Amazon announced a copycat of us pretty quickly after we went through YC. I suspect it’s not some sinister top-down thing (unless they are actually reading all YC company descriptions). Most likely, the copycats are ambitious, unoriginal PMs pitching some budget.
We facilitate subscriptions using a smart scale, and it works way better than a Dash button (Bottomless.com, YC W19). I’m actually surprised they haven’t launched yet and are taking so long.
It’s pretty wild, the hardware on their launch page is exactly like ours, only they're so slow that it’s a copy of two versions ago and hasn’t even hit the market.
I was on the team that was peripherally involved in building the Amazon Dash collection of products. The scale idea has been floating around within the company since 2015/2016. It takes long to do this at scale and a cost-effective point.
There were also other similar products that were scrapped because there was no way we could sell them at a reasonable price.
> "The scale idea has been floating around within the company since 2015/2016."
So much this.
As a former startup founder now acquired into a Top 10 valley tech company, few people understand just how many nascent projects, features and ideas a huge, successful tech company has in development. At least for our active product domains, I never saw a feature from a competitive product that we didn't already have on a list and usually in development somewhere.
When I first started, I would sometimes see a "neato" new feature publicly demoed in some competing product and bring it to the relevant PM's attention, only to be sent back a two-year-old internal video of a similar feature already working and either queued for shipping, dropped in market testing due to weak response or deferred to the "next version" queue due to resource prioritization.
Of course they’re reading the new startup descriptions. That’s the sort of market research due diligence that’s expected of any PM.
They fly in startups for presentations to get a glimpse into their inner workings, you think they aren’t taking the time to read about what everyone’s doing first?
It might not be hitting market due to lack of interest. The way I "solve" this today is to just send myself an email when I think I need to order something, then order it next time I check my email... works pretty good.
There's nothing sinister about a copycat. It just feels that way selfishly for the original creator. Capitalism works best in the long run with near perfect competition, copy cats are great for everyone except the first guy with the idea.
Hey it's me pyrrhotech, and upon some additional reflection decided that I was wrong and maybe there are some issues with copycats. Just wasn't thinking straight before.
> Capitalism works best in the long run with near perfect competition
Unfortunately someone like Amazon using their size and market power to produce copycats is the opposite of perfect competition since they can operate at a loss or at cost and starve out any newcomers.
We facilitate subscriptions using a smart scale, and it works way better than a Dash button (Bottomless.com, YC W19). I’m actually surprised they haven’t launched yet and are taking so long.
It’s pretty wild, the hardware on their launch page is exactly like ours, only they're so slow that it’s a copy of two versions ago and hasn’t even hit the market.