europe, then sell the site back to the people they imitated. It reeks of "go away" money.
- Argorak 15y ago
  So how about Zalando being the biggest player in his field in Europe?
  - cburgas 15y ago
    Was Zalando founded by them? I always thought they just invested in it.
    - Argorak 15y ago
      No, like most of the companies mentioned in the article. Zalando was a Rocket Internet incubator participant.
xd 15y ago
Interesting point you make about ripping off the design. I'm not a designer, just a humble developer .. why is it OK to rip of a product idea but not the design of a product?
- riffraff 15y ago
  I am not sure if this is defendable, but I would imagine it boils down to a difference that is often perceived between an idea (astract, possibly conceived by different people in similar ways) and it's realization. People generally won't argue when good ideas are cloned between competing products, and praise the competition. In the same way it's ok to write a theatre play in which the love between two people is contrasted by their families, but putting "wherefore art thou Romeo?" in the dialogs would seem bad.
- drostie 15y ago
  Well, let's first scope "OK": Among artists it's a professional courtesy that the medium is public and the realization is private. It recurs in plenty of spaces -- for example, in comedy it's okay to joke about airports, but it's not okay to steal someone else's joke about airports. So the scope of "OK" here is "professional courtesy among artists." Now we can answer why it is that way. Why do these comedians shun peers who steal jokes? Well the first reason is that it leads to crap. So, this sometimes happens with movies that are intended as comedies: ten different creative voices all try to push the jokes in a certain direction, and what you get is not extremely funny to 10% of the population -- which would be success -- but is only a little funny to 100% of the population -- which is a failure. So by taking someone else's joke and mixing it into a hodgepodge of other material, it stops being so funny as when it appears in the context that it's supposed to be in. But I think a second reason is that we nurture ideas. It takes effort to turn an absurd concept into a good joke, and it takes effort to take an abstract idea like "coding with other people" and turn it into GitHub. When a comedian tells someone else's joke, there is a false pretense that they have spent all of this work to develop that joke for themselves -- and they haven't done any of it. When Eddie Izzard says, "This is my friend's Christopher Walken impersonation, and I'm nicking it, and he knows that," he's disavowing this aspect of the joke, and therefore it's more acceptable and can be used in his routine without too many eyebrows raised. The frustration is with people who steal almost every joke and achieve success with that -- not with people who steal one or another joke when they think it deserves to live on.

moadeel 15y ago

I have a few German friends, I understand them to be quite risk averse. However, what Samwers have accomplished in Germany is something far far more important and bigger than a clone industry - it is the spirit of taking risks, a willingness to aspire to be something other than traditional careers and a strong stance/philosophy on a type of entrepreneurship (clones) - stances such as these almost always lead to an ideological opposition and make way for others to engage in similar realms with differing philosophies. You can see that in Project A ventures, which is a reaction to Samwer's philosophy, and that reaction is good for Germany's start-up culture.

itmag 15y ago
Tell me more? I've never heard of the Samwers before and am eager to learn more.
- moadeel 15y ago
  Don't know much more. I read the article and recalled convos with a few German friends in Accenture when I was consulting with them.
Roritharr 15y ago
As a German I've never viewed it this way, but its true. I'm working on creating a better Startup Community end Environment in my surrounding, not only because i'd like that to be here, but also because i'd like to show that there is a another, if not better, way to do this.
- moadeel 15y ago
  Bingo
rbanffy 15y ago
> it is the spirit of taking risks Erm... I don't think copying successful business is very risky. You can, of course, bork execution, but the key part - exploring the "needspace" and finding a viable business model - is already done. And even executing, when someone executed before, is rather easy.

limmeau 15y ago

I had completely missed that the Samwer brothers were in the web copying business. Last time I heard of them, they were busy selling teenagers ringtone subscriptions ("Jamba").

cygx 15y ago
They were in the copycat business first, selling alando.de to ebay for millions, ~100 days after launch. They have a history of making money by, if not illegal, at least morally questionable means, and got in trouble with the unions about treatment of employees...

robinjfisher 15y ago

I think this says a lot about the English-language focus of a lot of startups. Failure to cater, through language options, to individual countries will result in a demand for services that do and the Samwer brothers are meeting this demand. Is the price that companies such as GroupOn pay equivalent to the cost of localising their own offering? Maybe so and it may be a good deal.

com 15y ago
Actually it's not just language, a lot of startups are US focussed which can be frustrating when you'd love to be their customer, don't mind using English etc. Of course, with things like deals sites and so on, you might need to have localised sales organisations busy in each supported market. But I wonder how many startups simply choose the English language/US market to minimise complexity and risk? (Nothing intrinsically wrong with that, but it does open the door to copycats)

ig1 15y ago

It's funny how Fab complains so much about having their business model cloned when Fab itself is just one in a long line of flash sales businesses with a landing page style that is so common you can get it as a SaaS.

joering2 15y ago
+1. The only thing funnier to me is Facebook shutting down or legally going against anyone that scrap their data and get any traction, while the major reason why there are where they are is in part because of the co-owner's hackers past...

blumentopf 15y ago

Being German myself I think the Samwers are an embarrassment. Unscrupulous copycats like them should be outlawed by the German startup scene.

vijayr 15y ago
I'm not sure I understand why it is so bad. Yes, it is in bad taste, and yes it is wrong to copy layouts (probably illegal to copy layouts). But copying the business model itself? what is wrong with that, especially when the 'original' companies they are copying from, are not operating in Germany (and other countries the samwers are expanding to)?
moadeel 15y ago
Well, with the arrival of Project A ventures, you may not have to worry about getting them outlawed - now that an alternative exists you will probably have more people siding to the route of original ideas anyway.
patrickk 15y ago
It's just capitalism pure and simple. I personally think it's distasteful to rip off a website design directly, but if they can launch a proven business model in Europe quicker than the American originators (or because the American company can't/won't go international), why not? Imitation is the greatest form of flattery and all that.
kellysutton 15y ago
As an American living in Berlin for the time being, I find it remarkable how often the Samwer brothers are cursed by startup founders. But, I agree: invent your own businesses :)
Roritharr 15y ago
Embarrassed german here too. It's just like the saying i once got told by a friend from the valley. "In Germany you won't find venture capitalists, just capitalists." And the Samwers seem to have taken this really literally.

itmag 15y ago

“There are pioneering entrepreneurs and execution entrepreneurs, and maybe we belong more to the execution entrepreneurs,” says Oliver, who speaks at a rapid clip, frequently punctuating thoughts with a rhetorical “ja?” “I think the most admirable entrepreneurs are those with original ideas, ja? It’s a unique gift that you either have or you don’t. Just as we might have a very good gift of execution, others have a unique gift for the purest form of innovation.” The constant mantra of HN is "ideas are useless, execution is everything". So why the hate against these guys?

untog 15y ago
Because I think these guys are copying both ideas and execution. It's one thing to say "I want to make a site where people can rent out their spare rooms, I saw some other site do it", it's quite another to say "look at airbnb.com, copy that". When the exact execution is the same (even down to page layouts) you're not actually contributing anything yourself.
- ThomPete 15y ago
  There are thousands of Mexican, Italian and French restaurants out there all of them more or less copying each other. The point of having a business is to make money, not to save the world or be original. Thats a luxury of very few people. So without trying to defend the guys, I would say. Welcome to the real world.
  - joering2 15y ago
    > The point of having a business is to make money, not to save the world or be original. yes, but in todays world if you are not solving a problem ("save the world"), then your business most likely will not make money.
    - ThomPete 15y ago
      And yet here we are discussing a company that apparently have no problem doing exactly that. Just like most other companies out there. Is Facebook solving a problem out there? Or are they solving a problem they created themselves. Many businesses are build around this concept and the lines between solving problems and creating a demand are rather blurry.

untog 15y ago

I think there is a lot to learn from companies that operate in multiple languages- I used to work for one myself (until they, too, got a little copy-happy). Internationalisation is a huge market, and almost all US startups ignore it entirely. We had our original sites running in French, German, Spanish, Portugese, Hungarian, Russian... you name it. We weren't number one in any country- we were usually number 2 or 3. But none of our competitors operated outside their home country, so we managed to be very successful by occupying a lesser spot in multiple countries. Don't get me wrong, there is a large overhead in doing this- but there's plenty of opportunity, too.

vidarh 15y ago
One of my first startup was a webmail service available in 17 languages a few months after launch. The focus on being able to internationalize it easily was a big deal in terms of getting traction, and once we had the infrastructure, rolling out new languages was trivial. We even launched a Catalan version, and the cost of doing a translation was well worth the PR it generated for even (or maybe especially) a minor market like that.
- pbreit 15y ago
  Where is that service now?
gchucky 15y ago
Can you (or anyone, really) recommend some places to learn how about how best to do internationalization? It just seems like such an overwhelming topic, and any knowledge on how to best approach it would be most helpful, I think.

spinchange 15y ago

This reminds me of what you so see many small Chinese and Asian firms do with hardware and other physical goods in their local markets.

jedc 15y ago

Yes, they're copycats. But those of us who live in Europe sometimes get absolutely infuriated by US-based startups who go for years ignoring potential non-US customers. I'm sure Fab.com would have eventually rolled out to Europe, but in the meantime I'm happy that someone else built a product that solves the same problem. Sometimes this is a real regulatory problem, like anything to do with banking/payments/etc. But oftentimes it's just because businesses don't seem to like taking on the extra work/complexity of thinking internationally. So while I don't like their pure copycat methods (down to page layouts), I think they're serving a valuable purpose in the marketplace.

maigret 15y ago
Working often with american programmers, I can tell they often have a hard time including globalization in their code. On the other side, they are usually also quite capable folks, and once they get it they apply it consequently and efficiently. But possibly the culture is not there yet at the beginning. Still I don't get why not expanding aggressively globally, as the code base exists and the cost of delivering in additional countries should be marginal for most. Too much VC money flowing in maybe?
- jolan 15y ago
  It's not necessarily marginal. The EU has 2.5x the population of the US but 20x the languages, address/phone formats, cultural differences/expectations, etc. When things are changing rapidly and getting new features, localizing and testing that many locales is a large time sink.
  - Radim 15y ago
    I guess it depends on the application, but since we're discussing web app copycats here -- where do you see this monumental time sink? I'd say l10n and i18n are handled pretty well by pretty much all major web frameworks. Extra work yes, extra testing yes, but unless you've built your app in some insanely obscure way, I can't imagine how localizing it would be more costly than acquiring a copycat competitor, 6 months later? I believe the obstacles must be more political and operational, not technical.

gulbrandr 15y ago

single page link: http://www.businessweek.com/printer/articles/10778-how-three-germans-are-cloning-the-web http://www.businessweek.com/printer/articles/10778-how-three...

TDL 15y ago

If you are not willing to meet demand, someone else will be.

pg 15y ago

"There are pioneering entrepreneurs and execution entrepreneurs, and maybe we belong more to the execution entrepreneurs." What doublespeak. Startups are 99% execution. All successful startup founders are "execution entrepreneurs." All that really distinguishes the Samwers is that they copy existing ideas, and there are already names for people who do that.

namesb 15y ago
Fast Followers? Here's a Steve Blank article noting that the fast-following has some substantial advantages over being the first mover: http://steveblank.com/2010/10/04/why-pioneers-are-the-ones-with-the-arrows-in-their-backs/ http://steveblank.com/2010/10/04/why-pioneers-are-the-ones-w...
ckuehne 15y ago
"there are already names for people who do that." Honest question: What name is that? (English is not my first language.) And since I cannot quite interpret the tone of your comment I have to ask bluntly: Do you find it okay what the Samwers do?
- staunch 15y ago
  Copycat is the most unambiguous word I can think of.
- mode80 15y ago
  For what it's worth, I'm a native English speaker and wondered the same things.
- pg 15y ago
  The term I was thinking of is "knock-off artists." I don't like what they do. It's ok to take an existing idea and adapt it. E.g. to try to make a web-based version of a desktop app. But there is something contemptible about copying something so literally that you even copy the mistakes.
  - 15y ago

johnrob 15y ago

The communist regimes of 50 years ago were more than happy to protect our (American) ideas from foreigners. I suppose that in fighting so hard to undue this, we thought they would buy our products but not clone them.

ktizo 15y ago

Perhaps if you don't have the capability to deal with a territory, try and find locals who do and franchise to them before you get copied there.

yaliceme 15y ago

Most of the discussion seems to be about whether or not it's "bad" that the Samwers are "copycats." I was more struck by the culture at Rocket, which sounds quite nasty judging by the article. (“team meetings are full of insults, non-performers openly bashed in meetings as well as via e-mail.”) At least one top Rocket employee is cited as leaving due to the "climate of aggression" (the bad, inwardly directed, self-destructive kind). Don't we at HN usually say that it's the people that are most important? If culture is destiny, then the Samwers' copying of website layouts is the least of what's wrong here.