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Otonomo, with nearly $55M in funding, is cloning our product

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Re: Otonomo, with nearly $55M in funding, is cloning our product

#311

Post by adventured »

carbocation wrote: post #192
orasis wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At $55M in funding they won’t be undercutting anything - quite the opposite, they’ll need to turn a healthy profit or die.

At $55M in funding, they can undercut for years, since they won't need to turn a healthy profit for quite some time. For example, Uber and Lyft. (Point being: survival is not just about the long run, but also the short run.)

Further to that point about undercutting for years, it's not going to be just $55m.

If Otonomo have raised ~$55m, it means they have very powerful, very rich backers (Bessemer, NTT, SK, Aptiv). They might realistically have another $100m over the coming years instead, if they continue making progress.

Re: Otonomo, with nearly $55M in funding, is cloning our product

#312

Post by cabalamat »

jwr wrote: post #218
ChuckMcM wrote: post #44

That is pretty egregious, and its also par for the course. And that is why startup companies go through all the hoops of being "stealth" and having NDAs and what not. There was a German VC firm that was, as I recall, very upfront about this. Clone a successful US company before it got to the European market. On the one hand it is great to have validation of the idea, on the other its a pain to have someone with more…

> its also par for the course No, it is not. The world would be a much better place if we all started doing what is right. This isn't difficult: stealing and copying API design and API documentation is wrong. Make a note of the company, people who work there, and VCs who invested. Computers are good at quickly finding information: one day you might want to do business with one of those people or VCs and digging up th…

> This isn't difficult: stealing and copying API design and API documentation is wrong.

Copying APIs is fine, as far as I'm concerned.

The world is as better place if hardware and software is compatible with each other, and common interfaces enable that.

Re: Otonomo, with nearly $55M in funding, is cloning our product

#313

Post by dep_b »

earenndil wrote: post #162
dep_b wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people built the world's most popular operating system doing just that - copying Java's API.

But not their API documentation. They even copied the exact example UDID.

...and of course Java was somewhat open to begin with, which isn't the case for the technology the company that got copied in story. There's always the next level in douchebaggery, if Google was really wrong copying those headers to begin with.

Re: Otonomo, with nearly $55M in funding, is cloning our product

#314

Post by stcredzero »

xapata wrote: post #180
aw3c2 wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Chinese You mean "Chinese companies". "The chinese" is just racist.

I'm Chinese and I didn't think it was racist. I interpreted the assertion as a description of the Chinese government, not Chinese people.

For the record, I'm Asian and my wife was born in Fujian province, China.

Re: Otonomo, with nearly $55M in funding, is cloning our product

#315

Post by king_magic »

crankylinuxuser wrote: post #298
king_magic wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even then, they are still parasites with no ethics.

If you won't throw your ethics into the pit for power, someone else will. And them everybody will be forced to throw the shared ethics or be outcompeted. And collectively, everyone will be poorer as a result. https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/

I'll take the high road, thank you. I'm perfectly fine taking satisfaction in being morally and ethically superior for not stealing someone else's hard work.

Re: Otonomo, with nearly $55M in funding, is cloning our product

#317

Post by ptman »

iandanforth wrote: post #301
joshfraser wrote: post #286

Several years ago, I hired a boutique Silicon Valley law firm to create some terms of service and privacy documents for my company. As part of their long list of questions about how we would use our customers data, they asked for a list of similar companies and competitors. I'd already reviewed all of our competitor's terms to get a sense of what other people were doing. So, when I reviewed the final documents that t…

Sadly this is exactly what should be done in most contracts. (In a hypothetical alternate world where law worked more like OSS). Of course it was unethical for them to do it without telling you and trying to charge you $5k for it, but law would be a heck of a lot cheaper if openness and code re-use were the default.

The contract may well be copyright by the competing service provider's law firm. You can't just copy&paste it. It's especially worrying when law firms specialising in IPR issues do this.

Re: Otonomo, with nearly $55M in funding, is cloning our product

#318

Post by cperciva »

joshfraser wrote: post #286

Several years ago, I hired a boutique Silicon Valley law firm to create some terms of service and privacy documents for my company. As part of their long list of questions about how we would use our customers data, they asked for a list of similar companies and competitors. I'd already reviewed all of our competitor's terms to get a sense of what other people were doing. So, when I reviewed the final documents that t…

Hopefully the law firm in question went through your answers and made sure that your competitor's terms were also appropriate for you. That's where the legal expertise is needed, not in simply writing text.

Re: Otonomo, with nearly $55M in funding, is cloning our product

#320

Post by propman »

Would it be beneficial for you to make this a big deal from a political or media perspective? You seem to have an excellent case, and I would reach out to major news publications like Bloomberg or the NYTimes now while it’s at the top of HN. Maybe make a medium article or something for extra exposure as well?

Are there entities that protect American IP from other countries? Maybe the US chamber of commerce, or maybe reach out to the government itself.

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