Otonomo, with nearly $55M in funding, is cloning our product • Hacker News Board

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

#491

Post by chrisweekly » Tue, Apr 23, 2019, 12:19 AM UTC

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…

You're thinking of the Samwer brothers, w/ successful explicit clones of extant businesses.

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

#492

Post by trpc » Tue, Apr 23, 2019, 12:23 AM UTC

ignoramous wrote: post #488

trpc wrote: post #486

does this page ever load? I've tried like 5 or 6 times over the course of the last 9 hours and never been able to see what the hell that is all about even with a VPN

Yes, the page does load. Try this mirror: https://outline.com/FfSCUm

Thank you, that works

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

#493

Post by rorykoehler » Tue, Apr 23, 2019, 12:32 AM UTC

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…

That German VC company contacted us to talk about partnering, learnt as much as they could from us and then (not to my surprise) launched their clone of our company with $42m backing.

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

#494

Post by coverband » Tue, Apr 23, 2019, 12:34 AM UTC

alluro2 wrote: post #299

coverband wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. It sounds like a case of "this looks good, let's follow their format" and revising words/paragraphs just enough so you won't be blamed for plagiarism. The API parameters are very generic so it shouldn't be considered cloning.

It seems like you haven't seen the exact same copied parameter examples? I don't really see how this can be defended as not cloning - it's one thing to use others as "inspiration" and take in some general good ideas, but copy someone else's work in such a blatant manner is disgusting. If I were amongst their investors, I'd be pissed.

Oh I have seen it, and I'm not suggesting they haven't copied that. I'm saying that most client SDK documentation looks alike at least for authentication etc. and when you look at the examples given for Otonomo, most of it is boilerplate information.

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

#495

Post by monktastic1 » Tue, Apr 23, 2019, 12:35 AM UTC

Washuu wrote: post #479

Washuu wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It means the production of the items in question came out of the location specified.

Good to see that I am being down voted for my accent/dialect.

I didn't down-vote you, but I imagine it's because you just repeated "out of" without explicitly clarifying which definition was meant (though it's more obvious in your version, at least to a native speaker).

For what it's worth, the usage here means "from within."

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

#496

Post by rorykoehler » Tue, Apr 23, 2019, 12:36 AM UTC

evanlivingston wrote: post #233

selectiveshift wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because people and companies who do this add no value to society. They are parasites.

What if they provide the product at a lower price?

For how long? Until the VC money runs out and they either jack up the price or go bust?

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

#497

Post by dmitryminkovsky » Tue, Apr 23, 2019, 12:53 AM UTC

martinhath wrote: post #450

iamleppert wrote: post #282

Forgive me, but all I really see that’s ripped of are...some API docs? You can tell they copied them but this is likely the work of a single lazy employee rather than indicative of an entire company. Consider that the value of a company is more than API documentation. It’s the customers, the business relationships, and the employees. The actual tech is last in the things that are valuable. If you want to survive in t…

It is curious that while HN as a whole seems to be on the same side regarding the Google vs. Oracle case, they also are quick to jump on this bandwagon, but in the other direction. Is it lame to blatantly copy someones API docs? Sure. But even looking at the screenshots in their blog post, which I presume is meant to highlight this issue, it's clear that there are changes as well, so it looks more like derivative wor…

Same thought here but fwiw to me it seems that there are plenty of people on this thread who are on the Google side of this discussion.

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

#498

Post by jjeaff » Tue, Apr 23, 2019, 1:02 AM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #232

jjeaff wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ya, we got very close to closing with a VC in SV. Their technical due diligence consisted of one of their contacts from Google calling and asking me questions about our tech stack. It appeared that the Google dev derailed the deal because we were building our product in PHP. That's how they decided we must not know what we are talking about.

Did you get funded with another party?

Yes, we raised millions through a few other VCs.

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

#499

Post by oneplane » Tue, Apr 23, 2019, 1:03 AM UTC

MereInterest wrote: post #433

alpaca128 wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can hardly remember someone using an Apple(or any brand really) product name for the whole product category, it's rare in my experience. Sometimes there's a (grand)parent calling every game console "nintendo", but that's about it.

How about Q-tip? Band-aid? Adrenaline? Kleenex? There's quite a lot of them floating around. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_generic_and_genericize...

I don't think any of those exist in my country. We do have some older people that call every PND a 'TomTom'.

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

#500

Post by kumarski » Tue, Apr 23, 2019, 1:05 AM UTC

Reddit faked comments in the early days.

Youtube & Vkontakte hosted pirated content knowingly.

In the early days, iOS apps juiced their valuations with vanity invite metrics that entailed invite-walls that juiced downloads to access full functionality of apps. (invite 50 people to use full app features). Some of these were acquired for 8 figures plus.

Paypal created a bot that bought goods on eBay and then, insisted on paying for it using PayPal.

Rentoid bought and rented the items themselves.

Dating networks seed enough fake accounts on both sides to start the demand.

AirBnB allegedly created a bot & fake email addresses that would automatically respond to posts on Craigslist.

Marc Benioff of SalesForce hired fake protesters to disrupt his biggest rival’s conference and commandeered all the taxis at the event to deliver a 45-minute pitch about his own product. In another instance, he cancelled his keynote at the Oracle Conference and drew crowds to his own speech at a nearby restaurant.

Otonomo cloned some code, nothing that was impossible to deduce as well.