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Comment by blackrock | Hacker News Reader

It sounds risky to build your business on top of someone else’s business.

Do you even have legal authorization to access TikTok’s data, and customer base?

For an example, PadMapper built their rental search website on top of Craigslist, a few years back. It was actually quite nice at the time. And then, Craigslist shut them down with a cease-and-desist order.

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Of course it’s a risk, but as an indie hacker making my first business, being able to build on another platform that’s blowing up has serious benefits in terms of getting traction.

I doubt they care at $2500 MRR lol

I do commend you on that. Good work getting some traction on your idea.

Is the data scraped? What is the tech stack?

Yes

Backend: TypeScript, Node, Postgres, Apollo Server, TypeORM

Frontend: TypeScript, React, Apollo Client, Razzle.js/ After.js (just for SSR)

Deployed on Heroku

More details in the link

Maybe that's why he's selling lol. That, or the fact that tiktok is working on an ad system similar to youtube, which will let the influences make money. That'll kill this.

Back in the day I had a close friend who ran something on Instagram that would scrape data, allow scheduling of posts, groups that would be automated to like your posts (non-bot accounts), etc.

They had considered selling at one point because they feared Instagram was going to shut them down with legal force. They clear nearly a million in revenue before FB legal team showed up and told them to cease and desist.

They closed shop, took their excellent profit and went on to found actual enterprise software.

TL;DR OP probably wants to sell to not have to gamble with legal coming after them as they grow.

A huge percentage of businesses are built "on top of" another business. Whether that's Uber and Lyft who are hopelessly reliant on their apps being in the Android and iOS app stores or even a retailer with their own site that relies on a credit card processor to allow them to continue taking payments.

You have to gauge the level of risk on a case by case basis.

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