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Hundreds of Start-Ups Hope to Be a Copycat Start-Up

bits.blogs.nytimes.com

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Re: Hundreds of Start-Ups Hope to Be a Copycat Start-Up

#21

Post by tomblomfield »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #3

The author confuses the language of ' for ' with a copy of. If you are the 'Uber of Dog Walking' you are not a copy of Uber. Instead you have taken one part of the Uber puzzle, "on demand access using a smart phone" and applied it to the problem of finding a dog walker [1]. The sort of language arises because these techniques and technologies are created without names. In the physical world, you might have something…

Spot-on. This article misses the point entirely - X for Y is just a convenient (if somewhat lazy) way of describing new concepts by reference to existing ones.

I was hoping that the author would really dig into the practice of startup clones - c.f. http://www.rocket-internet.de

Re: Hundreds of Start-Ups Hope to Be a Copycat Start-Up

#22

Post by bchjam »

pg wrote: post #16
gress wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While that misconception is true, it doesn't negate the point that there are a lot of start-ups that are just playing house, trying to act like a start up in the hope that they'll strike it lucky.

True, but there are wannabees in every field where the people who succeed become rich or famous. There's nothing newsworthy about that sort of background radiation lameness. Or more precisely, it's one of the recipes for an Onion article.

I thought I had read something you wrote once (5. Most investors are momentum investors. from http://paulgraham.com/guidetoinvestors.html) implied that investor demand increases the volume of the more shallow type of copycat.

Re: Hundreds of Start-Ups Hope to Be a Copycat Start-Up

#23

Post by carbocation »

We have a word describing this kind of "x of/for y" construction: "metaphor" (or simile or snowclone, depending on exactly how you construct it). It has a name because it's used all the time.

I think it's ridiculous that startups are getting slammed for using a common component of human language in their marketing.

Re: Hundreds of Start-Ups Hope to Be a Copycat Start-Up

#24

Post by bmelton »

tomasien wrote: post #18
pg wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's because startups have been doing well lately. Whenever anything is doing well, its reputation contains a sort of potential energy that can be exploited by someone attacking it. E.g. "I found a mistake in Einstein's math" is going to get you a lot more attention than "I found a mistake in my next door neighbor's math."

I'm not sure if you use Facebook, but on Facebook there is a constant wave of quotes mis-attributed to Einstein and Thomas Jefferson. It's really interesting, they all get 10000's of shares. Somebody somewhere (or just the crowd accidentally) A/B tested a ton of different historical figures and came out with Einstein and TJ.

The patois of misattribution is, often times, a rather fun deception -- to see who will share the meme.

Things like "The internet is full of trolls" are captioned to a photo of Abraham Lincoln, for example. Or, more recently, the phenomenon of attributing moving quotations to Taylor Swift, or Barack Obama, where the actual source was Adolph Hitler.

In short, you're not wrong that these things occur, but in some cases, they probably occur as a means of exploiting our collective ignorance, and/or our willingness to share things that we think are attributable to someone we might idolize.

Summed up in a Hitler quote (attributable to anyone): "How fortunate for leaders that men do not think."

Re: Hundreds of Start-Ups Hope to Be a Copycat Start-Up

#26

Post by charlesju »

pg wrote: post #2

It's a common misconception that a startup describing itself as x of/for y is a sign of lack of originality. A lot of original ideas-- perhaps most good original ideas-- are initially conceived of as x of/for y. Plus it is a good tactic, which we actively encourage, for startups to describe themselves in those terms initially. It may not describe a startup perfectly, but it's the the most information you can convey i…

I am always reminded of the famous blog post about a getting a PHD wherein all you can hope to do as an individual is make a small bump on the giant circle of human experience and knowledge.

http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/

Likewise, backseat drivers to the expansion of the human existence, fail to grasp the basic understanding of how startups, knowledge, experiences are created. It is all through evolution. That is why there is such a high failure rate, that is why it's so hard to predict, that is why moving forward we will continue to use the x of/for y to describe our ambitions and ideas because all great things we have done are built upon those that have come before.

We are creatures of evolution and that expands beyond just the layman biological applications to encompass all of what we have and will do.

Re: Hundreds of Start-Ups Hope to Be a Copycat Start-Up

#27

Post by 001sky »

6cxs2hd6 wrote: post #20
crassus wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slightly OT, but what's up with the rise of the anti-tech media on the east coast? Who reads that trash anyway? It's all about weird tech CEOs, accusations of prejudice, accusations of unoriginality, and the like.

Are you saying the New York Times is trash? If so, I disagree. Although I wouldn't put any institution on a pedestal, I would say that the NYT is demonstrably a non-trashy news organization. Demonstrable in part by the fact you don't love everything they write about your precious industry or coast -- that is in fact an indication that they're doing a good job, i.e. not pleasing everyone all the time.

Are you saying the New York Times is trash

WAT? He's referring to the trash they [1,2]. Its more akin saying the east coast media has a napoleon complex wrt the west coast (because the growing wealth threaten's old money/media's sense of self/hegemony). Lots of people use "trashtalk" professionally, eg sportsmen. Hell, it even has its own wikipedia page.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trash-talk

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smack_talk

Re: Hundreds of Start-Ups Hope to Be a Copycat Start-Up

#28

Post by crassus »

tomasien wrote: post #19
crassus wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slightly OT, but what's up with the rise of the anti-tech media on the east coast? Who reads that trash anyway? It's all about weird tech CEOs, accusations of prejudice, accusations of unoriginality, and the like.

W/R/T who reads it, one of my best friends LOVES Valleywag and I ask him about it all the time. He thinks SV is just up its own ass (maybe), especially as it relates to social issues (yes) and that makes it like hate porn for him. I suppose that makes an ounce of sense, but the criticism of the businesses and innovation themselves feel out of place in that environment. The other side is just haters, there's been a re…

With respect to the social issues - on GitHub, nobody knows you're not a white straight male, but it turns out that open source is mostly written by white straight males anyway. Most of the criticism from the east coast seems to be that Silicon Valley doesn't care enough about correcting this outcome, and I'd say they are right - most engineers care more about how code works than who wrote it, and that's very much an old-fashioned enlightenment value that I agree with.

While initiatives to lower the barrier to entry in writing software are great, I'm not sure I want to see an industry that cares more about achieving social equality than writing good code. Crowds of engineers will never be fertile soil for social justice warriors for this reason.

Re: Hundreds of Start-Ups Hope to Be a Copycat Start-Up

#30

Post by steveklabnik »

pg wrote: post #2

It's a common misconception that a startup describing itself as x of/for y is a sign of lack of originality. A lot of original ideas-- perhaps most good original ideas-- are initially conceived of as x of/for y. Plus it is a good tactic, which we actively encourage, for startups to describe themselves in those terms initially. It may not describe a startup perfectly, but it's the the most information you can convey i…

Yup, especially when your space is lesser known. Back in 2009 when I had my startup, nobody understood what the hell we did until we started saying "EC2 but with 3D printers instead of servers." All of a sudden people went from glassy-eyed to intrigued. When we talked about the rise of mass customization, or the democratization of manufacturing, nobody grokked it.
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