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

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17573

by npk • 19 years ago

3 14 19 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

npk4• 19 years ago

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• 19 years ago

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

npk4• 19 years ago

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?

akkartik• 19 years ago

Related question in the YC app: "What do you understand about your business that other companies in it just don't get?"

http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=17628

npk4• 19 years ago

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

pg• 19 years ago

Deleted spams.

ralph2• 19 years ago

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?

kyro• 19 years ago

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.

npk4• 19 years ago

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.

ralph2• 19 years ago

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.

juwo2• 19 years ago

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

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

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