Andy Bromberg, CEO of Eco, details how Pebble (YC W22) copied them word for word | Hacker News Reader

Andy Bromberg, CEO of Eco, details how Pebble (YC W22) copied them word for word

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80 pointsankit21918 comments

Another YC backed fraud / theft whatever you want to call it. Quality really has gone down.

Im not a YC superfan, but I dont really see how this should reflect back badly on YC? they do hundreds of investments per year, of course there will be opportunists...

See the “Stablegains” posts from not even a week ago. Also a YC company.

Sure, but those are like 2 of ... thousands?

If I do a 1000 good things but fund logistics for 2 bank robberies I would still go to jail.

Also Dreamworld.

Why wouldn't this reflect badly on YC? If they should be credited for picking well, they should be discredited for backing plagiarists.

Glad to see he is kind of fighting back. I am tired of the startup trope that somehow, blatant theft is a form of "flattery".

Off topic, I keep coming across so many fintech startups whose product just seems to be a debit card end of the day. What is the business model here and why would I as a consumer be interested?

The card is just the gateway. All of these startups eventually expand into more profitable products later on.

As a customer, it’s just a matter of trying something modern - which should mean a better digital-first experience, but not always.

As a consumer they're hoping to interest you with better technology, usually a better mobile app experience.

The business model is to partner with a smaller bank and earn credit card like interchange income on debit card transactions due to the Durbin amendment. No other business model needed if you can get a bunch of consumers using a debit card. This applies to U.S. fintech's offering debit cards anyway. https://tanay.substack.com/p/fintech-and-regulatory-arbitrag...

I think around half of these examples are blatant theft, and half are just the most poorly-executed versions of what I would expect most founders to do.

Of course, since their goal seems to have been to copy rather than improve on Eco's idea, maybe step one of their plan was just as irredeemable as any of the other actions they've taken.

I wonder whether the plan here is to steal an idea and re-implement and hope to beat the original with better resourcing/execution/luck. Or whether the plan really was actually to just build enough of a Potemkin village to squeeze money out of VC? I'm guessing the latter.

Rocket internet has pretty solid business of course they don't copy so plainly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket_Internet

Threaded: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1528817375541350404.html

Throwaway for reasons; as a former employee of a defunct branch less bank card provider that launched on iPhone 4; who is copying who?

Overly optimistic marketing copy, super customer friendly hype about changing their world; check, check.

Enjoy riding the bandwagon others pushed down the hill, Andy. Everything old is new again.

Web devs copy and paste frameworks and config state all over. Marketing people do to. I guess when the brand is all there is because the tech stack and service have been done to death, protecting generic marketing hype is necessary.

oof, why does crypto attract the shadiest type of businessmen?

How do people do that blatant theft.

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