Sorry OP but right now you need to turn the tables and copy the company that copied you. Their site looks and reads much better than yours.
Ask HN: YC company copied our product, what can we do?
61–70 of 107 posts
Re: Ask HN: YC company copied our product, what can we do?
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
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)
Of course it isn't horrible advice, legal affairs are dealt with by lawyers and courts. If you have a product out there in the market you should go to bat for it. And yes, it might make your company fail. But that goes for a well funded competitor outright copying your product as well.
Legal action is fine as long as you have the time and money to do it
For the looks of it, in this case they should either not do it at all or just wait until they have enough money to do it
Even large companies wait for the right timing to sue
I know a company that had copied some images from Instacart. Instacart knew about it, but they waited until Uber acquired the company, then they sued Uber
Legal action is incredibly expensive and time consuming, especially in the US
Re: Ask HN: YC company copied our product, what can we do?
#63Stop 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…
Pretty wild how much "just execute better" posts there are, one wonders if its the common response to a situation like this, from this community, and what that says about trustworthiness in general of YC "founder" types!
The alternative would pretty much be an end to startup innovation, since a large company with a team of lawyers could just claim that any new product that threatens them is a copy in some way and destroy the startup with legal bills regardless of whether there's any merit to the claims.
Being copied sucks, and I agree that it should be looked down upon culturally, but I think "just execute better" really is the right answer. It's better for consumers and ultimately better for entrepreneurs too.
Re: Ask HN: YC company copied our product, what can we do?
#64Paul 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 ju…
Did you miss this bit above?:
> As a female founder, having my app rejected by YC with this product, it just makes me angry.
Re: Ask HN: YC company copied our product, what can we do?
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
Pretty wild how much "just execute better" posts there are, one wonders if its the common response to a situation like this, from this community, and what that says about trustworthiness in general of YC "founder" types!
The alternative would pretty much be an end to startup innovation, since a large company with a team of lawyers could just claim that any new product that threatens them is a copy in some way and destroy the startup with legal bills regardless of whether there's any merit to the claims. Being copied sucks, and I agree that it should be looked down upon culturally, but I think "just execute better" really is the right…
I've had something like this happen with a bunch of guys cloning my software and changing the URL to offer a competing service.
I've also had a funded competitor copy our business model and attempt to compete.
I sued the first one, the other one we outcompeted in spite of a 30:1 funding discrepancy. Regardless, these things are distractions and some funded bunch of cowboys destroying the market for you when you've spent a long time to get established can be a real problem. Even if they go under they'll do a lot of damage, not just to you, but also to their customers and possibly the whole field as a consequence of their activities. For instance: to offer the product for free because they're burning investor cash.
Re: Ask HN: YC company copied our product, what can we do?
#66Paul 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 ju…
Did you miss this bit above?: > As a female founder, having my app rejected by YC with this product, it just makes me angry.
I did miss it, thank you
You can still apply multiple times after getting rejected. There’s plenty of stories of companies/founders that only got into YC after several rejections
To be honest, if I were in their situation I wouldn’t apply again, but it could be a good move regardless
Re: Ask HN: YC company copied our product, what can we do?
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
Did you miss this bit above?: > As a female founder, having my app rejected by YC with this product, it just makes me angry.
I did miss it, thank you You can still apply multiple times after getting rejected. There’s plenty of stories of companies/founders that only got into YC after several rejections To be honest, if I were in their situation I wouldn’t apply again, but it could be a good move regardless
I'm not sure what YC's stance is on investing in established businesses, but in the VC world as a rule it is 'not done' to invest in multiple competitors active in the same field. That path is rife with conflicts of interest.
Re: Ask HN: YC company copied our product, what can we do?
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
The alternative would pretty much be an end to startup innovation, since a large company with a team of lawyers could just claim that any new product that threatens them is a copy in some way and destroy the startup with legal bills regardless of whether there's any merit to the claims. Being copied sucks, and I agree that it should be looked down upon culturally, but I think "just execute better" really is the right…
I've had something like this happen with a bunch of guys cloning my software and changing the URL to offer a competing service. I've also had a funded competitor copy our business model and attempt to compete. I sued the first one, the other one we outcompeted in spite of a 30:1 funding discrepancy. Regardless, these things are distractions and some funded bunch of cowboys destroying the market for you when you've sp…
I hear you, but what's the alternative? Are you advocating for software patents?
If you're just saying that an API or a website is copyrighted and can't be ripped off verbatim, that sounds more reasonable to me. But still, it's trivial to copy but then make minor cosmetic changes (especially with AI). Then we're back to a very troublesome gray area.
Re: Ask HN: YC company copied our product, what can we do?
#69Very sorry to hear this. Did you have any copyright to the apis or the code? Or even a ToS on your slack channel? IANAL so wouldn't hurt to speak to a lawyer. Also sorry I am not good reading the signals - why would being a female founder make you angrier than a non female founder? Id be angry as F too if a clone of my hard work appeared out of no where!
> Did you have any copyright to the apis or the code? Any code that's written from scratch is automatically assigned copyright to the creator or their employer at the time of creation. API's are probably considered copyrighted by the courts but getting any kind of remedy for that will be exceedingly difficult after Google vs. Oracle. > Id be angry as F too if a clone of my hard work appeared out of no where! This hap…
Yeah if the folks somehow copied code (hacking etc) there may be some grounds. Again this is black belt legal stuff. You beat me to it - especially after that whole GvsO case APIs getting copyright is also very tricky it feels to me.
> This happens literally all the time. I wouldn't recommend someone be a founder if this upsets them. No half-decent innovation isn't instantly cloned by 10 fly-by-night copycats and multiple large incumbents.
+10 - My only point here I wasnt sure why being a female founder mattered whether you could/should get angry. Getting angry is reasonable - just that what you do next and how you pick yourslef matters.
Re: Ask HN: YC company copied our product, what can we do?
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've had something like this happen with a bunch of guys cloning my software and changing the URL to offer a competing service. I've also had a funded competitor copy our business model and attempt to compete. I sued the first one, the other one we outcompeted in spite of a 30:1 funding discrepancy. Regardless, these things are distractions and some funded bunch of cowboys destroying the market for you when you've sp…
I hear you, but what's the alternative? Are you advocating for software patents? If you're just saying that an API or a website is copyrighted and can't be ripped off verbatim, that sounds more reasonable to me. But still, it's trivial to copy but then make minor cosmetic changes (especially with AI). Then we're back to a very troublesome gray area.
It all depends on what has been copied. If privileged info from the YC application was used they should be sued into the ground for that but I can't imagine that YC would ever let that happen. If they copied code, text or images from the product or webpages they should be slammed for that too. But if they just decided to clone the concept and did all the legwork themselves that would be a different matter.
The fact that they infiltrated the OPs comms channels certainly doesn't make them look good.