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Facebook has a market cap of nearly 200 billion, some of the most talented engineers in the industry, a world-class AI lab, nearly unlimited perks and over a bi
by debt 12y ago
Facebook has a market cap of nearly 200 billion, some of the most talented engineers in the industry, a world-class AI lab, nearly unlimited perks and over a billion users.
So unless this startup can start where FB is right now, no one will "clone" FB.
- JoeAltmaier 12y agoYou'd be surprised. FB is large and that often means conservative and ossified. How long does it take for new ideas to end up on the web page? I don't see that happening much, certainly not daily. The back-end I can't see but I wonder if anybody cares; its not part of what makes FB attractive to users. So replacing FB means recruiting some niche of customers, and providing something fresh and useful. That can be done without unlimited perks.
- untog 12y agoBut that's not "cloning" it. I was in a similar position years ago when my employer decided that they wanted a piece of what AirBnb was doing - the design specs they sent me were almost exactly AirBnb, only with the logo changed. With thinking like that you will never displace the #1 company, because you're not thinking ahead of them, you're only ever trying to catch up.
- davidw 12y agoIt's very, very rare that someone successfully takes on a big, entrenched competitor like IBM or Microsoft, and wins a head-on fight. It's much more likely that they exploit some new thing.