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Comment by jedc | Hacker News Reader

Yes, they're copycats.

But those of us who live in Europe sometimes get absolutely infuriated by US-based startups who go for years ignoring potential non-US customers. I'm sure Fab.com would have eventually rolled out to Europe, but in the meantime I'm happy that someone else built a product that solves the same problem.

Sometimes this is a real regulatory problem, like anything to do with banking/payments/etc. But oftentimes it's just because businesses don't seem to like taking on the extra work/complexity of thinking internationally.

So while I don't like their pure copycat methods (down to page layouts), I think they're serving a valuable purpose in the marketplace.

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Working often with american programmers, I can tell they often have a hard time including globalization in their code. On the other side, they are usually also quite capable folks, and once they get it they apply it consequently and efficiently. But possibly the culture is not there yet at the beginning.

Still I don't get why not expanding aggressively globally, as the code base exists and the cost of delivering in additional countries should be marginal for most. Too much VC money flowing in maybe?

It's not necessarily marginal. The EU has 2.5x the population of the US but 20x the languages, address/phone formats, cultural differences/expectations, etc.

When things are changing rapidly and getting new features, localizing and testing that many locales is a large time sink.

I guess it depends on the application, but since we're discussing web app copycats here -- where do you see this monumental time sink?

I'd say l10n and i18n are handled pretty well by pretty much all major web frameworks. Extra work yes, extra testing yes, but unless you've built your app in some insanely obscure way, I can't imagine how localizing it would be more costly than acquiring a copycat competitor, 6 months later?

I believe the obstacles must be more political and operational, not technical.

1. Languages and other standards

2. Server resources to host globally

3. Legal costs to maintain compliance with all laws across borders yet still deliver the same product everywhere.

It's not trivial to globalize a business, even on the web. Look at how much trouble Google is getting into every year from various countries.

Sorry, but 1 & 2 are trivial and relatively cheap to deal with.

Legal issues can be a problem for certain services, but I see many services for which that is of absolutely no concern. Do you see any major legal issue for let's say, Quora or Stackoverflow?

Google only got into trouble after they became big enough to have a physical presence in various countries, plus they have taken up the ill-advised strategy of flipping the bird to non-US authorities.

1 can add significant time and complexity to your code trying to figure out what date format, for example, should be shown to various countries or regions. The easy solution would be to show one and provide options, but then which one do you show? Do you do geoip? Then what language are you going to put it in? Do you outsource translation, or hire a translator? How do you moderate user content on a multilingual site? Do you show local prices, and if so, how often is the conversion updated (if at all)?

There are serious logistical problems to tackle, not even counting getting it all running and bug-free for every use case in every language with ever data format possible. It's a huge setback, especially if you stand to gain nothing significant from being worldwide.

I dont agree to 1 and 2 but your third point may be the killer. As soon as payment plays a role, checking law conformance may be a pain in the ass.

In general the non-technical part is more complicated like localized user Services.

With regards to point 1, I like to remember the article on Local-sensitive Number Grouping: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2006/04/17/57748... - for me, this shows nicely how the rabbit hole, as usually, is deeper than you would think at first...

This comment shows a complete lack of understanding of what it takes to expand a service outside a given country (ie, the US). The final comment about VC money makes no sense at all.

Agreed. Copying page layouts is pretty bad, but, pre-Internet, nobody would have been upset if a company opened in San Diego that emulated another in New York.

Like you say, if they're not serving the market, then somebody else should.

I'm Italian and I live in Italy, and sometimes I see really interesting startups that (IMHO) could be successfully launched in Italy too. Sometimes I think I could be a copycat like these guys, sometimes I think I could just adapt their idea to my country market , other times I think about contacting the (tipically) US startup guys and ask them if I can help them in some way to launch here.

So, maybe it's time for a new (?) kind of job, the New Market Facilitator (or helper or.. feel free to find a better matching english term for it): a person that could be contacted to evaluate a specific market (i.e. a country), that can deal with localization, local laws etcetera.

What do you think?

PS if anyone is interested in launching their service in Italy, feel free to contact me at startup.in.italy@gmail.com (freshly made :D)

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