Please clone mint.com :-)
yeah..just use yoodlee and go bust in year or two like kublax did :)
Ask HN: Cloning a US startup for a european country ?
11–20 of 26 posts
Re: Ask HN: Cloning a US startup for a european country ?
#12Please clone mint.com :-)
For this I would need an equivalent of Yodlee in France ;)
Re: Ask HN: Cloning a US startup for a european country ?
#13I (and a friend of mine) cloned digg/reddit (it's something like a mix between the two) about 4 years ago, as there was nothing alike in the Italian market. It worked very well and the product (called Oknotizie, http://oknotizie.virgilio.it) did a successful deal with Telecom Italia.
Re: Ask HN: Cloning a US startup for a european country ?
#14I'm french too, and currently involved in "cloning" (although there will of course be some differences) a US concept, so I just hope it's not the same one!
Re: Ask HN: Cloning a US startup for a european country ?
#15Go for it, some will view it as bad but just ignore them.
Interestingly enough we thought about offering localization services for international startups, the complete set (marketing, strategy, translation, management, sales, partnerships)as a package to get started at least far enough to make the market entry for clones unviable.
Any thoughts on that?
Re: Ask HN: Cloning a US startup for a european country ?
#16It's probably fine as long as you stick to mainly cloning the idea or functionality, ideally perhaps modifying or extending it to fit your understanding of the local market.
The main place people go wrong is also cloning the look-and-feel, or making the name be an obvious pun/derivative/translation of the original. Not only for legal reasons (though it matters for those too), but it can make the clone feel too derivative, like it's a generic-brand knockoff instead of a product in its own right.
Re: Ask HN: Cloning a US startup for a european country ?
#17It happens all the time and it's a great business model. There have been a lot of successes with this. I'm shocked it doesn't happen more often. There's no moral imperative saying it's "bad". In fact, quite the opposite. Just don't violate copyright.
I'm shocked it doesn't happen more often.
Ditto. For instance, someone should clone Nico Nico Douga:
Re: Ask HN: Cloning a US startup for a european country ?
#18I'm french too, and currently involved in "cloning" (although there will of course be some differences) a US concept, so I just hope it's not the same one!
Drop me an email, check out my profile ;)
Re: Ask HN: Cloning a US startup for a european country ?
#19Cloning a concept is fine, but cloning the (entire) interface is not.
As with all things moral, the moment you have to ask if it is moral, guess what, it isn't!
Re: Ask HN: Cloning a US startup for a european country ?
#20I'm french too, and currently involved in "cloning" (although there will of course be some differences) a US concept, so I just hope it's not the same one!
Drop me an email, check out my profile ;)
There's no email in your profile. You should put it in the ``about'' field, the ``email'' field is not visible to other users.