

How Foursquare bought my domain to steal my idea - davidbarker
https://medium.com/p/984261e3df7c

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zaidf
The irony in this whole thing is that people like the OP are precisely why
NDAs should not be signed. When you are a company like foursquare, ideas like
swarm arise naturally from product evolution.

Sure, you may have had the same idea 4 years ago but 4 years ago, it could
have been a terrible idea. This brings me to my second point: OP is highly
underestimating the importance of timing. It's akin to someone telling you
everyday that you need to get treated for cancer; and then years later when
you do get cancer, claiming he was right all along.

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dnlserrano
I was going to back @yid on his comment, but then I saw the "First batch of
app designs are complete"... OMG, this is a complete rip-off.

How can we be sure it was you who designed those mockups? Sorry, but it just
seems unbelievably strange that a company like Foursquare would act in this
way.

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hashtag
A few thoughts...

1\. As yid said, it appears that this has been a half-hearted attempt, or
certainly looks that way from an outside perspective. It should not have taken
you 4 years to execute this idea, and even then, it doesn't appear to have
been launched even now.

2\. Execution is what matters at the end of the day.

Those things said, I do genuinely sympathize. It sucks when someone takes your
idea and steals it. Worse if you know that person. But it won't be the thing
that hinders you from success.

Now, with all of that out of the way, its insane how similar the logo and
mockups are on your site is to theirs. Its almost blatantly stealing assets
and beyond if true, not just an idea. That is incredibly bad.

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yid
I'm sure you're hurting and upset, and I do sympathize, but I don't think you
have a leg to stand on. At multiple junctures, you sold assets related to your
app, which suggests to me that it was a half-hearted effort, even though you
had a coming soon page. There are no unwritten codes in business; only written
ones, and sometimes a bigger dog comes in and steals the show.

~~~
trevelyan
Baffles me he is surprised that the buyer of his domain would be building a
swarming app.

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duked
Anyone know which font was used to design the Swarm text that appears on the
iphone screen here:
[http://seantaylor.co/websites/swarmapp/old/](http://seantaylor.co/websites/swarmapp/old/)
?

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lazylizard
hey, at least swarmly shipped it
already..[http://techcrunch.com/2014/05/02/foursquare-swarms-over-
swar...](http://techcrunch.com/2014/05/02/foursquare-swarms-over-swarmly/)

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calcsam
I've begun to notice that if someone is complaining that another company stole
their idea, they're usually nontechnical -- business, design, etc.

