Here's the link to the post on part 1:
Someone Stole My Startup Idea – Part 2: They Raised Money With My Slides?
31–37 of 37 posts
Re: Someone Stole My Startup Idea – Part 2: They Raised Money With My Slides?
#32The people who stole these slides remind me of a child who cheats at spelling in primary school. They may do well in tests, but as soon as they need to actually spell something they'll have no chance (hope my spelling is ok, by the way). The other issue is that someone who would steel like that. Would probably also have other ethical shortcomings. For example they may have no problems ripping off customers, employees…
We've had several people imitate our site, not just in overall functionality but to the point of copying specific phrases, design elements, the layout and so on. I agree though that they might be able to get that far, but what they're lacking is the focus that made us create what we did in the first place. Each of these sites has tried to branch out a bit (you know, steal our ideas as a starting point, and build from there) and they've totally missed the mark with each new addition.
Right on about the ethics, too. Someone who builds their business on a purloined platform can clearly not be trusted in general.
Re: Someone Stole My Startup Idea – Part 2: They Raised Money With My Slides?
#33I discovered an unexpected benefit of being plagiarized: it makes imitators easy to find. A couple days ago I was curious how many YC clones there are now, so I tried to make an up to date list. The most fruitful source was to search in Google for distinctive phrases from our application form. Practically all of them copy that, and more often than not they leave chunks of verbatim text unchanged. (I found 26. Some ar…
Indeed, I've noticed in the niche we're in, several sites have copied the wording on our advertising sign up page. Of course, it's complemented by strong similarities to our layout and functionality, but there's something that seems more blatant about duplicating prose.
Re: Someone Stole My Startup Idea – Part 2: They Raised Money With My Slides?
#34Ethics aside, if a company/startup can't be bothered to make new slides after stealing an idea, it will likely make similar inflexible "shortcuts" later on and fail miserably (as the article showed).
That's what I keep thinking reading this. Slides? They stole ... slides? Not customer lists, or research notes, or software. Just slides? Come on. Is that really what passes for evidence of "hard work" on the marketing side of things. Is a good powerpoint really going to make or break a company?
maybe slide duplication is the easiest to discover and verify.
sound advice regardless! thanks for the uplifting post. fear mongering is crummy. i'm glad to have found a source that is both entertaining, useful and upbeat (telling it like it is!).
Re: Someone Stole My Startup Idea – Part 2: They Raised Money With My Slides?
#35Interesting, but scary. In this case it looks like an unethical and incompetent competitor. However, if they had actually followed up on the stolen strategy properly, it might have posed a bigger problem.
I think his point was that the stolen strategy, by itself, had no value no matter now it was followed up on. His company completely ditched the strategy over the intervening months, in fact, in favor of iteratively improved ones. It seems that the only way the competitor could have properly followed up on the strategy was to use the same process to arrive at that initial strategy, and subsequently evolve it into some…
t seems that the only way the competitor could have properly followed up on the strategy was to use the same process to arrive at that initial strategy, and subsequently evolve it into something that actually worked
Sorry, I'm not sure I follow this reasoning. Why is it critical that they come up with the initial strategy first in order to succeed? Why wouldn't stealing the initial strategy and then evolving it work? (Obviously one consider that the people who came up with the original idea had some insight that puts them a step ahead, but, to me, that doesn't seem like it would necessarily be enough).
Re: Someone Stole My Startup Idea – Part 2: They Raised Money With My Slides?
#36I discovered an unexpected benefit of being plagiarized: it makes imitators easy to find. A couple days ago I was curious how many YC clones there are now, so I tried to make an up to date list. The most fruitful source was to search in Google for distinctive phrases from our application form. Practically all of them copy that, and more often than not they leave chunks of verbatim text unchanged. (I found 26. Some ar…
hehe, nice hack!
You can use this technique to by pass the middle people in other ways too. For example with agency job ads, it is sometimes possible to find the company from the phrasing or combinations of technologies listed along with the location of the company. So then you can apply directly to the company, rather than going through the agency.
You can put these unique terms in things like google alerts, and then you get an email each time a ycombinator clone springs up!
Many times I have seen terms and conditions on websites and other software ripped off of other ones... and sometimes they even forget to change the company names, and even the product name! Quite funny really.
Maybe copyright infringement is a better term than plagiarized though?
I'm not sure talking about the term plagiarism with regards to business or ycombinator is all that useful. Surely ycombinator drew inspiration from other things without crediting them? The three months, and $5000 figure seems eerily similar to another program run by a company that starts with G, for example.
Micro finance was around along time before ycombinator started. So were incubators that helped startups. Investing is a very old idea.
I'm not sure if plagiarism makes sense in a medium where no credits are given at all. Where if you give credit to some other companies, they might get angry at you... and maybe bring down the law on your head. In this way academia is permitted to be more honest and free with ideas.
It's always nice to have an idea, but it's really good if people copy it. Firstly it's flattering, and secondly the idea has much more potential to spread if other people take it up... growing the market for the dominant player.
Borrowing ideas and claiming them as your own is rife in business. I'm not sure business would work if they had to credit their competitors every time they advertised, or published something.
cu,
Re: Someone Stole My Startup Idea – Part 2: They Raised Money With My Slides?
#37The people who stole these slides remind me of a child who cheats at spelling in primary school. They may do well in tests, but as soon as they need to actually spell something they'll have no chance (hope my spelling is ok, by the way). The other issue is that someone who would steel like that. Would probably also have other ethical shortcomings. For example they may have no problems ripping off customers, employees…
We've had several people imitate our site, not just in overall functionality but to the point of copying specific phrases, design elements, the layout and so on. I agree though that they might be able to get that far, but what they're lacking is the focus that made us create what we did in the first place. Each of these sites has tried to branch out a bit (you know, steal our ideas as a starting point, and build from…
I am not so sure, what would be unethical about cloning, say, etherpad?