Ask HN: Has any startup died due to idea being copied by a big company?

There was a company called Kiko[0]. They made it into YC back in 2007 I think. They were basically building Google Calendar. After a year of work Google unveiled their Google Calendar and they had to sold their business. PG wrote about it in one of his essays[1].

[0] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/kiko#/entity

[1] http://paulgraham.com/notnot.html

It is sad to know that. Couldn't google have bought the company altogether. Also how does this compare with imvu and snapchat (the two companies I know which didn't get outright killed because big companies tried to copy their product idea and failed)

Go back a bit and you will see that corporations like Microsoft (and many others) are built on stolen ideas. Its a very long list but Lotus123 and Netscape spring to mind for me

I came across this suggestion across the internet that "nobody is interested in your idea". Hence the curiosity!

you need traction first then they become interested. "Nobody is interested in your unproven idea" should be the quote.

Snapchat (2011 - 2018). My its soul rest in peace in Instagram.

Are you predicting that snap will fail in 2018?

yes, can't do anything but let it be.

Yes.