51–60 of 102 posts
Interestingly, the Chinese word for learning, 学 (xue) also means to imitate/to mimic.
I am confused, how else can you learn by NOT imitate?
Tumblr's not alone -- Innovation Works also has a pretty decent copy of my last start-up, Flurry, called Umeng. (For the curious, compare the product at flurry.com and umeng.com.) I've been watching Umeng for a bit and the services have slightly diverged, presumably because Umeng's learnt a bit more about the Chinese market and adapted its product. But the initial product was just a straight-up clone. I am a little s…
While this example is a little extreme in its similarity with the original, copying a startup idea and implementing it in another market than an English speaking is not just done in China. Here's an article about a bunch of european startups doing the same: http://www.businessinsider.com/what-do-ebay-facebook-and-gro...
its clever because not every us startup works without localisation everywhere. ebay/groupon and to a certain degree facebook need localization and if they arent able to get this fast clones will appear and people will flock to these clones because the idea is great but the us company is incapable/unwilling to cater to different markets than the us fast enough. it seems as if other markets are only an afterthought.
As someone living in Canada, I can't tell you how frustrating it is to see great companies not servicing their neighbors to the North. Examples: Amazon Mechanical Turk, Google Checkout, Google Voice, Braintree, WePay.
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I've often wondered if one of the (many) reasons why there are so few successful startups coming out of Europe is due to the copying. I visited Berlin a while back and my buddy was telling me about a bunch of guys who've built a successful business (dozens of engineers) just cloning 'hot' American products. It's got to reduce the number of people working on brand new ideas. (I'm not suggesting that you can't build a…
Heh, that may be a factor, but I doubt it's the main one. Lots of American HN users seem to be pretty Liberal in their political outlook, and that's fine. But consider Germany, with a welfare state that looks after you from cradle to grave. If you want to start a startup there then you'd better have your EUR 20,000 in capital minimum, and you'd better do all the paperwork and comply with all the regulations and have…
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Not really, since Tumblr doesn't have any ads either. Come to think of it, besides selling premium themes, how else does Tumblr make money? Surely all the trust-fund hipsters on the site don't bring in wheelbarrows of money with their ironic 1-gear eco-bikes, do they?
You were downvoted for adding a snidey remark to a decent question. Next time just ask the question. Since I'm curious as well, how does Tumblr make money besides themes? Does anyone know their monetization strategy?
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I've often wondered if one of the (many) reasons why there are so few successful startups coming out of Europe is due to the copying. I visited Berlin a while back and my buddy was telling me about a bunch of guys who've built a successful business (dozens of engineers) just cloning 'hot' American products. It's got to reduce the number of people working on brand new ideas. (I'm not suggesting that you can't build a…
Heh, that may be a factor, but I doubt it's the main one. Lots of American HN users seem to be pretty Liberal in their political outlook, and that's fine. But consider Germany, with a welfare state that looks after you from cradle to grave. If you want to start a startup there then you'd better have your EUR 20,000 in capital minimum, and you'd better do all the paperwork and comply with all the regulations and have…
1) 20k minimum for startups
You're confusing a few things here. The costs to form a company depend on what kind of legal form you want it to have. What you're talking about is the GmbH (basically a LLC), where you actually need 25k of capital. This is by far not the only form a company can take. If you just want to make sure that every founder gets its part, you've got a name for the company etc, you can form something like a UG. If you don't have more than three founders, you can use some standard forms and everything's done within a few days at most. And even if you want limited liability and don't have the capital, you can choose from several other legal forms available in Europe. The British limited company is quite popular, as you need less capital.
This is hardly a problem for most IT-based startups, who rarely have a lot of founders or actually trade something (where limited liability is quite welcome).
2) Diplomas/certificates are required
There are several cases where this is true, but I don't see any that would affect startups. Yes, if you want to become a hairdresser or want to open your own carpentry shop, you need to have the proper papers. For a web-based startup? What kind of papers would those be?
3) 35 hrs/week
That's France. Never mind that the difference between a regular job and startup hours doesn't have to be that different. And even if you're doing the stereotypical 100+ hours a week, the difference to a regular job in any country will be quite high (well, South Korea excluded).
4) Less hunger because of welfare
Hows is that particular to startups? If this were true, people would drop out of almost any job because it would be easier otherwise. Germans on the dole don't live in limitless luxury.
I'm not saying that there isn't a tendency to copy things here. The whole Facebook vs. StudiVZ affair is pretty embarassing. But that's basically one market niche some companies are filling, it's not really representative of the whole German startup scene.
Yes, there's no equivalent to the venture capital-backed silicon valley startup scene. But that's pretty unique in the US, too.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Heh, that may be a factor, but I doubt it's the main one. Lots of American HN users seem to be pretty Liberal in their political outlook, and that's fine. But consider Germany, with a welfare state that looks after you from cradle to grave. If you want to start a startup there then you'd better have your EUR 20,000 in capital minimum, and you'd better do all the paperwork and comply with all the regulations and have…
This argument doesn't make sense to me. Better wellfare lowers the risk of working at a startup, which would make more people try it. I guess work regulations and employee rights are make things harder in Europe than in the US, though. According to Inc., "Norway has more entrepreneurs per capita than the United States": http://www.inc.com/magazine/20110201/in-norway-start-ups-say... (Disclosure: I am indeed Norwegian…
We do have a bit more middle-class companies, or at least so it seems. As with almost everything, the US is more about extremes than Europe.