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

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

#71

Post by FailMore » Mon, Apr 22, 2019, 3:58 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #50

yingw787 wrote: post #34

Holy crap. The only way forward for Bessemer et al. VCs is to immediately withdraw their funding for this “company” and cut all ties in order to prove that they had no forewarning that this is how their money was being used. There are so few actors this visibly bad that if they didn’t do anything they would become “that guy” everybody avoids, in both the deals and funding space, when orgs do their due diligence. So t…

Bessemer & Co. would not spend this kind of money without doing DD to the point where their competitive review would have snagged the OP's efforts. So most likely they know.

They would not have looked at the API docs of either the startup they are investing in or their competitor (99.95%). I've worked as VC and technical detail at such a level is basically non existent. Economics, team, market take up the vast majority of the effort.

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

#72

Post by foobiekr » Mon, Apr 22, 2019, 3:59 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #50

yingw787 wrote: post #34

Holy crap. The only way forward for Bessemer et al. VCs is to immediately withdraw their funding for this “company” and cut all ties in order to prove that they had no forewarning that this is how their money was being used. There are so few actors this visibly bad that if they didn’t do anything they would become “that guy” everybody avoids, in both the deals and funding space, when orgs do their due diligence. So t…

Bessemer & Co. would not spend this kind of money without doing DD to the point where their competitive review would have snagged the OP's efforts. So most likely they know.

Getting onboard a company where there is a fast growing but not established market leader might even be a sound investment. Just add more thrust.

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

#73

Post by dep_b » Mon, Apr 22, 2019, 3:59 PM UTC

bob33212 wrote: post #27

I expected this to be a " I had the idea first" post. But it is actually a copyright infringement post AND makes the offending company look like a bunch of hacks. If they don't have the engineering chops to build an API how are going to handle the ops of it.

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

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

#74

Post by gnicholas » Mon, Apr 22, 2019, 3:59 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #65

gnicholas wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like VCs need a plagiarism detector for websites (think TurnItIn) to make sure their portfolio companies aren't blatant ripoffs.

We always check this sort of stuff for our customers, and more than once it has triggered.

How do you do it? Just using Google on various phrases? Are you checking for your customers our on your customers? If the latter, why do you care (most vendors wouldn't).

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

#75

Post by andechs » Mon, Apr 22, 2019, 3:59 PM UTC

gnicholas wrote: post #59

jacquesm wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bessemer & Co. would not spend this kind of money without doing DD to the point where their competitive review would have snagged the OP's efforts. So most likely they know.

Sounds like VCs need a plagiarism detector for websites (think TurnItIn) to make sure their portfolio companies aren't blatant ripoffs.

Just because something is a blatant ripoff, doesn't mean it's not a good investment. VCs are doing investments based on predicted ROI, not uniqueness. Lyft and Uber are extremely similar, but the particulars of the business are much more relevant to the investment opportunity.

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

#76

Post by Veen » Mon, Apr 22, 2019, 4:01 PM UTC

rum3 wrote: post #48

dillonmckay wrote: post #24

Can you not use a DMCA and contact their hosting provider? One per offense. Also, if the docs are registered copyright, willfull infringement per offense is over $100k per instance. $50mil/$140k = 357.14 Thoughts?

A bit naive. I am sure the DMCA can be used to put some fire on their ass to rewrite the documentation though but not much more than that.

Depends who is hosting their documentation. Under the DCMA, hosting providers are obligated to take content down when they recieve a valid takedown notice (They can put it back up when they get a counter notice).

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

#77

Post by jacquesm » Mon, Apr 22, 2019, 4:01 PM UTC

noonespecial wrote: post #66

You may not hear anything right away, but someone who works for (or was outsourced by) Otonomo is currently having a Very Bad Day.

Otonomo management will have an even worse day when they realize that they are not indemnified just because someone works for them. They will likely have to kiss a substantial portion of that money goodbye as compensation in whatever settlement will be reached. Their lawyers will not be able to win this one from what I've read and seen so far so the best they will be able to achieve is to settle before it gets to court, fighting this will only make it much more expensive.

OP should figure out if the public stuff is all that was ripped or if it went further, it would not be the first time that an ex employee made off with a copy of the company crown jewels.

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

#78

Post by runako » Mon, Apr 22, 2019, 4:01 PM UTC

This is obviously terrible, inexcusable behavior...

However, I expected to see that SmartCar (which somehow is not a trademark violation against the BMW marque?) was a scrappy indie startup being violated by a company backed by serious institutional money.

TL;DR; Smartcar is backed by NEA and A16Z. (Crunchbase says they have raised $12mm, which would likely put them comfortably in the top 1% of companies by capital raised.) This is a spat between two well-funded and well-backed companies.

None of this is to excuse the behavior of the Israeli company, just recognizing that the violated company probably has access to more levers than most to fix this.

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

#79

Post by Gabriel_Martin » Mon, Apr 22, 2019, 4:01 PM UTC

azinman2 wrote: post #19

relaunched wrote: post #13

This is a great opportunity for Bessemer, and the other investors, to demonstrate that it isn't returns above all. Updated to include my tweet: https://twitter.com/MattHurewitz/status/1120356791932604421?...

What else is it for a VC? Isn’t that literally their purpose?

lumbering forward blindly without responding to the red flags a company throws up is not profitable.

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

#80

Post by dragonwriter » Mon, Apr 22, 2019, 4:01 PM UTC

rum3 wrote: post #48

dillonmckay wrote: post #24

Can you not use a DMCA and contact their hosting provider? One per offense. Also, if the docs are registered copyright, willfull infringement per offense is over $100k per instance. $50mil/$140k = 357.14 Thoughts?

A bit naive. I am sure the DMCA can be used to put some fire on their ass to rewrite the documentation though but not much more than that.

The DMCA can be used to put a fire under them to file a DMCA counternotice, at which point the whole issue with their hosting provider is done and you are down to the basic question of are you going to file, litigate, and win an actual copyright lawsuit on a timeline and at a cost that leaves you with a viable startup.