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> How dare you assume that your competitors have the time and skill to copy you. Unfortunately your competitors don't need your skills to copy you; once you ma

by jakobe 13y ago

> How dare you assume that your competitors have the time and skill to copy you. Unfortunately your competitors don't need your skills to copy you; once you make your thing public, everybody will see how to do it and copying your product becomes trivial. But the good part is that only successful projects are copied, so you really shouldn't worry about it -- when people start copying you, it means you are on the right track.

jot 13y ago
Have you ever worked on a rebuild? Copying is surprisingly hard, almost never trivial. Check out how bad Rocket Internet's products are compared to the services they copy. They are pros at copying and still they can't get it right. People copy when they know it's worth the risk. That's why successful projects are copied. I agree with you that it is a very good indicator that you are on the right track. :)
- hnriot 13y ago
  Sometimes this is true, but many products are trivial to copy, like Instagram, or twitter. Most of us here could probably copy either of those in a weekend or two.
  - ZoF 13y ago
    Copy basic functionality perhaps.... I doubt the majority here could scale nearly as effectively as both of those companies have....
    - mikeash 13y ago
      I don't know. Scaling as effectively as Twitter doesn't seem like a particularly high bar. They spent a year or so after they got big being down almost as much as they were up. The "fail whale" was just about the most common thing to see on twitter.com. Of course, now that Twitter is established, you cannot repeat their mistakes if you want to succeed.
      - ZoF 13y ago
        Relevant[1] front-page discussion. [1]http://highscalability.com/blog/2013/7/8/the-architecture-twitter-uses-to-deal-with-150m-active-users.html http://highscalability.com/blog/2013/7/8/the-architecture-tw...
    - blueprint 13y ago
      Plus there's a degree of polish and stability that takes a few months to hit.
    - nawitus 13y ago
      Is there a single example of a service which failed to scale? Once you have user growth, you can get investors to fund scaling regardless of the technology choices made the beginning.
  - jot 13y ago
    That might be true in the case of the first version of Instagram and Twitter. It was probably far from trivial once they had significant traction. Why do you think no one copied them at the early stage? You'd think that Twitter with all their resources could have copied Instagram in a snap. Instead, when he saw the product and the traction, the founder of Twitter invested in it. He then got upset when Facebook brought them and is only now copying them.
  - rythie 13y ago
    If they are so easy to copy, why are well all using Instagram and Twitter and not one of the many copies? There's more to a business than the code of its products.
- jakobe 13y ago
  I always feel that the most difficult part of any project is its design, the implementation is rarely difficult. By design I mean both the conceptual design (data model, user flow), and user interface design. It takes a lot of time to come up with ideas how to tackle a problem. Then you implement them, realise it doesn't work, and start over with a different approach. All this design work isn't necessary when you copy something. Someone else has already done the design work for you. You can lean back and say: "The solution is obvious." Then you only need to implement it. In my experience, the implementation always seems trivial in comparison to the design process. But you are right, people who copy stuff often make poor copies. I think the problem is that they probably don't fully understand your design. They see how you solved something, but they don't understand why you solved it that way. Finally, I don't think a rebuild is the same as a copy, because you generally only rebuild when something doesn't work. And then you actually need to put a lot of design work into the rebuild process -- that's why it's hard.
  - jot 13y ago
    These are great points. Most developers I know find that the most difficult part of product development is sales. Design is also difficult but I'd recommend treating it as a process rather than a project when it comes to new products in new businesses. Design will never be done and it can always be improved, copycats will always be two steps behind or they'll fork into a different direction. I know of financially successful products where the teams behind them don't know why the design they have works. They've even had situations where they've improved the design in their view and it's been well received in user testing. But when they release it, it has a negative impact on sales, retention or some other core metric. Imagine trying to copy a counter intuitive system like that? If you have something where the core value is obvious and can be copied with ease you've probably released too late. Even in that case it would be pretty impressive if your marketing was so good that it found someone who could copy it. After removing the design part there are still very few people in the world with the time and resources to focus on building a copy right now. I'd guess that most people who think about copying will more likely become very good customers of yours, they can then have more time to work on their own ideas.
blueprint 13y ago
> But the good part is that only successful projects are copied Or products that are so brilliant that it's immediately apparent they'll be successful
- jot 13y ago
  Have you seen one of those products before? If so why did you not copy it?
  - blueprint 13y ago
    I have seen numerous instances of such products, but whether and why I personally did or did not copy them will only tell you about my nature and my temporary circumstances - it is not a proof of whether good products are more often copied.
    - jot 13y ago
      You're right, it is not a proof. But in my experience there are very few people who are both smart enough to spot opportunities to copy and have the time to do so when they see them. I'd go as far as to estimate that those people are 1 in a million. If even half a million people discover your early stage product someone copying you will be the least of your worries.
      - blueprint 13y ago
        Agree with you for sure. But while it's certainly not a likely thing for any one individual to do, the number of people on the planet working in tech makes it something that happens quite often really. That's my experience, at least.

by jakobe 13y ago

jot 13y ago

Have you ever worked on a rebuild? Copying is surprisingly hard, almost never trivial. Check out how bad Rocket Internet's products are compared to the services they copy. They are pros at copying and still they can't get it right. People copy when they know it's worth the risk. That's why successful projects are copied. I agree with you that it is a very good indicator that you are on the right track. :)

hnriot 13y ago
Sometimes this is true, but many products are trivial to copy, like Instagram, or twitter. Most of us here could probably copy either of those in a weekend or two.
- ZoF 13y ago
  Copy basic functionality perhaps.... I doubt the majority here could scale nearly as effectively as both of those companies have....
  - mikeash 13y ago
    I don't know. Scaling as effectively as Twitter doesn't seem like a particularly high bar. They spent a year or so after they got big being down almost as much as they were up. The "fail whale" was just about the most common thing to see on twitter.com. Of course, now that Twitter is established, you cannot repeat their mistakes if you want to succeed.
    - ZoF 13y ago
      Relevant[1] front-page discussion. [1]http://highscalability.com/blog/2013/7/8/the-architecture-twitter-uses-to-deal-with-150m-active-users.html http://highscalability.com/blog/2013/7/8/the-architecture-tw...
  - blueprint 13y ago
    Plus there's a degree of polish and stability that takes a few months to hit.
  - nawitus 13y ago
    Is there a single example of a service which failed to scale? Once you have user growth, you can get investors to fund scaling regardless of the technology choices made the beginning.
- jot 13y ago
  That might be true in the case of the first version of Instagram and Twitter. It was probably far from trivial once they had significant traction. Why do you think no one copied them at the early stage? You'd think that Twitter with all their resources could have copied Instagram in a snap. Instead, when he saw the product and the traction, the founder of Twitter invested in it. He then got upset when Facebook brought them and is only now copying them.
- rythie 13y ago
  If they are so easy to copy, why are well all using Instagram and Twitter and not one of the many copies? There's more to a business than the code of its products.
jakobe 13y ago
I always feel that the most difficult part of any project is its design, the implementation is rarely difficult. By design I mean both the conceptual design (data model, user flow), and user interface design. It takes a lot of time to come up with ideas how to tackle a problem. Then you implement them, realise it doesn't work, and start over with a different approach. All this design work isn't necessary when you copy something. Someone else has already done the design work for you. You can lean back and say: "The solution is obvious." Then you only need to implement it. In my experience, the implementation always seems trivial in comparison to the design process. But you are right, people who copy stuff often make poor copies. I think the problem is that they probably don't fully understand your design. They see how you solved something, but they don't understand why you solved it that way. Finally, I don't think a rebuild is the same as a copy, because you generally only rebuild when something doesn't work. And then you actually need to put a lot of design work into the rebuild process -- that's why it's hard.
- jot 13y ago
  These are great points. Most developers I know find that the most difficult part of product development is sales. Design is also difficult but I'd recommend treating it as a process rather than a project when it comes to new products in new businesses. Design will never be done and it can always be improved, copycats will always be two steps behind or they'll fork into a different direction. I know of financially successful products where the teams behind them don't know why the design they have works. They've even had situations where they've improved the design in their view and it's been well received in user testing. But when they release it, it has a negative impact on sales, retention or some other core metric. Imagine trying to copy a counter intuitive system like that? If you have something where the core value is obvious and can be copied with ease you've probably released too late. Even in that case it would be pretty impressive if your marketing was so good that it found someone who could copy it. After removing the design part there are still very few people in the world with the time and resources to focus on building a copy right now. I'd guess that most people who think about copying will more likely become very good customers of yours, they can then have more time to work on their own ideas.

blueprint 13y ago

> But the good part is that only successful projects are copied Or products that are so brilliant that it's immediately apparent they'll be successful

jot 13y ago
Have you seen one of those products before? If so why did you not copy it?
- blueprint 13y ago
  I have seen numerous instances of such products, but whether and why I personally did or did not copy them will only tell you about my nature and my temporary circumstances - it is not a proof of whether good products are more often copied.
  - jot 13y ago
    You're right, it is not a proof. But in my experience there are very few people who are both smart enough to spot opportunities to copy and have the time to do so when they see them. I'd go as far as to estimate that those people are 1 in a million. If even half a million people discover your early stage product someone copying you will be the least of your worries.
    - blueprint 13y ago
      Agree with you for sure. But while it's certainly not a likely thing for any one individual to do, the number of people on the planet working in tech makes it something that happens quite often really. That's my experience, at least.