YC criticized for backing AI startup that simply cloned another AI startup

Post by pclmulqdq » Tue, Oct 01, 2024, 2:12 PM UTC

CharlieDigital wrote: post #82

segmondy wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wild take, copying matters. If you have a great idea, and no capital and I copy you and have more capital (money, social), I can deploy my capital to crush you in the market. This very idea that ideas don't matter is hogwash, you can say that idea alone is not enough, but it matters. This is why big companies sometimes get sued by the govt, they copy smaller companies ideas, add it into their already established prod…

> If you have a great idea, and no capital and I copy you and have more capital (money, social), I can deploy my capital to crush you in the market This is precisely how our markets work and why we have a system of trademarks, patents, and copyright. Use those tools to your advantage if you are small.

Post by Vanclief » Tue, Oct 01, 2024, 2:13 PM UTC

tomschwiha wrote: post #155

Vanclief wrote: post #87

We recently applied to the current YC batch and got rejected. Seeing this just made me die a little inside. We are a small SaaS that has very happy paying customers and a huge market. We solve a boring problem, with boring technologies and we are not the next OpenAI or Stripe. Yet we have easily a 10,000 X potential. I feel like YC now prioritizes funding things that can be hyped more instead of actually funding thin…

Your profile mentions something with Blockchain? I'm not too sure, but are there any use cases except for Bitcoin stuff? From the solutions I heard there are offen more practicable solutions available compared to using Blockchain tech.

Post by wpietri » Tue, Oct 01, 2024, 2:15 PM UTC

llm_trw wrote: post #145

wpietri wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as we're nit-picking, we're talking about the Apache license. But my point isn't about the specific license. It's about one set of people very generously doing lots of labor and publishing the result in hopes of making the world a little better. And then some other people exploiting that for personal gain with no regard for the first group. That's a social dynamic that's at the heart of IP laws. For example,…

>That's a social dynamic that's at the heart of IP laws. Pirate book publishers saw a way to make some money by exploiting the labor of authors and original publishers for their own gain. This is a _gross_ misunderstanding of what publishing was like in the first few centuries of the printing press. Copyright laws originated as a form of government censorship and control over the printing press in 15th-16th century E…

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Oct 01, 2024, 2:16 PM UTC

gyre007 wrote: post #25

hbbio wrote: post #11

The worst part is that instead of backing out and let's say kicking them out of the batch, YC doubled down praising the (pretty poor imho) justification that may also have been written by ChatGPT, like the license :) https://x.com/mwseibel/status/1840846817631879291

I don’t thinks its the worst , but it did feel in bad taste. YC have put money and trust in them, so why would they kick them down? Would you? They haven’t committed any crime so why would they distance themselves (Note: I am not a YC founder or affiliated with YC in any way)

Post by tightbookkeeper » Tue, Oct 01, 2024, 2:17 PM UTC

MangoCoffee wrote: post #156

It's amusing to see some comments downplaying the significance of 'copying.' Apparently, it only becomes a concern when Chinese companies replicate Western products and ideas. Perhaps it's time to stop crying about Chinese clones.