
Startup Copycats: You’re Doing it Wrong. - tomh
http://thenextweb.com/entrepreneur/2012/06/05/startup-copycats-youre-doing-it-wrong/
======
kgtm
TL;DR: Copy startups that have a significant barrier to entry in a country
where you are familiar with ways to overcome said barrier. Use your knowledge
of local regulations and how to maneuver them in your advantage. In general:
aim to be a country-scoped Stripe versus a country-scoped Pinterest or
Twitter.

My take (only slightly off-topic): While I emphatically agree with the author
on the types of startup one should aim to clone locally, I see little
discussion regarding the inherent difficulties of even starting _any kind_ of
business in many countries. Mandatory _expensive_ social insurance, high
company formation costs, bureaucracy, all make bootstrapping prohibitive. In
other words, maybe the problem isn't getting inspiration for the proper kind
of startup to clone; it's finding a way to get the ball rolling.

~~~
tluyben2
Yeah for a startup that is kind of true; it depends a bit on what it is, but
generally 'doing a startup' is costly. I wouldn't say those mandatory social
insurance and other things are very different in different countries
(depending on your bootstrapping wallet size). However if you don't go for
those typical growths of startups and you just want a few million $ in the end
(I guess, according to Wikipedia, that's not a startup), it is not so hard to
bootstrap and build + make a good living. I don't particularly need rocket
ship money.

As an example; my wife and I started a dating site in one EU country (which
was crowded with dating sites) for (in the beginning) around $150/month
hosting and 'free' programming (I spent a few weeks on it in my spare time).
We spent $250 on marketing and after around 6 months it made more than I made
from my other company with almost no work (30-60 min/day). Sold it for very
nice money (no mortgage); did a few of those kind of things and invested
(part) of the money in 'bigger' things with actually employees. I often like
that of model a lot better than stories on HN; simply reasoned; there are only
a few Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest like companies; the chance that your
millions $ VC company makes it is not that large. It's make or break otherwise
the VC multiplier is not large enough.

I think to bootstrap, depending on your company, you need the right group of
people and the idea depends on those people. If your wife happens to know
_all_ the press in your country, it's far easier to bootstrap a number of
companies than when you have to hire PR companies. It's your job as
entrepreneur to gather people around you who will help you.

So while I agree with your ; for a typical startup you need a lot of resources
to get off the ground, but for any kind of business; nah. It depends on your
dreams, but if you just want to supplement or replace your income (or work
more or less), it's not that hard.

~~~
wiradikusuma
how did you make money from your dating site if the market is very crowded
with competing service and most of them available for free?

~~~
tluyben2
The rest was worse at marketing and monetization. So you have the huge players
(with millions marketing money) and far after that the old ones which were
dying anyway and then us and then the 1000s of sites who couldn't manage over
a 1000 members (in total, not per month even). And ours was free as well, we
had good free marketing and managed to monetize more than the other free ones.

------
DarkShikari
There's still a lot of cases where it's very hard for even a consumer-facing
US-based web startup to get traction in another country, for language and
cultural reasons. Japan is a particularly notable case; it's often said that
companies without an office in Japan never succeed there. Some examples:

 _Pixiv_ vs. DeviantArt

 _Mixi_ vs. Facebook

 _Nico Nico Douga_ vs. Youtube

China is an even more extreme case, though that also has problems of
corruption, legal wrangling, censorship, and so on.

~~~
wahnfrieden
Facebook began gaining more traction in Japan once they setup a special office
in Tokyo and let them make tweaks to the product only for the Japanese market
- AFAIK, this was a unique case for them at the time, and they didn't do
anything besides basic localization (which they crowdsourced...) for other
nations. One of the things they did to show that they understood Japanese
culture was to add a blood-type field to user profiles, a superstitious
statistic that's nevertheless prevalent there. Before that, it felt too
foreign.

Anecdotal but I've had many more of my Japanese and Korean friends abroad join
Facebook in the last year or two.

~~~
harisenbon
I agree that those helped, but when the people around me started using
facebook was right around the time "Social Network" came out in Japan.

I used to be on Mixi, and I and most people I know have pretty much stopped
using it. When they started tying in their services to other APIs like
Twitter, etc, I think is when they really jumped the shark.

(Also, Mixi is not really a Facebook clone, per say, as they both launched in
the same month. I would say they were just another SNS that was more geared
towards the Japanese market)

------
xmmx
I disagree. Sure, they're the bigger name HERE in the US, but when you clone a
startup that hasn't moved overseas yet, the clone becomes the bigger name,
e.g. Renren, the facebook clone. Facebook is available in china, but I don't
see them gaining "100% of the user market". A clone that gets traction early
on can dominate the market.

~~~
culturestate
> Facebook is available in china, but I don't see them gaining "100% of the
> user market".

Facebook is Public Enemy #1a (Twitter is 1b) to the Chinese government. It's
only available via a VPN, and VPN is an _expensive_ proposition to most
Chinese - having one means effectively doubling your internet bill. Most
Chinese know Facebook, just like they know Twitter and YouTube. They just
aren't willing to jump through the hoops required to use them over renren,
weibo, or youku.

A much better example of your point (sticking with China) would be tencent
(QQ) - they cloned ICQ and are now a massive company WITHOUT protection from
the government.

~~~
dawson
I can see FB [eventually] negotiating its way into China and succeeding as the
dominant social network, Twitter on the other hand, I think Sina Weibo has won
that space, imo.

~~~
culturestate
For that, Facebook will have to give in to a surveillance backdoor and respond
to realtime censorship demands. I just can't see them going there.

------
wfrick
The advice about cloning a regulated startup is wise in that meeting a certain
set of regulatory requirements can be a great differentiator. That said, the
specific experience, network, and skill set required by a team to crack a
particularly regulatory regime is if anything tougher to assemble than to
crack a particular technical problem.

~~~
wfrick
*particular

