
Why would your project be hard for someone else to duplicate? - npk

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kyro
Initially, I thought the question was referring to a project on strictly
technical terms. After thinking, I soon realized that it's not all about
technicalities and complexity in code, rather it can be taken as why would the
atmosphere, communities, ease of use, value, services, etc. that your project
will create be difficult to duplicate by competitors.

Surely, big companies such as Google, etc., can probably code any given
project in fractions of a time less than the time say a couple hackers can
complete it in, but I believe it's the environment and quality of service that
you provide that differentiates one project from a duplicate.

At least that's how I interpreted it.

~~~
npk
Kyro - what you're saying makes a lot of sense, but you're working under
different assumptions than I. Sppose you chose random groupings from the set
of all YC funded founders, and give them a random idea from set of all initial
ideas, the resulting companies might be different, but the ratio of successes
will stay the same. (Assume everyone is equally good friends, etc.)

The launched YC companies all built the company, including all the
"atmosphere, communities, ease of use, value, services, etc." in three months
or so. Again, any random pairing of YC funded founders could have done this.
For example, I don't think any random pair of founders could run a successful
MEMS foundry, which requires specific knowledge.

So, now, I read the question as what's different about the _founders_ and not,
the _company._

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ralph
It wouldn't. But many people prefer to think up something new rather than
compete with someone who's already in the market. And the others tend to be
dissatisfied with an existing product and therefore implement an improvement
on it rather than simply clone.

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npk
I'm thinking about the YC question, "why would your project be hard for
someone else to duplicate? My partner and I could duplicate any given YC
company, feature-for-feature, quickly. So, to first order, the answer to this
question is, "It's not hard."

But just duplicating can't be the real worry here. Is the underlying question,
"Why won't your competitors quickly duplicate what you're building?"

~~~
amichail
It's hard to get users, particularly if you are not the first in a given area.

~~~
npk
If someone wants to copy a YC company that's m months old, a copy-cat site
could be build in ~ m months. None of the YC companies seem to have a "secret
sauce" that would take years to develop. (And I'm not saying they should.)

Since the answer to the duplication question is universally "no", why put it
on the application? What is the subtext that I am missing?

~~~
ido
What they can't easily copy from a month old YC company is the huge amount of
free publicity/contacts that comes from being a YC company.

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npk
Possible BUG? Why does this thread say n comments, and I only see n-1?

~~~
pg
Deleted spams.

~~~
ralph
I asked this question elsewhere too. Can we have a "known bugs" page that has
what you consider bugs on there together with whether you intend to fix them
or not.

I think spam posts being counted is a bug but it isn't clear if you do. A
known bugs page may answer that. Perhaps it's awkward to fix because you send
the HTML containing the count before examining each of the posts, or do you
build the whole page before sending anything?

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juwo
I was afraid of this. That is why I did not release for so long.

