"is illegally cloning our product"
isn't it for the court to establish?
Otonomo, with nearly $55M in funding, is cloning our product
81–90 of 637 posts
Re: Otonomo, with nearly $55M in funding, is cloning our product
#82Earlier 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.
Bessemer & Co. likely know that Otonomo is building a drop-in replacement copy of Smartcar's API. I'm not sure there's anything terribly controversial about that, although reasonable people may disagree. Bessemer & Co. probably don't know that the docs are literally being copied though.
A literal copy would show up during tech DD. If they did not flag it that's their problem, if they did flag it it is still their problem.
Re: Otonomo, with nearly $55M in funding, is cloning our product
#83That 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…
> German VC firm that was, as I recall, very upfront about this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket_Internet
Ah good old Rocket Internet. Used to deal quite a lot with them back in the days.
For all the ethically ambiguous things they do, I still remember fondly their creative ways of using AdTech.
Re: Otonomo, with nearly $55M in funding, is cloning our product
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Sure, but neither of them was illegally copying aspects of the others' business. Business models are not protectable.
Re: Otonomo, with nearly $55M in funding, is cloning our product
#85I don't have any data to back it up but majority of Israeli startups have one goal: to be acquired (and are extremely good at marketing them to acquiring companies and investors). So continue your product and in a couple of years time, they would have been acquired and the product put on back burner by the acquiring company.
Re: Otonomo, with nearly $55M in funding, is cloning our product
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
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).
> How do you do it?
We have a team of people that exhaustively search for players in the same space. The 'Google on various phrases' is more or less the gist of it, the more unique the better.
It's not an automated process so fairly time consuming.
> Are you checking for your customers our on your customers?
We do not check on our customers, we check for our customers. And usually pre-investment.
> If the latter, why do you care (most vendors wouldn't).
You are probably wrong about that, copying something verbatim will get you a C&D pdq in most cases.
Re: Otonomo, with nearly $55M in funding, is cloning our product
#87You blew it. By posting this article and getting to the top of Hackernews you may have alerted their attention and they may rapidly change everything to not seem like copyright infringement. Then you might have weak or no claims.
Re: Otonomo, with nearly $55M in funding, is cloning our product
#88Every single instance of professional plagiarism that I’ve encountered in my working career has been techpubs/documentation. And that has been exponentially more common for outsourced documentation.
Even solid companies like Arista got bitten by their doc writers cloning Cisco documentation.
So while this sucks, the most likely explanation for the evidence presented is at that layer.
Re: Otonomo, with nearly $55M in funding, is cloning our product
#89Earlier 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.
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.
We do technical due diligence, because at the VCs this specialty is usually not present.
Re: Otonomo, with nearly $55M in funding, is cloning our product
#90I hope the VC notices this. At best they invested in a lazy company. At worst, fraudsters. If they actually believe the idea has merit, they should do right by Otonomo.
A lazy company—one that gets the job done expending the least unnecessary resources—is what investors want.
Playing fast and loose with the law—whether it's competitors legal interests or regulatory conpliance—is often part of the economy of disruption.