
Someone Created a Startup Just like Mine and Here Is Why That Is Awesome - jv22222
https://blog.nugget.one/upstart/someone-stole-my-startup-idea-and-why-it-doesnt-matter/
======
cdiamand
Hey Cory from Opps Daily here!

Just want to preface this by saying Nugget.one is an incredible product that
essentially inspired Opps Daily.

I signed up for your product shortly before new years, trying to figure out
what kind of venture I would launch in the New Year.

I'm always struggling to find good software ideas, so your service seemed
great. But it stopped after about a week and there was a hefty price tag to
keep getting these ideas.

I just wanted ideas, not the community, so I figured out how you were getting
the ideas and started getting them for myself. A few days later it became
clear that I should start Opps Daily because there is incredible potential to
help solve problems.

Anyways, just writing in to say I find your service pretty inspiring although
I'm not trying to build a community to launch Saas products, but more of
community where people learn about problems others are having and connect with
those people.

I've actually sent a few people your way when they mentioned my emails lacked
the analysis they were looking for.

Anyways, Im sorry if you feel like I stole something from you, I'm always
singing your praises when someone mentions the similarity.

I'd love for you to drop me a line if you ever want to compare notes! :)

~~~
jv22222
OP Here: For the record. Corey an myself have reached out to each other and
are getting along great. We've setup a call that we're both looking forward to
having. We already learned stuff from each other.

Regarding privacy: I deeply screwed up on this. Somehow I just assumed because
Corey was so radically transparent that it was ok. That was my error and I
apologize. Also I guess since the only identifying data was the domain name,
which is public, I also somehow thought that was ok. I was wrong.

Regarding intent: It was not meant to come across as mean spirited. It really
was just meant to be a good blog post. I missed the mark. Obviously my
authorship screwed up on that point.

~~~
gshulegaard
I am glad you are responding well here, but just an example of tone from your
post:

> I wish he wasn’t ripping off Nugget, but the fact that he is actually doing
> something is a big deal.

This would be a lot more impactful edited as such:

> The fact that he is actually doing something is a big deal.

The little (potentially read as snide ["ripping off"]) opening context for the
sentiment actually detracts from its point and helps establish a negative
author tone for potential readers. In general, placing any point behind a
"but" detracts from impact and moves said impact to the opening context.

Hey writing is hard and written tone is super difficult to manage! As an idea,
you might consider having friends read posts and comment on the overall tone
before publishing (if you don't already).

Disclaimer: I am not a good writer so apply grains of salt liberally.

~~~
jv22222
I have made the change you suggested.

I ran the post past my smartest friends who read HN, they all said it looked
good.

We just missed the privacy aspect and also in trying to be funny I went at it
too hard.

------
cocktailpeanuts
It may not matter what happened.

But it does matter that you decided to publicly out him. This is very petty
and as a user i would feel betrayed of my privacy.

You could have actually taken advantage of this and wrote a completely
different blog post and people would have appreciated it, but this feels too
petty. Even when you say it doesn't matter and all the diplomatic cliche
saying competition is good, it just doesn't feel right because I can sense the
bitterness in every word.

It's not like this guy was freelancing for you telling you he's going to build
your idea and one day suddenly he launched it as his own. You already have a
service out there. It's public domain. You can't "steal" an idea that's
already out there.

~~~
hluska
I came here to type out almost this exact thing. I'm not sure what the op
hoped to gain from this, but frankly, he seems very petty. There is literally
no way that I'd give him any personal information after reading this....

He may have gotten some pageviews out of this, but I think that it will take a
very long time to repair his brand.

~~~
bfuller
So you stole their idea

~~~
hluska
Actually no, I didn't. Good ideas tend to occur to multiple people at the same
time.

~~~
bfuller
Obviously my sarcasm was not obvious

------
dd112
I get the whole "slack welcoming Microsoft"[0] vibe from this post. Welcoming
the competition in a tongue in cheek kind of way can be a clever marketing
ploy sometimes although it's very rarely executed successfully. I think
whatever you were trying to achieve with this went out the window when you
released user activity information. The post is sprinkled with resentment
which I don't think reflects the best on your business.

Competition, for the most part, is healthy. It validates that there is a
market. Many successful businesses are created this way. The competition
may/may not execute the idea better, but if they do then at least you know you
have room for improvement. If they don't, well then that only strengthens your
position as the front runner.

If it's a complete carbon copy, then it's usually survival of the fittest with
who can obtain the most exposure. Don't get me wrong, I understand why you
would be frustrated - it's never easy when a direct competitor pops up that
can threaten the success of your business just as you're getting established
(especially when you're emotionally and financially invested in it), but I
think you're going to look back at this and realise exposing the competition
this way really wasn't beneficial for you.

Regardless, keep your chin up. Don't let these types of things get you down -
use it as a driving force to continue to improve and grow!

[0] [https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-slacks-full-page-ad-
new-y...](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-slacks-full-page-ad-new-york-
times-epic-fail-justin-bariso)

------
louisswiss
This is a great example of why you should give yourself some time to cool off
before reacting to something that has upset you. I'm sure Justin is a
perfectly nice guy, but by ignoring user privacy and (in my opinion) going a
bit over the top with his rhetoric he has left me with a needlessly sour
aftertaste which could have been avoided with a clear head.

~~~
aarondf
Totally agreed. Also a good reason to let other people review your
controversial posts before you publish them.

I've always been kind of annoyed by pg's "Thanks to [these 8 influencers] for
reviewing early versions of this article" footnotes, but I think it's
valuable. (Annoyed because it feels like namedropping. That's my bias though,
not his problem.)

~~~
refrigerator
You've perfectly summed up my thoughts on pg's (and increasingly other people)
"acknowledgements" in articles - thanks.

------
jshmrsn
This appears to be a clear violation of your own privacy policy.

[https://nugget.one/privacy](https://nugget.one/privacy)

"Sharing Your Information

Rest assured that we neither rent nor sell your personal information to anyone
and that we will share your personal information only as described below.
Nugget Personnel: Nugget personnel and authorized consultants and/or
contractors may have access to user information if necessary in the normal
course of Nugget business. Protection of Nugget and Others: We may release
personal information when we believe in good faith that release is necessary
to comply with a law; to enforce or apply our Terms of Use and other policies;
or to protect the rights, property, or safety of Nugget, our employees, our
users, or others. This includes exchanging information with other companies
and organizations for fraud protection and credit risk reduction."

------
dugmartin
Justin, I think you should rename the post "Someone created a startup just
like mine and here is why that is awesome".

~~~
jv22222
Ok, so how can I do that? I think it's going to change the actual link of the
blog... and then this submission here will go dead?

Any advice on how to technically change it but keep the HN submission live?

~~~
sah2ed
You can always email the mods to help out: hn@ycombinator.com

~~~
dang
Yes, that's best. We can change the URL (and maybe the title) and post a
comment explaining the change.

~~~
jv22222
As recommended I have changed the title of the post to:

Someone Created a Startup Just like Mine and Here Is Why That Is Awesome

And changed the link to:

[https://blog.nugget.one/upstart/someone-created-a-startup-
ju...](https://blog.nugget.one/upstart/someone-created-a-startup-just-like-
mine-and-here-is-why-that-is-awesome/)

~~~
sctb
Thanks. We've updated the link from [https://blog.nugget.one/upstart/someone-
stole-my-startup-ide...](https://blog.nugget.one/upstart/someone-stole-my-
startup-idea-and-why-it-doesnt-matter/) and the title from “Someone Stole My
Startup Idea, and Why It Doesn't Matter”.

------
levthedev
I'm pretty disappointed in this blog post. Besides the weird privacy
violations that Justin committed in making this post, it also baffles me that
he thinks someone 'stole' his startup idea. You can't steal something that no
one owns - Nugget did not patent this idea, did not invent it, and is not even
the first 'Startup Ideas' newsletter (I'm subscribed to 4). I was considering
paying for Nugget, but now there's no chance.

------
thunderstrike
The fact that you published his data from your service, mainly because of your
unhappiness about him working on his own service, is unacceptable.

------
ikeboy
1\. Why would a business owner with money to spend be using Mturk to make
pennies?

2\. The FBA problem has been solved by Inventory Lab.

3\. Regardless of the tone of OP, publishing any user data is bad.

------
unimpressive
For another take on the whole 'violated his users privacy':

When you control a service like this it's very easy to forget that while it's
casual and normal for you to be able to see peoples information, to other
people this is an awesome responsibility you've been entrusted with.
Especially since it probably doesn't come up very often until it does, but by
that point the cat is out of the bag.

To help prevent a normalization of deviance, you should put in some kind of
mechanism to remind yourself that customer data is private and handling it
should be treated with extreme care.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalization_of_deviance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalization_of_deviance)

------
BatFastard
The sound of inevitability.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIbEj1CIpuU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIbEj1CIpuU)

Every idea has multiple people who are considering it at around the same time.
And rarely people act on it, because giving birth to new idea's can be like a
9 year gestation period. Not for the faint of heart.

Personally I know when I see someone who is also executing on an idea that I
have had, I subscribe to them, just to keep up.

~~~
jv22222
Please compare the ideas that are sent out. There is a quantifiable similarity
that can only have resulted from him using the same hit process as mine. That
level of similarity can't happen by serendipity. But, as I mentioned in the
post, it doesn't matter. Competition is good.

Mine:

I work in the eCommerce/re-seller business. In particular I sell products on
Amazon. Specifically Amazon FBA.

As my business is scaling up it is becoming more difficult to keep track of
what we scoured for product in the field and the costs associated with it.
Tracking COGS and the sources to monitor and report would be great.

The software would need to be something mobile so I can put in the costs,
source of product and expected profits. It would also need to be linked to
Amazon.

Yes I would pay for this software.

Theirs:

I sell vinyl records on eBay, Amazon, Discogs, and Etsy.

I find it time-consuming to list products on each of these different sites.

Software that facilitated the listing and cross-listing of products would save
me time and make me more money because I have far too much product on hand and
not enough time to list it. Ideally the software could automatically pull info
from one listing on one site and populate the other sites for me.

I would pay a monthly service fee for this.

~~~
mod
It sounds like every thread I've read here on HN about how to get ideas for a
startup. It's textbook patio11 or similar.

Since we don't know who you're talking to, they introduce their industry. They
name their problem. They guess at what a solution might do. And "will you pay
for this" is product validation 101.

I could see having a longer template, but if you want the barebones edition, I
don't see how you could come up with anything else.

I don't think you've got something novel--I think you learned it through
repetition, here on HN.

------
miguelrochefort
This is ridiculous.

When your target demographic is composed of people desperate for startup
ideas, you should _expect_ this to happen.

There is no shortage of ideas. Those who succeed at this game already have
more ideas than they have ambition. Those who would use a service like yours
are not likely to succeed.

------
joeax
If someone "steals" your startup idea, it is probably a good idea to begin
with. I'd be ecstatic that the idea has been validated.

Over the years I've met developers and others who've talked about how they
have a great idea, but then they Googled their idea and someone is already
doing it. My response is always "so". Either analyze the deficiencies in their
product and do it better, or find a new twist or angle to a concept that has
never been tried.

------
AznHisoka
Nobody stole anything. There is no secret sauce here. Just something that
could easily be reproduced in a weekend.

------
jrs235
Cory will get to post "How a competitor blindly thinking I was evil and trying
to smear me helped my startup take off!"

Anyways, while the tone and content of this specific blog post is questionable
and sub-par, I find many of Justin's other blog posts to be interesting.

Don't worry Justin, you'll be able to write a post after Cory does titled:
"How I mistakenly accused a competitor of being evil led to market validation
that ended up helping us both!"

------
rudolf0
"Stole" seems like a big stretch. It seems just as likely he's had this idea
for a while, and registered just to check out his soon-to-be competition.

~~~
jv22222
Don't you think it's a bit unlikely that the wording of the opportunity would
be exactly the same unless he had used my mechanical turk hit process?

Seems unlikely that could happen in the scenario you describe.

~~~
rudolf0
That's true, the MTurk questions he asked are very similar.

It could maybe be coincidental, since that's basically the default things
you'd ask someone when trying to understand pain points and product ideas, but
I do see your point since it seems like it's the same 4 questions.

~~~
jv22222
For comparison:

Mine:

I work in the eCommerce/re-seller business. In particular I sell products on
Amazon. Specifically Amazon FBA.

As my business is scaling up it is becoming more difficult to keep track of
what we scoured for product in the field and the costs associated with it.
Tracking COGS and the sources to monitor and report would be great.

The software would need to be something mobile so I can put in the costs,
source of product and expected profits. It would also need to be linked to
Amazon.

Yes I would pay for this software.

Theirs:

I sell vinyl records on eBay, Amazon, Discogs, and Etsy.

I find it time-consuming to list products on each of these different sites.

Software that facilitated the listing and cross-listing of products would save
me time and make me more money because I have far too much product on hand and
not enough time to list it. Ideally the software could automatically pull info
from one listing on one site and populate the other sites for me.

I would pay a monthly service fee for this.

~~~
misterhtmlcss
It's also possible he had the a related idea, saw yours, felt that it
validated his thinking, then mostly stole your content and personalized it to
himself.... however who knows what he'll do next. He could have done all those
things just to get started because it was easier, now he could end up tweaking
and refining it over the next month or so into something that may not even
closely resemble your vision any more.

I've literally ripped a the summary i found from someone else's LinkedIn
summary, tweaked (personalized for moi) it, published it because it was way
better than mine and then over the ensuing week tweaked it again and again to
the point that it didn't even resemble the original in any way. It just
provided the foundation for moving in my own direction. Essentially i used
that person's inspiration and came up with my own totally unique
interpretation.

This guy could be doing that too. Good link bait though. Not classy, but good
for sure.

------
ziikutv
You basically violated his privacy, talking about when he signed up etc.

I wonder if this was an attempt at virtue signaling (by making yourself seem
untouched by him copying) or calling someone out; kind of pretentious.

You even tries to have another jab by asking him about his email procedure;
trying to make him look bad.

Edit: I just wanted to point this out as an example of how much of CJ this
community is. Everyone touts the same principles, but rarely follow them.
Simply reading PG's essays is not enough.

Regardless, thanks for the read.

------
flippyhead
I've been in this situation myself and this as mature response. Still, it's
hard to square using the word "stole" with the sentiments in the article.

------
the-dude
Your idea was not stolen, you still have it.

He might have copied it, but you can't be sure.

~~~
the-dude
Oh, and publicising user-activity data about a specific user?

No Nugget for me ever.

~~~
the-dude
[https://nugget.one/privacy](https://nugget.one/privacy)

Right.

~~~
haldean
> We may release personal information when we believe in good faith that
> release is necessary to comply with a law; to enforce or apply our Terms of
> Use and other policies; or to protect the rights, property, or safety of
> Nugget, our employees, our users, or others.

@jv22222: in your opinion, does this blog post fall under any of these
categories? And if not, why bother having a privacy policy at all?

~~~
poikniok
Is it possible to take legal action against Nugget in this situation?

------
buildly
IMO it's certainly a neat story; "I signed up looking for inspiration." Boom!
Success; inspiration acquired!

------
tetek
Is 4 questions really your business value?

------
uladzislau
Now I'm expecting 5 more startups based on the same idea because it looks like
a market with very low barrier to entry and based on OP reaction quite
significant ROI.

------
asadkn
The lesson here seems to not publicly share your trade secrets if the barrier
to entry in the market are too low. Even if the idea is out there, holding off
on behind-the-scenes execution details is a good idea.

While most people have enough ego and morals to do their own thing, there are
many out there looking for easy ideas and methods to imitate. They like to
call it inspiration which is a self-serving label to an otherwise immoral
action.

------
no1youknowz
I haven't seen this answered, I genuinely want to know where the line is.

Lets say there is competitor A, they have a SaaS application.

Developer looks at that and says, "that can be done in a weekend".

So he does it.

Scenario 1. He uses the same HTML, CSS and jQuery to base his application on.
His SaaS application behaves exactly as theirs. His backend code is unique to
him.

Scenario 2. He uses unique HTML, CSS and jQuery to base his application, but
it looks the exact same. His SaaS application behaves exactly as theirs. His
backend code is unique to him.

Scenario 3. He uses unique HTML, CSS and jQuery to base his application,
unique to him. His SaaS application behaves in a unique way but achieves the
same result as theirs. His backend code is unique to him.

Under which scenario will he get sued and which scenario is he untouchable?

I was watching Dragons Den CA and Michelle Romanow said that "Copying was ok".

Where is the line, which scenario can the Competitor claim copyright to their
works?

Has anyone faced this situation?

Thanks

~~~
louisswiss
In all three scenarios you can be sued. Whether it sticks or not is a
different matter and depends on a lot of different things.

~~~
no1youknowz
What type of things exactly?

Edit.

I find it interesting you say all 3 scenarios when the 3rd one is all unique
code.

For example. If we look at behavioral marketing.

mouseflow hotjar navilytics fullstory crazyegg

\+ im sure there is more.

What you are saying, is that any of these guys could sue each other? For what,
copying the same idea and executing it?

~~~
louisswiss
IANAL but imo copying an idea isn't enough for anything to stick in court (as
if it would get that far).

------
andy_ppp
I've never had a problem coming up with interesting ideas!

It's actually launching something that's the most difficult problem; a startup
helping with that could work, anyone know of one?

~~~
RepressedEmu
I'm working on a service called Protolaunch that does exactly that. You get
help finding your ideal customers, a custom landing page optimized for
conversions, and a digital marketing strategy to promote your brand and grow
your email list of future customers. Getting market feedback and validation
has always been the single best motivation to finish an MVP or business
project for me personally and Protolaunch aims to make it a one step "pre-
launch" process.

I'd love to get your thoughts and feedback!

~~~
fenwick67
Somebody needs to make an automated workflow that just takes ideas from
Nugget, forwards them to Protolaunch to pick the best ideas.

Then, it could just procedurally generate a company name and logo (lowercase
white letter on a rounded rectangle), reserve the domain name, file the FTC
paperwork, and send automated emails to venture capitalists. Then just watch
the money roll in.

~~~
RepressedEmu
Nugget > Protolaunch > LogoJoy > Namecheap API > Sendgrid powered with emails
scraped from AngelList.

Throw in a startup buzzword lorem ipsum generator and this sounds like a
winner. Instead of domain squatting it will be like startup squatting.

------
ninjabeans
He sources startup ideas from Mechanical Turk?

------
mathgenius
I'm having a hard time understanding how a bunch of mechanical turkers could
come up with SaaS ideas.

"I am finance officer for a startup ..." How is a finance officer for a
startup going to end up on mturk doing HITs? What am I missing...

------
andy_ppp
Okay here is a startup idea; I'll do office hours with you (via Skype or in
person if you are in London) once per week to keep you honest, in exchange I
ask that you do the same. My email is in my profile, feel free to say Hi!

------
amelius
In my ideal world, it wouldn't matter what ideas companies have. All that
matters is the "needs" of customers, and they would publish them so companies
can build products/services to satisfy them.

~~~
EveSmith
| _In my ideal world, it wouldn 't matter what ideas companies have. All that
matters is the "needs" of customers_

your "ideal world" is actually (surprisingly) the world of _free market
capitalism_.

You see, most "free market" "private sector" types base their views on
microeconomics, "let the market decide" what "the market clearing price" is,
there will be no shortages, price gouging is a signal to competitors and new
market entrants...

But they forget that microeconomic theory is entirely based on some
assumptions and axioms, one of which is "perfect (symmetric) information",
buyers, sellers, competitors, and investors are assumed to all share the same
information, no secrets, and without that openness, the market will never find
the market clearing price.

 _creating wealth is not the raison d 'etre of free market capitalism; cheap
and abundant goods and services for consumers is_

~~~
amelius
> your "ideal world" is actually (surprisingly) the world of free market
> capitalism

I don't think this is true. In this world, companies keep business ideas for
themselves, so they can try to be first to market, which is more important
than almost anything else (even to a large extent product quality). On the
other hand, potential customers don't ever publish their needs, they just
don't seem to know what they want until somebody tells it to them.

------
kamalkishor1991
Site is not working "Error establishing a database connection"

~~~
cube00
[http://web.archive.org/web/20170215162826/https://blog.nugge...](http://web.archive.org/web/20170215162826/https://blog.nugget.one/upstart/someone-
stole-my-startup-idea-and-why-it-doesnt-matter/)

