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A Y Combinator Company Copied Our Design and Data Viz: We've Arrived

291 points by antr 12y ago

biomimic 12y ago
Looks like you both copied an original source and wanted to save time by not modifying the original lib source.
gadders 12y ago
Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8998008 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8998008
- johngd 12y ago
  I think the more interesting part is the comments that crept out of the wood work days after the article was posted to HN. hautit 5 days ago (1 comment - account created 324 days ago) Get over it, CBInsights, your UX sucks. theUXclub 4 days ago (brand new account) CB Insights, cheap and creepy as always. A 'low-drama' group of people that decided to tweet and share the story all over the place claiming something like 'Look! They copied us!'- Your UX is bad as hell, I wouldn't be very proud. Plus, your site is Bootstrap (a framework created for people who have no skills or time to invest on CSS or design), did you also invent it and they copied you as well? frumpywooly 4 days ago (brand new account) "...12 folks from their team have signed up for our free trial since September including the CEO, head of product, designer, product manager and a senior ruby developer." CBInsights, creepiest company in America
  - coldtea 12y ago
    So, not only plagiarizers but active smear campaigners too...
    - vdaniuk 12y ago
      >smear campaigners Wow, multilevel irony! CB Insights actions, arguably, constitute a large scale smear campaign that is not adequate to the original transgression of the startup. Your comment, arguably, constitutes a low scale smear campaign as you have no proof that startup founders have posted those comments. Any other CB Insights competitor/enemy could use that opportunity. So much drama out of a non-issue.
      - coldtea 12y ago
        >CB Insights actions, arguably, constitute a large scale smear campaign that is not adequate to the original transgression of the startup. "Blame the victim" much? They just reported it on the web AFAIK. What else would be "adequate to the original transgression of the startup"? >Your comment, arguably, constitutes a low scale smear campaign as you have no proof that startup founders have posted those comments. Sure, no hard proof. I only have a guess, based on decades of living in a human society, that accounts that were created days before, and that say the same things, and in favor of the transgressor, are somehow related to them... Is there any competing theory? Random internet people that decided to sign up to HN just to vent against a company?
        vdaniuk 12y ago
        Yeah, a competing theory that I've included in my original comment. Anyone with a grudge against CB Insights could have registered those accounts. >Random internet people that decided to sign up to HN just to vent against a company? Obviously, trolls exist. Copyright/plagiarism/"inspiration" discussions are a feeding grounds for those kind of people. That's two competing theories. And yeah, it's ironic to state with confidence that someone is "actively running a smear campaign" with no plausible data confirming the statement.
    - MangoDiesel 12y ago
      If they are trying to seem as immature and incompetent as possible, this is definitely a great way.
  - asanwal 12y ago
    Yeah - our competitors don't seem to like us. Go figure :) Note: CEO of CB Insights
macmac 12y ago
Would be interesting to get Y Combinator's take on this.
- anon1385 12y ago
  This is hardly the first or worst example of a YC company copying something. For example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3523024 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3523024 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3529607 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3529607 Being prepared to do this kind of thing is a core part of the YC values: http://paulgraham.com/founders.html http://paulgraham.com/founders.html >Though the most successful founders are usually good people, they tend to have a piratical gleam in their eye. They're not Goody Two-Shoes type good. Morally, they care about getting the big questions right, but not about observing proprieties. That's why I'd use the word naughty rather than evil. They delight in breaking rules, but not rules that matter. This quality may be redundant though; it may be implied by imagination.
  - semperfaux 12y ago
    While I've never been particularly interested in YC itself, that quote is something I'd never read, and honestly it's really sad. That he straight up admits that he's looking for people who are [synonym for evil that doesn't make him look as bad] is really telling and sad. Maybe I'm just too idealistic in general -- entirely possible -- but when I read "breaking rules, but not rules that matter," I wonder who gets to decide which rules matter. Because someone obviously thought they mattered enough to be rules in the first place.
    - vinceguidry 12y ago
      I book I've found that helped me get a historical sense for morality and its place in politics, religion, and personal success is Karen Armstrong's Fields of Blood. http://www.amazon.com/Fields-Blood-Religion-History-Violence-ebook/dp/B00KAFVNYM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1423667397&sr=8-1&keywords=fields+of+blood http://www.amazon.com/Fields-Blood-Religion-History-Violence...
    - 12y ago
xianshou 12y ago
Practially speaking, design is legally indefensible as intellectual property - if you actually paid lawyers to make a case for you, you'd only be depleting your own war chest to make your copycats go through the relatively small hassle of a redesign. The only effective way to counter it is loudly naming and shaming the companies responsible. Kudos to CB Insights for doing exactly that. Not only will it make the copying more trouble than it was worth to Techlist, but the threat of public embarrassment will help deter copycats in the future.
- andrewparker 12y ago
  CSS (like all written works) is copyrightable, so if there is clear evidence that the CSS was copy/pasted, CB Insights would have a case on that basis. Damages would be negligible, so it would not be a case worth pursuing.
  - macmac 12y ago
    Not all written works are copyrightable. Even in the US which is fairly lax about granting copyright, a work must fulfill certain criteria to be copyrightable, cf here for a good overview https://www.lib.purdue.edu/uco/CopyrightBasics/basics.html https://www.lib.purdue.edu/uco/CopyrightBasics/basics.html
    - bhayden 12y ago
      Since titles and short phrases aren't copyrightable, could I start a tech news blog, have all of the exact same stories and titles that Engadget uses, and write my own content for each story and not being infringing on their copyright?
      - macmac 12y ago
        You could try, and Engadget would probably not, if they hire a good law firm, use copyright to try to stop you. They could however potentially use other parts of the law including, depending on the jurisdiction, rules on unfair competition, passing off etc.
raverbashing 12y ago
No, the design is not copied. Period This is like saying a blog copied another blog because they're showing sequences of articles in a vertical column that scrolls. That style of heat map is not unique nor exclusive to a site. Nor it is to use shades of blue. Oh wow they have a blue bar graph with a red line, "they're stealing our IP!!!!" "Oh the fields are the same" Similar software needs to deal with the same data, obviously. This article is enlightening. It's free publicity for the Y Combinator company, and I'd take them more serious than a company that greatly overstates their IP.
- rev_bird 12y ago
  But they said the design was copied. Also, non-trivial parts of the design are in the exact same positions in both examples -- it seems to me like the question isn't even if the design was copied, but more of whether we should care.
  - stingraycharles 12y ago
    And on top of that, the exact same capitalization and abbreviations are used. At least they took the effort to rename "last year" to "last 4 quarters" in one occasion..
  - raverbashing 12y ago
    "we definitely took CBInsights as reference" is the phrase Now, it would be one thing to, for example, get the html/css and copy it, that would be illegal But to merely use as a reference? "Also, non-trivial parts of the design are in the exact same positions in both examples" Such as? There's also a low amount of flexibility in most cases. "but more of whether we should care." Yes, we shouldn't worry too much ;)
- coldtea 12y ago
  >No, the design is not copied. Period The even admitted to copying it. Go read TFA again. Period. What it "looks like" to a non designer who can't tell copying from "similar design to catter similar needs", doesn't matter.
cpfohl 12y ago
I've used tree-maps for data visualization before too...I've never heard of cb-insights though. Furthermore, I've written an additional piece of code that let's you decide what colors to use...so it could be blue and white... While I agree that there's some suspicious similarities in content (potentially plagiarism, although you're in the same vertical...) and style, the use of tree-map visualizations isn't plagiarism, nor is using bar-charts with a line on top.
- dandare 12y ago
  Obvious plagiarism is obvious. It has nothing to do with tree-maps in blue palette.
seivan 12y ago
Oh shocking that a tech "journalist" does shady stuff. Pretty much expected of "journalists" these days.
- johansch 12y ago
  Who's the 'journalist'?
johansch 12y ago
So, has the wholesale design/concept cloning of (mostly) american startup web services become an everyday-thing in Singapore too now? (In addition to e.g. China and Russia.)
- coldtea 12y ago
  Dunno, but it seems racism has come to HN now.
deleted 12y ago
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deleted 12y ago
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ndreckshage 12y ago
Everyone is copying everyone. Grow up.
- coldtea 12y ago
  "Everyone is rippinf off everyone. Grow up". Here I fixed that for you. Works great in other contexts too: "Everyone is abusing everyone. Grow up".
jbob2000 12y ago
This was posted last week. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8998008 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8998008
pirsquare 12y ago
There is nothing wrong with companies "copying/stealing" designs. But it is wrong when you are criticizing others for doing so while you are doing it. See TechInAsia previous rants on "copying designs": https://www.techinasia.com/flightfox-copy-rip-off-nomadlist/ https://www.techinasia.com/flightfox-copy-rip-off-nomadlist/ https://www.techinasia.com/china-startup-copy-listener/ https://www.techinasia.com/china-startup-copy-listener/
danso 12y ago
Jesus, besides the merit of CB Insights' claim, this whole thing reeks of incompetence. You're a YC-funded startup and you can't do your own visual design? I'll admit that when I need ideas/designs, I'll often head over to the D3 gallery page, copy the relevant parts of the code, but at least modify it so that it looks different, and actually meets my needs. What's comical is not only did they purportedly rip off a design, but they ripped off a pretty prosaic one. And I don't know what's the worser sign of their operational capacity, that they signed into a competitor's product to take code/get inspiration, or that they couldn't even be bothered to come up with fake email addresses, or that it required 12 employees to go in and successfully make off with the designs. Edit: Also, as a data-handling-person, the startup's defense that their inspiration is "only the way data is displayed" is annoying...data display is very important...but also, data display is the first thing people see, and I imagine is the thing that makes it into slidedecks in lieu of actual proof of quality of data analysis and data research...if you have the resources to be great and different at the "backend" part of data work, you most definitely have the ability to not just borrow someone's design...as good data display often follows a bespoke understanding of the data itself. Also, I must credit HighCharts and its well-documented API as getting me through various crunch-time oh-shit-I-need-a-web-graph-right-now situations http://www.highcharts.com/demo http://www.highcharts.com/demo
- minimaxir 12y ago
  > if you have the resources to be great and different at the "backend" part of data work, you most definitely have the ability to not just borrow someone's design...as good data display often follows a bespoke understanding of the data itself. Given the incredible popularity of "big data" startups, this assumption I believe is incorrect. There are many data-oriented startups who have put out questionable data visualizations in the name of "content marketing." (e.g. Mattermark, another YC company, has been fond of doing this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8090617 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8090617 )
- samsnelling 12y ago
  I grew up playing a huge amount of basketball, and therefore have a completely different frame of reference here. In sports, you watch a lot of film and study your competition. You then take the best parts of your competition, and prepare to compete with them. Sometimes you take their best plays. Sometimes you you design new plays to actively exploit the other team. The point that I'm trying to make is: this is a competition. The fact that CB would even validate this YC company by writing this post - to me - is a defensive move rather than an offensive one.
rubiquity 12y ago
> Our terms of service which all these users agreed to prohibits this explicitly – You may not access the Services if You are Our direct competitor, except with Our prior written consent. Is that something that is actually defensible?
- loumf 12y ago
  Why wouldn't it be? They say you have to agree to it to get access, so the copiers that made accounts agreed to it. If you mean, "would be defended" or "could know about it", then probably not. It just adds more to the name and shame tactic they decided to do.
  - thu 12y ago
    Here in Belgium, there are terms that people put in their legal document that shouldn't be present and would be considered invalid (as if they were not present) irrespective of the fact you agreed to them. Examples that come to mind: prohibit people renting an apartment to have a cat, reduce the time you have to return a product bought online (and get a refund) to less than the legal time, ...
- codingdave 12y ago
  I'm not a lawyer, but I tend to think that it would not be a clear-cut argument. On the one hand, it is a TOS, which is a contract. On the other, people don't read TOSes online, and I have no idea what the current case law has to say about that. Even if they did read it, it could be argued that a "signup for free" button that is generally available, without an approval cycle behind it is an implicit written permission for anyone to access the services. Again, IANAL, but I certainly would not make any decisions on the validity of this without consulting one.
peter_d_sherman 12y ago
Hi everyone. Forgive me for saying this, but "The more the world changes, the more the world seems to stay the same". Didn't something very similar to this happen a long time ago with the Apple vs. Microsoft "Look And Feel" copyright lawsuit? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Computer,_Inc._v._Microsoft_Corp http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Computer,_Inc._v._Microso.... And as it turns out, both parties probably copied design elements created by Xerox PARC... which were probably originally created by some researcher(s) there who read scholarly articles by other researcher(s) who probably wrote about the possibility of things similar to the created design elements existing in the first place... So who invented what, when? I sure as heck don't know! But what I think is amazing is how computer history tends to repeat itself... <g>
kcole16 12y ago
It's cool to see the startup growth analytics industry heating up. I thought Mattermark was first, but it looks like CB Insights was founded before them. Regarding the plagiarism, I think this will blow over pretty quickly. Not a fan of what they did, but as long as they weren't stealing data, it isn't unforgivable. UIs are almost always influenced by one another, they just made the mistake of following their inspiration too closely.
siruva07 12y ago
No surprise -- YC promotes launching fast and copying / plagiarism facilitates that. This has happened before with a YC company (http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/28/curebit-apologizes-for-copying-37signals/ http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/28/curebit-apologizes-for-copy...) and YC companies are also known to copy (often verbatim) legalese from a bigger competitor and find / replace with their own company name. Having started two companies, as a non tech founder, I can understand why they did this at the start, as there are many other more important things to do than CSS and TOS. But this isn't an excuse as soon as they had the resources to make the change.
- pen2l 12y ago
  > Graham killed the thread, saying that it violated the > site’s guideline to “not use posts to ask us questions,” > but he also wrote, “I think they shouldn’t have done > it, and that they compounded the problem by not taking > the initial complaints seriously enough.” That is a convenient and often used response. And also a great way to cap controversies from getting out of hand: just censor them!! Good thing YC owns this forum.
- chaostheory 12y ago
  > YC promotes launching fast and copying / plagiarism facilitates that. You don't copy someone's unique look, when they don't want you to copy them. There are so many inexpensive ($12 - $49) CSS templates that look good enough or even cool, that what happened is both inexcusable and just stupid. Most of them are already built to use either bootstrap or foundation as well, so it makes the launching fast part trivial.
shadowmint 12y ago
again? really? I guess it didn't get enough attention a week ago, let's rolllllll it all out again. ffs. The article itself links to the previous discussion (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8998008 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8998008)
- coldtea 12y ago
  So? Things are posted on HN twice (or more) all the time. I, for one, missed the original discussion.
  - shadowmint 12y ago
    Well, I guess the 'previous thread' comment being the most upvoted comment in this thread is kind of telling. You do the math.
toblender 12y ago
Funny that segment design looks exactly like disk space analyzer for mac... http://lifehacker.com/5915508/the-best-disk-space-analyzer-for-os-x http://lifehacker.com/5915508/the-best-disk-space-analyzer-f...
- mkolodny 12y ago
  No it doesn't. There's a big difference between taking inspiration from somewhere, and copying it. CB Insights and Disk Space Analyzer use blocks to visualize size, but that's about as far as the similarity goes. This company not only copied CB Insights's color scheme and layout, but also the text "The color represents the amount of funding and the size represents the number of deals."
- minimaxir 12y ago
  The design type is known as a treemap: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treemapping http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treemapping
- bhayden 12y ago
  Which is funny because that program is a direct rip off of the Windows version, WinDirStat http://a.fsdn.com/con/app/proj/windirstat/screenshots/98445.jpg http://a.fsdn.com/con/app/proj/windirstat/screenshots/98445....
romaster 12y ago
When I read the article my first thought was... So go to war. Don't be proud that you bootstrapped and they got funded. Go to war. Go to the VC community and raise a ton. You have proof of a strong product and yet you are not capitalizing on first mover advantage. You are asking these guys to copy you and trump you. Go to war. Raise. Build. Grow. Expand. Offer more things free to limit competitor entry points. Offer even better metrics. Go to war. Good luck.
davemel37 12y ago
The CEO of the YC company apologized in the other HN thread and said they are changing it...why is this still a story. To be fair, I would be upset and annoyed like CBI, but on a pragmatic level...what more do they want. No good comes out of publicizing others shortcomings (no matter how much they deserve the public shaming). This should have been handled privately...not through Twitter and HN. If they insisted on doing something publicly why not spin it in your favor and make a slogan, "Data so awesome, our competitors steal it like a possum."
echoless 12y ago
The article's passive-aggressive tone is overbearing. Why can't they simply present the evidence, say they are very disappointed with the YC company for stealing their design and be done with it?
asanwal 12y ago
Anand, CEO of CB Insights here. Surprised to see this here again (prior discussion - http://cbi.vc/1DhMQT3 http://cbi.vc/1DhMQT3), but if any questions, feel free to ask. I'm at a conference but will try to reply during breaks. If you're really bored :) and want to read more on this, Connie Loizos of StrictlyVC dove in a bit more (http://cbi.vc/1vk4lLY http://cbi.vc/1vk4lLY)
- not_that_noob 12y ago
  You're a genius. Getting this much free publicity AND painting a competitor as incompetent and second-rate. YC should have invested in you :)
  - asanwal 12y ago
    Ha. Our master plan is to get a Sequoia Capital portfolio company to copy us. Mu ha ha ha.
- huhtenberg 12y ago
  Links unshorten - 1DhMQT3 -> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8998008 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8998008 1vk4lLY -> http://www.strictlyvc.com/2015/02/05/venture-database-race-kerfuffle http://www.strictlyvc.com/2015/02/05/venture-database-race-k...
daemonk 12y ago
Playing devil's advocate here. How much change in the design would people think it is not a rip-off? If they changed the color scheme? If they changed the font? The type of visualization shown seems pretty standard (looks like a treemap plot?). I don't want to denigrate the importance of stylistic choices as they are very important in data visualizations, but it seems like a pretty standard visualization. Perhaps it is the dimensions they chose to represent out of the data that was a rip-off? Ripping off methods of visualizing subtle aspects of the data that conveys information would be a more egregious offense to me.
- hackthisuk 12y ago
  For me if the text hadn't been copied verbatim then I would be inclined to agree with your points.
- hellbanner 12y ago
  The classic "How many atoms do I remove from a table before it stops being a table?"
- atestu 12y ago
  Hey I made the CB Insights design. I completely agree the viz is standard (the treemap was my first d3 viz actually!). A lot of people are stopping at the charts and saying "well it's just a bar chart and a treemap, get over it!" To me the fact that the entire layout outside of the chart, even the copy is exactly the same is the main offense. Even the table below the chart (when you click to see the data) is exactly the same. It would have taken them 20 minutes to just shuffle things around, but no they just replicated it. We put a lot of time in figuring out the best way to present information so that users don't actually have to spend a lot of time to get answers. They skipped that part and stole our work.
timme 12y ago
Generic charts with a blue/orange color scheme. Clickbait bullshit.
kumarm 12y ago
Wow Techlist didn't steal from a Billion Dollar company, They stole from a Bootstrapped Startup.
- zmh 12y ago
  It could go either direction. There was an startup Innopage in Hongkong news these two days claiming that the design of its iOS App "Worthy" was copied in merely 2 months by China's Alibaba after the latter sent a 10-member delegation team to visit Innopage in Hong Kong. Alibaba responded that "there is no factual and legal basis." What can a startup do? (The following articles are all in chinese) Founder Keith Li's article: http://www.grandline.hk/2015/02/%E4%B8%80%E5%B0%81%E6%B2%92%E6%9C%89%E5%90%91%E9%A6%AC%E9%9B%B2%E5%AF%84%E5%87%BA%E7%9A%84%E5%85%AC%E9%96%8B%E4%BF%A1%EF%BC%9A%E9%98%BF%E9%87%8C%E5%B7%B4%E5%B7%B4%E5%A6%82%E4%BD%95%E6%8A%84%E8%A5%B2/ http://www.grandline.hk/2015/02/%E4%B8%80%E5%B0%81%E6%B2%92%... News: http://startupbeat.hkej.com/?p=1197 http://startupbeat.hkej.com/?p=1197 Alibaba's response: https://thestandnews.com/finance/%E8%A2%AB%E6%8C%87%E6%8A%84%E8%A5%B2-%E9%98%BF%E9%87%8C%E5%B7%B4%E5%B7%B4-%E7%84%A1%E4%BA%8B%E5%AF%A6%E4%BE%9D%E6%93%9A/ https://thestandnews.com/finance/%E8%A2%AB%E6%8C%87%E6%8A%84...
neumino 12y ago
Everything blows about this post. - Are blue treemap your only value CBinsights? Well if you felt like you had to write about it, so maybe... - Also public shaming using "Y Combinator company" instead of naming the company is shameful. Don't lump together all the YC companies for your own greed of getting attention. - Your TOS blows. Close their account and send them a mail if you didn't want them to use your product.
- ottertown 12y ago
  I pretty much agree with this. They created a D3.js treemap and probably even used a standard Colorbrewer blue color scheme, as seen in this d3 example: http://bl.ocks.org/mbostock/4063582 http://bl.ocks.org/mbostock/4063582 Was it terribly uncreative for the other YCombinator company to do the same thing? Yes. Was it plagiarism, copying, or unethical? No way. You did not invent the treemap nor a strong blue on light blue color scheme. Your UX is not unique enough to claim design infringement here. Lastly, your TOS is probably the most alarming part of this story. You should not be so afraid of competition that you attempt to prohibit 'competitors' from using your product.
davemel37 12y ago
When did YC companies change from being the little guys/underdogs to being the big strong evil Lord Business? I don't know if it's schadenfreude, or simply that HN is full of people who resent YC because they didn't get in (myself somewhat included) But, this propensity to try to destroy someone who wronged you, without a pragmatic outcome you are trying to achieve, other than to be punitive, goes completely against my own moral compass, and It really bothers me that no one else here seems to agree. and the excuse that "we have a right to know" or that "if they did this, what else are they dishonest about...we need to know who they are to protect ourselves." etc... are all built on a house of cards with a foundation called, "we like to watch the mighty fall." I try to never bring up religion, but there is a beautiful Jewish Law called Shemiras Halashon (guarding your tongue) that bans "Gossip, bad mouthing people, and talking about others in a way that can be construed negatively, even if its true... unless there is what's called, "Toeles" which is a set of criteria the story must meet to be justified to share... http://www.torahmediaatlanta.com/assets/Uploads/MiriamFeldman/5-partShmirasHalashonSeries%205771/Shmiras%20Halashon%20%2801%29%2011-03-10.pdf http://www.torahmediaatlanta.com/assets/Uploads/MiriamFeldma... This idea that our words don't hurt is a falacy, and while I am certainly guilty myself... when it's an egregious effort to be punitive, with no pragmatic goal...it just seems wrong to me.
- omni 12y ago
  Punishment has a very simple pragmatic goal: to discourage this behavior from other people in the future.
  - justin66 12y ago
    In this case the "punishment" (seriously?) had the immediate effect of forcing them to change the design they stole.
    - davemel37 12y ago
      Yes,but not immediately, the initial reaction of the perpetrator was to defend the decision on twitter, thats what happens when you attack someone, they go on the defensive... ..but that same objective could have been achieved privately. A nice email from the victim stating that they see they copied their design and would greatly appreciate them changing it ASAP...would have likely yielded a quicker and cleaner result. Regardless, my initial comment was less addressed to the victim here, but rather to the HN community for pouncing all over it.
dreamweapon 12y ago
What gets me about this whole flap is that I just don't see anything particularly interesting or innovative in the UX design for that page CB Insights is so fiercely proud of. So it's a heatmap combined with slider -- how original is that? As if everyone hasn't been stealing from everyone else's UX, like, all the time, since the public internet became a thing.
nhangen 12y ago
Disappointing that the YC staff has not commented on this. It also fell very quickly from page 1...

291 points by antr 12y ago

biomimic 12y ago

Looks like you both copied an original source and wanted to save time by not modifying the original lib source.

gadders 12y ago

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8998008 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8998008

johngd 12y ago
I think the more interesting part is the comments that crept out of the wood work days after the article was posted to HN. hautit 5 days ago (1 comment - account created 324 days ago) Get over it, CBInsights, your UX sucks. theUXclub 4 days ago (brand new account) CB Insights, cheap and creepy as always. A 'low-drama' group of people that decided to tweet and share the story all over the place claiming something like 'Look! They copied us!'- Your UX is bad as hell, I wouldn't be very proud. Plus, your site is Bootstrap (a framework created for people who have no skills or time to invest on CSS or design), did you also invent it and they copied you as well? frumpywooly 4 days ago (brand new account) "...12 folks from their team have signed up for our free trial since September including the CEO, head of product, designer, product manager and a senior ruby developer." CBInsights, creepiest company in America
- coldtea 12y ago
  So, not only plagiarizers but active smear campaigners too...
  - vdaniuk 12y ago
    >smear campaigners Wow, multilevel irony! CB Insights actions, arguably, constitute a large scale smear campaign that is not adequate to the original transgression of the startup. Your comment, arguably, constitutes a low scale smear campaign as you have no proof that startup founders have posted those comments. Any other CB Insights competitor/enemy could use that opportunity. So much drama out of a non-issue.
    - coldtea 12y ago
      >CB Insights actions, arguably, constitute a large scale smear campaign that is not adequate to the original transgression of the startup. "Blame the victim" much? They just reported it on the web AFAIK. What else would be "adequate to the original transgression of the startup"? >Your comment, arguably, constitutes a low scale smear campaign as you have no proof that startup founders have posted those comments. Sure, no hard proof. I only have a guess, based on decades of living in a human society, that accounts that were created days before, and that say the same things, and in favor of the transgressor, are somehow related to them... Is there any competing theory? Random internet people that decided to sign up to HN just to vent against a company?
      - vdaniuk 12y ago
        Yeah, a competing theory that I've included in my original comment. Anyone with a grudge against CB Insights could have registered those accounts. >Random internet people that decided to sign up to HN just to vent against a company? Obviously, trolls exist. Copyright/plagiarism/"inspiration" discussions are a feeding grounds for those kind of people. That's two competing theories. And yeah, it's ironic to state with confidence that someone is "actively running a smear campaign" with no plausible data confirming the statement.
  - MangoDiesel 12y ago
    If they are trying to seem as immature and incompetent as possible, this is definitely a great way.
- asanwal 12y ago
  Yeah - our competitors don't seem to like us. Go figure :) Note: CEO of CB Insights

macmac 12y ago

Would be interesting to get Y Combinator's take on this.

anon1385 12y ago
This is hardly the first or worst example of a YC company copying something. For example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3523024 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3523024 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3529607 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3529607 Being prepared to do this kind of thing is a core part of the YC values: http://paulgraham.com/founders.html http://paulgraham.com/founders.html >Though the most successful founders are usually good people, they tend to have a piratical gleam in their eye. They're not Goody Two-Shoes type good. Morally, they care about getting the big questions right, but not about observing proprieties. That's why I'd use the word naughty rather than evil. They delight in breaking rules, but not rules that matter. This quality may be redundant though; it may be implied by imagination.
- semperfaux 12y ago
  While I've never been particularly interested in YC itself, that quote is something I'd never read, and honestly it's really sad. That he straight up admits that he's looking for people who are [synonym for evil that doesn't make him look as bad] is really telling and sad. Maybe I'm just too idealistic in general -- entirely possible -- but when I read "breaking rules, but not rules that matter," I wonder who gets to decide which rules matter. Because someone obviously thought they mattered enough to be rules in the first place.
  - vinceguidry 12y ago
    I book I've found that helped me get a historical sense for morality and its place in politics, religion, and personal success is Karen Armstrong's Fields of Blood. http://www.amazon.com/Fields-Blood-Religion-History-Violence-ebook/dp/B00KAFVNYM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1423667397&sr=8-1&keywords=fields+of+blood http://www.amazon.com/Fields-Blood-Religion-History-Violence...
  - 12y ago

xianshou 12y ago

Practially speaking, design is legally indefensible as intellectual property - if you actually paid lawyers to make a case for you, you'd only be depleting your own war chest to make your copycats go through the relatively small hassle of a redesign. The only effective way to counter it is loudly naming and shaming the companies responsible. Kudos to CB Insights for doing exactly that. Not only will it make the copying more trouble than it was worth to Techlist, but the threat of public embarrassment will help deter copycats in the future.

andrewparker 12y ago
CSS (like all written works) is copyrightable, so if there is clear evidence that the CSS was copy/pasted, CB Insights would have a case on that basis. Damages would be negligible, so it would not be a case worth pursuing.
- macmac 12y ago
  Not all written works are copyrightable. Even in the US which is fairly lax about granting copyright, a work must fulfill certain criteria to be copyrightable, cf here for a good overview https://www.lib.purdue.edu/uco/CopyrightBasics/basics.html https://www.lib.purdue.edu/uco/CopyrightBasics/basics.html
  - bhayden 12y ago
    Since titles and short phrases aren't copyrightable, could I start a tech news blog, have all of the exact same stories and titles that Engadget uses, and write my own content for each story and not being infringing on their copyright?
    - macmac 12y ago
      You could try, and Engadget would probably not, if they hire a good law firm, use copyright to try to stop you. They could however potentially use other parts of the law including, depending on the jurisdiction, rules on unfair competition, passing off etc.

raverbashing 12y ago

No, the design is not copied. Period This is like saying a blog copied another blog because they're showing sequences of articles in a vertical column that scrolls. That style of heat map is not unique nor exclusive to a site. Nor it is to use shades of blue. Oh wow they have a blue bar graph with a red line, "they're stealing our IP!!!!" "Oh the fields are the same" Similar software needs to deal with the same data, obviously. This article is enlightening. It's free publicity for the Y Combinator company, and I'd take them more serious than a company that greatly overstates their IP.

rev_bird 12y ago
But they said the design was copied. Also, non-trivial parts of the design are in the exact same positions in both examples -- it seems to me like the question isn't even if the design was copied, but more of whether we should care.
- stingraycharles 12y ago
  And on top of that, the exact same capitalization and abbreviations are used. At least they took the effort to rename "last year" to "last 4 quarters" in one occasion..
- raverbashing 12y ago
  "we definitely took CBInsights as reference" is the phrase Now, it would be one thing to, for example, get the html/css and copy it, that would be illegal But to merely use as a reference? "Also, non-trivial parts of the design are in the exact same positions in both examples" Such as? There's also a low amount of flexibility in most cases. "but more of whether we should care." Yes, we shouldn't worry too much ;)
coldtea 12y ago
>No, the design is not copied. Period The even admitted to copying it. Go read TFA again. Period. What it "looks like" to a non designer who can't tell copying from "similar design to catter similar needs", doesn't matter.

cpfohl 12y ago

I've used tree-maps for data visualization before too...I've never heard of cb-insights though. Furthermore, I've written an additional piece of code that let's you decide what colors to use...so it could be blue and white... While I agree that there's some suspicious similarities in content (potentially plagiarism, although you're in the same vertical...) and style, the use of tree-map visualizations isn't plagiarism, nor is using bar-charts with a line on top.

dandare 12y ago
Obvious plagiarism is obvious. It has nothing to do with tree-maps in blue palette.

seivan 12y ago

Oh shocking that a tech "journalist" does shady stuff. Pretty much expected of "journalists" these days.

johansch 12y ago
Who's the 'journalist'?

johansch 12y ago

So, has the wholesale design/concept cloning of (mostly) american startup web services become an everyday-thing in Singapore too now? (In addition to e.g. China and Russia.)

coldtea 12y ago
Dunno, but it seems racism has come to HN now.

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ndreckshage 12y ago

Everyone is copying everyone. Grow up.

coldtea 12y ago
"Everyone is rippinf off everyone. Grow up". Here I fixed that for you. Works great in other contexts too: "Everyone is abusing everyone. Grow up".

jbob2000 12y ago

This was posted last week. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8998008 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8998008

pirsquare 12y ago

There is nothing wrong with companies "copying/stealing" designs. But it is wrong when you are criticizing others for doing so while you are doing it. See TechInAsia previous rants on "copying designs": https://www.techinasia.com/flightfox-copy-rip-off-nomadlist/ https://www.techinasia.com/flightfox-copy-rip-off-nomadlist/ https://www.techinasia.com/china-startup-copy-listener/ https://www.techinasia.com/china-startup-copy-listener/

danso 12y ago

Jesus, besides the merit of CB Insights' claim, this whole thing reeks of incompetence. You're a YC-funded startup and you can't do your own visual design? I'll admit that when I need ideas/designs, I'll often head over to the D3 gallery page, copy the relevant parts of the code, but at least modify it so that it looks different, and actually meets my needs. What's comical is not only did they purportedly rip off a design, but they ripped off a pretty prosaic one. And I don't know what's the worser sign of their operational capacity, that they signed into a competitor's product to take code/get inspiration, or that they couldn't even be bothered to come up with fake email addresses, or that it required 12 employees to go in and successfully make off with the designs. Edit: Also, as a data-handling-person, the startup's defense that their inspiration is "only the way data is displayed" is annoying...data display is very important...but also, data display is the first thing people see, and I imagine is the thing that makes it into slidedecks in lieu of actual proof of quality of data analysis and data research...if you have the resources to be great and different at the "backend" part of data work, you most definitely have the ability to not just borrow someone's design...as good data display often follows a bespoke understanding of the data itself. Also, I must credit HighCharts and its well-documented API as getting me through various crunch-time oh-shit-I-need-a-web-graph-right-now situations http://www.highcharts.com/demo http://www.highcharts.com/demo

minimaxir 12y ago
> if you have the resources to be great and different at the "backend" part of data work, you most definitely have the ability to not just borrow someone's design...as good data display often follows a bespoke understanding of the data itself. Given the incredible popularity of "big data" startups, this assumption I believe is incorrect. There are many data-oriented startups who have put out questionable data visualizations in the name of "content marketing." (e.g. Mattermark, another YC company, has been fond of doing this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8090617 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8090617 )
samsnelling 12y ago
I grew up playing a huge amount of basketball, and therefore have a completely different frame of reference here. In sports, you watch a lot of film and study your competition. You then take the best parts of your competition, and prepare to compete with them. Sometimes you take their best plays. Sometimes you you design new plays to actively exploit the other team. The point that I'm trying to make is: this is a competition. The fact that CB would even validate this YC company by writing this post - to me - is a defensive move rather than an offensive one.

rubiquity 12y ago

> Our terms of service which all these users agreed to prohibits this explicitly – You may not access the Services if You are Our direct competitor, except with Our prior written consent. Is that something that is actually defensible?

loumf 12y ago
Why wouldn't it be? They say you have to agree to it to get access, so the copiers that made accounts agreed to it. If you mean, "would be defended" or "could know about it", then probably not. It just adds more to the name and shame tactic they decided to do.
- thu 12y ago
  Here in Belgium, there are terms that people put in their legal document that shouldn't be present and would be considered invalid (as if they were not present) irrespective of the fact you agreed to them. Examples that come to mind: prohibit people renting an apartment to have a cat, reduce the time you have to return a product bought online (and get a refund) to less than the legal time, ...
codingdave 12y ago
I'm not a lawyer, but I tend to think that it would not be a clear-cut argument. On the one hand, it is a TOS, which is a contract. On the other, people don't read TOSes online, and I have no idea what the current case law has to say about that. Even if they did read it, it could be argued that a "signup for free" button that is generally available, without an approval cycle behind it is an implicit written permission for anyone to access the services. Again, IANAL, but I certainly would not make any decisions on the validity of this without consulting one.

peter_d_sherman 12y ago

Hi everyone. Forgive me for saying this, but "The more the world changes, the more the world seems to stay the same". Didn't something very similar to this happen a long time ago with the Apple vs. Microsoft "Look And Feel" copyright lawsuit? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Computer,_Inc._v._Microsoft_Corp http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Computer,_Inc._v._Microso.... And as it turns out, both parties probably copied design elements created by Xerox PARC... which were probably originally created by some researcher(s) there who read scholarly articles by other researcher(s) who probably wrote about the possibility of things similar to the created design elements existing in the first place... So who invented what, when? I sure as heck don't know! But what I think is amazing is how computer history tends to repeat itself... <g>

kcole16 12y ago

It's cool to see the startup growth analytics industry heating up. I thought Mattermark was first, but it looks like CB Insights was founded before them. Regarding the plagiarism, I think this will blow over pretty quickly. Not a fan of what they did, but as long as they weren't stealing data, it isn't unforgivable. UIs are almost always influenced by one another, they just made the mistake of following their inspiration too closely.

siruva07 12y ago

No surprise -- YC promotes launching fast and copying / plagiarism facilitates that. This has happened before with a YC company (http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/28/curebit-apologizes-for-copying-37signals/ http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/28/curebit-apologizes-for-copy...) and YC companies are also known to copy (often verbatim) legalese from a bigger competitor and find / replace with their own company name. Having started two companies, as a non tech founder, I can understand why they did this at the start, as there are many other more important things to do than CSS and TOS. But this isn't an excuse as soon as they had the resources to make the change.

pen2l 12y ago
> Graham killed the thread, saying that it violated the > site’s guideline to “not use posts to ask us questions,” > but he also wrote, “I think they shouldn’t have done > it, and that they compounded the problem by not taking > the initial complaints seriously enough.” That is a convenient and often used response. And also a great way to cap controversies from getting out of hand: just censor them!! Good thing YC owns this forum.
chaostheory 12y ago
> YC promotes launching fast and copying / plagiarism facilitates that. You don't copy someone's unique look, when they don't want you to copy them. There are so many inexpensive ($12 - $49) CSS templates that look good enough or even cool, that what happened is both inexcusable and just stupid. Most of them are already built to use either bootstrap or foundation as well, so it makes the launching fast part trivial.

shadowmint 12y ago

again? really? I guess it didn't get enough attention a week ago, let's rolllllll it all out again. ffs. The article itself links to the previous discussion (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8998008 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8998008)

coldtea 12y ago
So? Things are posted on HN twice (or more) all the time. I, for one, missed the original discussion.
- shadowmint 12y ago
  Well, I guess the 'previous thread' comment being the most upvoted comment in this thread is kind of telling. You do the math.

toblender 12y ago

Funny that segment design looks exactly like disk space analyzer for mac... http://lifehacker.com/5915508/the-best-disk-space-analyzer-for-os-x http://lifehacker.com/5915508/the-best-disk-space-analyzer-f...

mkolodny 12y ago
No it doesn't. There's a big difference between taking inspiration from somewhere, and copying it. CB Insights and Disk Space Analyzer use blocks to visualize size, but that's about as far as the similarity goes. This company not only copied CB Insights's color scheme and layout, but also the text "The color represents the amount of funding and the size represents the number of deals."
minimaxir 12y ago
The design type is known as a treemap: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treemapping http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treemapping
bhayden 12y ago
Which is funny because that program is a direct rip off of the Windows version, WinDirStat http://a.fsdn.com/con/app/proj/windirstat/screenshots/98445.jpg http://a.fsdn.com/con/app/proj/windirstat/screenshots/98445....

romaster 12y ago

When I read the article my first thought was... So go to war. Don't be proud that you bootstrapped and they got funded. Go to war. Go to the VC community and raise a ton. You have proof of a strong product and yet you are not capitalizing on first mover advantage. You are asking these guys to copy you and trump you. Go to war. Raise. Build. Grow. Expand. Offer more things free to limit competitor entry points. Offer even better metrics. Go to war. Good luck.

davemel37 12y ago

The CEO of the YC company apologized in the other HN thread and said they are changing it...why is this still a story. To be fair, I would be upset and annoyed like CBI, but on a pragmatic level...what more do they want. No good comes out of publicizing others shortcomings (no matter how much they deserve the public shaming). This should have been handled privately...not through Twitter and HN. If they insisted on doing something publicly why not spin it in your favor and make a slogan, "Data so awesome, our competitors steal it like a possum."

echoless 12y ago

The article's passive-aggressive tone is overbearing. Why can't they simply present the evidence, say they are very disappointed with the YC company for stealing their design and be done with it?

asanwal 12y ago

Anand, CEO of CB Insights here. Surprised to see this here again (prior discussion - http://cbi.vc/1DhMQT3 http://cbi.vc/1DhMQT3), but if any questions, feel free to ask. I'm at a conference but will try to reply during breaks. If you're really bored :) and want to read more on this, Connie Loizos of StrictlyVC dove in a bit more (http://cbi.vc/1vk4lLY http://cbi.vc/1vk4lLY)

not_that_noob 12y ago
You're a genius. Getting this much free publicity AND painting a competitor as incompetent and second-rate. YC should have invested in you :)
- asanwal 12y ago
  Ha. Our master plan is to get a Sequoia Capital portfolio company to copy us. Mu ha ha ha.
huhtenberg 12y ago
Links unshorten - 1DhMQT3 -> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8998008 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8998008 1vk4lLY -> http://www.strictlyvc.com/2015/02/05/venture-database-race-kerfuffle http://www.strictlyvc.com/2015/02/05/venture-database-race-k...

daemonk 12y ago

Playing devil's advocate here. How much change in the design would people think it is not a rip-off? If they changed the color scheme? If they changed the font? The type of visualization shown seems pretty standard (looks like a treemap plot?). I don't want to denigrate the importance of stylistic choices as they are very important in data visualizations, but it seems like a pretty standard visualization. Perhaps it is the dimensions they chose to represent out of the data that was a rip-off? Ripping off methods of visualizing subtle aspects of the data that conveys information would be a more egregious offense to me.

hackthisuk 12y ago
For me if the text hadn't been copied verbatim then I would be inclined to agree with your points.
hellbanner 12y ago
The classic "How many atoms do I remove from a table before it stops being a table?"
atestu 12y ago
Hey I made the CB Insights design. I completely agree the viz is standard (the treemap was my first d3 viz actually!). A lot of people are stopping at the charts and saying "well it's just a bar chart and a treemap, get over it!" To me the fact that the entire layout outside of the chart, even the copy is exactly the same is the main offense. Even the table below the chart (when you click to see the data) is exactly the same. It would have taken them 20 minutes to just shuffle things around, but no they just replicated it. We put a lot of time in figuring out the best way to present information so that users don't actually have to spend a lot of time to get answers. They skipped that part and stole our work.

timme 12y ago

Generic charts with a blue/orange color scheme. Clickbait bullshit.

kumarm 12y ago

Wow Techlist didn't steal from a Billion Dollar company, They stole from a Bootstrapped Startup.

zmh 12y ago
It could go either direction. There was an startup Innopage in Hongkong news these two days claiming that the design of its iOS App "Worthy" was copied in merely 2 months by China's Alibaba after the latter sent a 10-member delegation team to visit Innopage in Hong Kong. Alibaba responded that "there is no factual and legal basis." What can a startup do? (The following articles are all in chinese) Founder Keith Li's article: http://www.grandline.hk/2015/02/%E4%B8%80%E5%B0%81%E6%B2%92%E6%9C%89%E5%90%91%E9%A6%AC%E9%9B%B2%E5%AF%84%E5%87%BA%E7%9A%84%E5%85%AC%E9%96%8B%E4%BF%A1%EF%BC%9A%E9%98%BF%E9%87%8C%E5%B7%B4%E5%B7%B4%E5%A6%82%E4%BD%95%E6%8A%84%E8%A5%B2/ http://www.grandline.hk/2015/02/%E4%B8%80%E5%B0%81%E6%B2%92%... News: http://startupbeat.hkej.com/?p=1197 http://startupbeat.hkej.com/?p=1197 Alibaba's response: https://thestandnews.com/finance/%E8%A2%AB%E6%8C%87%E6%8A%84%E8%A5%B2-%E9%98%BF%E9%87%8C%E5%B7%B4%E5%B7%B4-%E7%84%A1%E4%BA%8B%E5%AF%A6%E4%BE%9D%E6%93%9A/ https://thestandnews.com/finance/%E8%A2%AB%E6%8C%87%E6%8A%84...

neumino 12y ago

Everything blows about this post. - Are blue treemap your only value CBinsights? Well if you felt like you had to write about it, so maybe... - Also public shaming using "Y Combinator company" instead of naming the company is shameful. Don't lump together all the YC companies for your own greed of getting attention. - Your TOS blows. Close their account and send them a mail if you didn't want them to use your product.

ottertown 12y ago
I pretty much agree with this. They created a D3.js treemap and probably even used a standard Colorbrewer blue color scheme, as seen in this d3 example: http://bl.ocks.org/mbostock/4063582 http://bl.ocks.org/mbostock/4063582 Was it terribly uncreative for the other YCombinator company to do the same thing? Yes. Was it plagiarism, copying, or unethical? No way. You did not invent the treemap nor a strong blue on light blue color scheme. Your UX is not unique enough to claim design infringement here. Lastly, your TOS is probably the most alarming part of this story. You should not be so afraid of competition that you attempt to prohibit 'competitors' from using your product.

davemel37 12y ago

When did YC companies change from being the little guys/underdogs to being the big strong evil Lord Business? I don't know if it's schadenfreude, or simply that HN is full of people who resent YC because they didn't get in (myself somewhat included) But, this propensity to try to destroy someone who wronged you, without a pragmatic outcome you are trying to achieve, other than to be punitive, goes completely against my own moral compass, and It really bothers me that no one else here seems to agree. and the excuse that "we have a right to know" or that "if they did this, what else are they dishonest about...we need to know who they are to protect ourselves." etc... are all built on a house of cards with a foundation called, "we like to watch the mighty fall." I try to never bring up religion, but there is a beautiful Jewish Law called Shemiras Halashon (guarding your tongue) that bans "Gossip, bad mouthing people, and talking about others in a way that can be construed negatively, even if its true... unless there is what's called, "Toeles" which is a set of criteria the story must meet to be justified to share... http://www.torahmediaatlanta.com/assets/Uploads/MiriamFeldman/5-partShmirasHalashonSeries%205771/Shmiras%20Halashon%20%2801%29%2011-03-10.pdf http://www.torahmediaatlanta.com/assets/Uploads/MiriamFeldma... This idea that our words don't hurt is a falacy, and while I am certainly guilty myself... when it's an egregious effort to be punitive, with no pragmatic goal...it just seems wrong to me.

omni 12y ago
Punishment has a very simple pragmatic goal: to discourage this behavior from other people in the future.
- justin66 12y ago
  In this case the "punishment" (seriously?) had the immediate effect of forcing them to change the design they stole.
  - davemel37 12y ago
    Yes,but not immediately, the initial reaction of the perpetrator was to defend the decision on twitter, thats what happens when you attack someone, they go on the defensive... ..but that same objective could have been achieved privately. A nice email from the victim stating that they see they copied their design and would greatly appreciate them changing it ASAP...would have likely yielded a quicker and cleaner result. Regardless, my initial comment was less addressed to the victim here, but rather to the HN community for pouncing all over it.

dreamweapon 12y ago

What gets me about this whole flap is that I just don't see anything particularly interesting or innovative in the UX design for that page CB Insights is so fiercely proud of. So it's a heatmap combined with slider -- how original is that? As if everyone hasn't been stealing from everyone else's UX, like, all the time, since the public internet became a thing.

nhangen 12y ago

Disappointing that the YC staff has not commented on this. It also fell very quickly from page 1...