Otonomo, with nearly $55M in funding, is cloning our product

Post by keithwhor » Mon, Apr 22, 2019, 5:02 PM UTC

ethbro wrote: post #151

keithwhor wrote: post #114

Smartcar has raised $12M in financing from A16Z and NEA. The difference between $12M and $55M is a single financing stage. What likely happened here is a remote team was paid to generate docs with a directive like, “Smartcar has a good API,” and stole them directly. Then the management team didn’t bother checking. This is great PR for Smartcar all things considered, and I actually think has a fantastic silver lining:…

> What likely happened here is a remote team was paid to generate docs with a directive like, “Smartcar has a good API,” and stole them directly. Then the management team didn’t bother checking. If a remote team is writing your API documentation by copying and pasting, then what is the actual implementation team building from?

Post by tomnipotent » Mon, Apr 22, 2019, 5:03 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #177

tomnipotent wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> without doing DD It's a Series A, serious DD doesn't usually happen this early and a jr. analyst with a finance background wouldn't catch something like this.

The latest participation by Bessemer was a series 'B' as far as I can tell: https://otonomo.io/pr/otonomo-announces-25-million-strategic... And even then, series 'A' requires DD as much (and sometimes more so) as later rounds.

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Apr 22, 2019, 5:06 PM UTC

joeax wrote: post #100

ChuckMcM wrote: post #44

That is pretty egregious, and its also par for the course. And that is why startup companies go through all the hoops of being "stealth" and having NDAs and what not. There was a German VC firm that was, as I recall, very upfront about this. Clone a successful US company before it got to the European market. On the one hand it is great to have validation of the idea, on the other its a pain to have someone with more…

This is pretty egregious, but in reality the only thing that was copied was the docs for the API, not the API itself. The other company still has the write all the backend code, and given their track record of just ripping stuff off, may not have the engineering chops to pull it off. In addition, as Smartcar continuously improves their product and API, the other company can only react to these changes. If I was the O…

Post by jjeaff » Mon, Apr 22, 2019, 5:08 PM UTC

aw3c2 wrote: post #174

stcredzero wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a German VC firm that was, as I recall, very upfront about this. Clone a successful US company before it got to the European market. The Chinese also do this. (As in, the government seems to encourage it outright.) The culture and language barrier do make for an effective moat. It usually takes significant effort and even some cultural change for a company to get its legs for international operation.

> The Chinese You mean "Chinese companies". "The chinese" is just racist.

Post by yayr » Mon, Apr 22, 2019, 5:10 PM UTC