The Copycats at Hacker News

My observations are as follows:

1) No clones have caused my business to fail.

2) It is effing hard to convince people to rip off good ideas which require non-trivial work or savvy. Heck, it's highly nontrivial to get them to "rip off" those ideas when they pay five figures to have me write them down in a strategy document or build the prototype myself and hand them the working source code.

I mean, take A/B testing. I have said "A/B testing prints money" so many times that some people are tired of hearing about it. Empirically, most of my clients, many of whom have read my blog for years, do not A/B test before I work with them. I talk to a lot of startups, some of whom are highly regarded. Very few A/B test as a regular thing. The savviest guy who cloned me doesn't bother A/B testing, either.

Please, good HN readers, "steal" that idea from me (or any of the numerous other people you could steal it from, because I certainly stole it myself). The last company I successfully convinced to actually do it NDAed me vis-a-vis the impact. Let me hum a few bars: they offered to hire me at a quant's salary to do it full-time. (Cheapskates.)

And yet when we check back on who A/B tests here in February 2013, do you know what we're going to see? A few articles about it, with wise comments like "A/B testing can only get you to a local maxima" and "Didn't we read an article just like this on Smashing Magazine in 2006?", and fairly few companies who actually have someone do it every week, even among the savvier folks.

P.S. Would love to be wrong about that.

I remember when hn-books.com launched, and I vaguely remember some of the clones. None of them are that great. They all suffer from the same issues I've had with other "organize your books" types of sites, with crappy UIs and generally poor categorization and filtering. (What's JQuery in Action doing in the FP section of hn-books? Where's Appel's compiler books in the compiler section, and why isn't Lisp in Small Pieces there? etc... the site that was announced in the Show HN post above suffers from the same issues)

I point out these flaws not to pick on DanielBMarkham's work, because it's a decent site and I hope it's a success. But my point is, bring on the copycats! If no one "copied" anyone else we'd be stuck with an awful lot of shitty first attempts at things. I know this post was about these kinds of web businesses, but in general think where we'd be without copies.

By all means, don't publish the recipe to your secret sauce, and don't do it while you're still brewing it. But don't get pissy about these supposed hordes of copycat programmers just waiting in the wings of HN.

We hacked on it for about 2 weeks between classes. During that time, someone wrote a beautified version of Who's Hiring with regex search. By the time we posted it, there were several comments on the thread to the effect of 'I was actually writing this'.

A similar situation took place in the last few weeks with Bootstrap theme-ing websites. For each posted, there were a slew of 'No way! I've been working on this too - see here'.

I don't necessarily think it's a matter of people copycating, per se. There is a certain amount of emulation that can be seen. Consider when Path created a unique menu that gained some attention on here. Within a week, numerous JS clones were released. A week later, CSS3 complete clones started rolling out.

Overall, I think the story here is that you've got 100,000 users browsing HN. Many of whom have similar skillsets and 'scratch your own itch' engrained in their personalities. The result is often an almost autonomous convergence on a few good ideas. I think this can be attributed to a sort of pidgeon hole principle of code hungry hackers and a few obvious but good ideas.

This practice itself isn't really new. If you look at mathematics alone, you'll find many things with multiple names or a concatenation of names. This is usually because n people happened to all be working on it at the same time without knowledge of each others advances. Sometimes ideas just seem to be 'in the air' at a given point in time.

So you set up your easel and get out your paints in front of a nice-looking house and start to puzzle over how to start. Suddenly 500 other people all arrive -- some of them who actually know how to paint -- and set up all around you. Not only is it annoying, it's also distracting. And it can lead to a kind of herd mentality where everything is attempted, but nothing is really tried.

This is called "competition" - you will find it everywhere you go. Is it "annoying" and "distracting" that you are not the only one thinking about or working on something? Maybe. But it will never happen that way in life. And even if you are the only one and you finish your work, as soon as it's out and someone sees it, they will copy you.

The way that you deal with competition is to be better than everyone else - not seek a place where there's no competition. The approach this guy advocates and the way he complains about competition is not the way to approach problems. If someone shows up at the house who actually knows how to paint and you don't, it's time to bow out - you just lost. Practice up and come back next time knowing how to paint.

You wouldn't openly discuss a "oh my god I've just stumbled across x from Ycorp" tip on the trading floor tea room now, would you?

That aside, I do agree it adds an unnecessary level of pressure. You know, the thing is too, theres plenty more spaces out there.

Sharing your ideas in many cases I think is a bad idea. With all due respect to Patrick, who has commented elsewhere on this thread, one data point from the niche of Bingo Card Creators (old people referring by word of mouth?) doesn't match up with the high level of clones I see on HN every month.

And if a copycat has more stamina than you do then maybe you picked the wrong business. Really, don't worry about people copying you, take it for what it is: flattery.

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The thing I find most interesting about Ping Pong is that you can often win without doing anything fancy or aggressive. A lot of players think the way to win is to slam the ball really hard. The problem with this strategy is that a slam is a high-risk/high-reward shot. If you do it right, you almost certainly score a point when your opponent fails to return the ball. If you do it wrong, you give your opponent a point.

Modesty aside, I consider myself a "pretty good" Ping Pong player. I can slam the ball when necessary, but I hardly ever do. I can beat most other players by simply returning every shot with a little backspin. Hitting the ball hard simply isn't necessary. All I need to do is wait for the other player to make 21 mistakes.

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So even if you have competitors if you execute in a better fashion than they do, and don't f--- up, you can still be the most successful business.

When you see a clone of hn-books or bingo card creator or some other idea, you're assuming the motivation for it is profit, and you're assuming the goal is to create a business.

Your assumptions may often be correct, in fact, your assumptions may be correct in the majority of cases, but unfortunately, they are not always correct. You are too focused on "work," "effort," "skill," "business," and "profit" to see the less obvious and more idealistic side of things.

The less obvious side is, fun.

The greatest hackers I've known just love coding. They do it for fun. Many are obsessive enough to use a pedal bike to power their CVS/GIT server if that was the only way to keep it running. The challenge, problem, or idea is mostly irrelevant. Though nearly everyone enjoys having their accomplishments recognized by others, it's not a competition for attention, recognition, profits, or anything else.

Great hackers often have the luxury of waking up, getting a cup of coffee, and scratching whatever itch suits their current fancy. All programmers suffer from the planning fallacy, or more accurately, an over-abundance of optimism. When they see a challenge, their only reaction is, "I can do that!" regardless if there is any realistic truth in their statement. --HN is filled with interesting challenges.

The thing is, the fun is in trying. Whether or not they "succeed" or "fail" matters very little since all the fun is had in just trying. It's also fun to watch other people try, and learn from the lessons they have learned through trying. Programming is not a spectator sport, but learning from the efforts of others is as close as we'll get without actually writing some code of our own, and possibly contributing it back to those we've been watching.

I suspect at least some portion of the clones are merely people who said, "I can do that!" and for fun, gave it a try. The idea of sincerely competing in a business sense never crossed their minds as they fired up their favorite text editor and started having some fun.

If the challenge that I found interesting and fun today was writing an ebook on being a ScrumMaster, I'd enjoy my attempt at writing one. We both know my results would undoubtedly suck compared to yours, but it would still be fun for me, even though the result would still be yet another bit of competition for you.

The above was a poor example, but I wanted to point out how the "fun for me" can also be "harmful for you," even when no harm is intended. It's quite similar to people who drive too fast, or in the opinion of law enforcement, drive faster than allowed or faster than is safe. Some of the "fun" people have is inconsiderate and harmful.

Does anbody know what he is referring to? Does he simply mean instapaper, readability and the likes, or are there some other interesting solutions out there?

Basically, software people like writing software, but often don't have a project that really excites them. Reading about something on HN gives them the inspiration to take that idea and implement it themselves.

So yes, if you're making a weekend project that is nothing special and don't want anyone to use, don't talk about it here because someone else will reimplement it. But if you look at complicated things that make money, like Flickr or YouTube, you don't see a lot of people cloning those because it's not as easy.

But if you - in an afternoon or a long weekend - create a web site as a small project, expect a lot of people to do that too. Some do it for fun, and some may actually be serious about competing with you. But if you have passion for it, and they don't, it won't matter.

I look at the stuff Patrick does (BCC), and it looks kinda hard to really copy. He's open about his processes, challenges, and all the work he put into it (particularly marketing and generating repeat business). I may be bold enough to say it's easy to copy the technology and hard to copy the business.

But, sometimes I just let it all hang out because I know that there's no possible chance for someone to copy my efforts.

The few businesses that are easily copied are usually short term projects because sooner or later everyone finds out the secret. The best projects I've done are the ones where I'm going full open kimono because there's something about my personal network, skill set or etc that gives me an inherent advantage over everyone else.

Best examples are my personal connections to marketing firms and my professional licenses.

We realized that product B would not be a good seller and did not invest any money in it. However, the competing company somehow finds out about the plans and invested a lot of money to get product B out the door before we could (even though we had let the idea fall to the side).

They lost a lot of money and it helped us gain additional market share with the original product A.

Note: I only had a small part in this company but makes it easier to write the story with "We".

(I'm not actually working on one. Really. _looks at watch_)

I would say this is correct IF you have a mailing list to peddle this 'product' to; a lot of internet millionaires are working exactly like that. They create some crappy product and get their list to buy and sell it.

Daniel, you shouldn't even be worried about the copycats; they're not your true audience. Those 500 people who show up to paint the same house as you? They're not your true disciples. They'll play around getting paint on themselves for a week tops and then move on to the next shiny thing. The 3-4 who stay? THOSE are your disciples.

So go ahead. Shout from the rooftops. Share your ideas. The copycats will slavishly praise the good advice, will implement it poorly, and then move on. And the 2-3 people who actually understand you, take your advice to heart, and with diligence and patience implement it will love you forever.

Ideas are not the only diamonds in the rough; people are as well, and only diamonds can recognize diamonds. Don't bemoan by the vastness of the rough. Celebrate the rare diamonds you find instead.

All ideas are stupid until proven successful. By then, copying is too late.

* On copycats: When I release something on HN I get a couple tweets or private emails where the sender basically tells me "hey, I'm going to copy your idea/site/layout/whatever. Just thought you should know." Which is fine because I don't think anything I've done is uniquely original. It is a little weird though to get a heads-up each time.

* I am incredibly candid in my communications about my projects ("startups"). I enjoy the transparency. It makes for a good learning experience, both for others and myself. Lately I've been extra-transparent, though I'm starting to get a feel for when it's time to reel it in.

So, thanks for this -- it really made me sit and think about how I should take care not to divulge something that is key, even if it seems obvious to me. Others might not have found it so obvious or would not have pursued it if they hadn't been handed the answers.

The problem then becomes that some ideas might not turn a profit fast enough.

The solution to that is to use the fake landing page method or the kickstart/indiegogo to have the market decide for you what to build.