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Ask HN: YC company copied our product, what can we do?

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Re: Ask HN: YC company copied our product, what can we do?

#31

Stop talking about it and call a law firm. Your local Bar Association will be able to give you a list of firms/attorneys that practice in this area, or your existing lawyer may have a recommendation. Many law firms will give you a short consultation for free. Bring a succinct written summary of the facts with you that briefly describes the product, how you discovered the issue, and what you found when you investigate…

If you go this route be sure to grab evidence now. Screenshots, logs and anything you can to show the product similarities and IP issues. Before they change stuff and try to erase it.

Re: Ask HN: YC company copied our product, what can we do?

#33

Don’t worry, listen to pg https://x.com/paulg/status/1697761812698034630?s=46 > When people copy you, the best strategy is usually to ignore them. People who copy you are (a) unoriginal and (b) opportunists, and those are both strong predictors of failure. If you wait them out, they'll eventually drop away. /s?

Some guys in Visicalc, Lotus, Netscape, etc. would have some things to say about this...

Re: Ask HN: YC company copied our product, what can we do?

#34

The real answer is to out execute them. Taking time to do legal action will only waste valuable resources. Ironically the founder worked at Rocket-internet which was notorious for copying successful startups https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/27/wimdu-rocket-internets-air...

[flagged]

Been a lurker for a while and just wanted to comment on the post. I still think recommendation still stands.

I'd rather have the discussion be about the benefits of legal action vs executing instead of how long this account has been around.

Re: Ask HN: YC company copied our product, what can we do?

#37
Paul Graham says you shouldn’t care and they will probably fail:

https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1697761812698034630?s=46

https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1500779743804903427?s=46

Of course he’s completely wrong, but YC won’t really do anything about it (except maybe reap the benefits)

For what it’s worth, I’m sorry this happened to you, it sucks

At the same time, seems like you might be onto something and should just keep going strong

Also, maybe you could apply to YC, they usually don’t care about funding competing companies

Re: Ask HN: YC company copied our product, what can we do?

#39
YC companies also copy other YC companies. It happens all the time. Personally I would prefer that the world didn't work this way, but it's just how the game is played.

There are a lot of people in the tech world with the right connections, access to capital, and execution skill, but who either aren't creative enough to come up with an innovative product, or prefer to be the nth-mover in an already-validated market to the risk of trying to establish a new market. If they see that you have a good idea but aren't executing/growing/raising money at an A+ level, they will swoop in and copy your idea and then pretend that they were the first to come up with it.

There's nothing necessarily wrong with this apart from (imo) being kind of lame on a personal level. The consumer ultimately benefits from the competition, and you have only yourself to blame really for creating an opening by not executing quickly and effectively enough. It's capitalism. All the solutions to this 'problem' I've ever heard proposed--software patents and the like--create far worse problems for people who want to innovate.

If you're working on a new idea and are seeing real traction, you just need to expect this and factor it into your strategy. This is why so much emphasis is placed on having a 'moat' of some kind that is difficult to reproduce. If you're seeing success and it's easy to copy you, someone's probably already working on a clone.

Re: Ask HN: YC company copied our product, what can we do?

#40

Stop talking about it and call a law firm. Your local Bar Association will be able to give you a list of firms/attorneys that practice in this area, or your existing lawyer may have a recommendation. Many law firms will give you a short consultation for free. Bring a succinct written summary of the facts with you that briefly describes the product, how you discovered the issue, and what you found when you investigate…

Unless you have tons of funding and lawyers already on retainer, this is horrible advice

Legal fees will drain your funds faster than anything else and you will probably not see any benefits from it

In fact it might be what makes your company fail (taking away the focus from building your business)

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