

What American Startups Can Learn From the Cutthroat Chinese Software Industry - mankins
http://www.fastcolabs.com/3005191/

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weareconvo
> Kobo says American startups like to develop products without the "impure"
> influence of monetization, "but [in China] the development of a good product
> isn’t even thought of in the beginning," he says. "Chinese web companies
> have a totally nonchalant attitude towards creating the actual products.
> They are just a lot more focused on ways to make money from the outset.”

...because they know that, due to their country's non-existent respect for
intellectual property, they can just rip off the product itself from something
created in America.

~~~
capisce
Similar to how America used to disrespect foreign intellectual property back
in the day: <http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/khan.copyright>

'The U.S. was long a net importer of literary and artistic works, especially
from England, which implied that recognition of foreign copyrights would have
led to a net deficit in international royalty payments. The Copyright Act
recognized this when it specified that "nothing in this act shall be construed
to extend to prohibit the importation or vending, reprinting or publishing
within the United States, of any map, chart, book or books ... by any person
not a citizen of the United States." Thus, the statutes explicitly authorized
Americans to take free advantage of the cultural output of other countries. As
a result, it was alleged that American publishers "indiscriminately reprinted
books by foreign authors without even the pretence of acknowledgement."'

It's a tendency that nations (and startups) break the rules as much as
possible in the early stages or when behind, and as soon as they're ahead seek
to prevent others from getting similarly ahead by lobbying for stricter
regulations and intellectual property rights.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
(1) The current state of the world is more relevant to China then what we did
in the past.

(2) In this case, Chinese entrepreneurs are constantly ripping off from each
other, making the situation intolerable even if we ignore theft of global IP.
Enforcing IP rights in China at this point would be good China, not just for
foreign IP right owners.

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gpcz
The Chinese approach is similar to the approach taught in an entrepreneurship
class I'm taking at the University of Michigan right now (ENGR 520). They
teach a variety of tools and models, but most of them revolve around how to
identify the high-value-capture activities in an industry segment, evaluate
the barriers to entry and founder capability sets, come up with a strategy to
get into the industry, and calculate whether or not the business is worth
starting. For the purposes of the class, they encourage us to assume the
business implementation (technology) will work, since the point is to figure
out whether or not the business is worth doing in the first place.

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chuable
"...If you’re not building a business, then what are you doing?”

Innovating, maybe?

