Hacker News Reader

"I just will feel guilty about screwing over another startup"

I like your confidence. Just by copying their idea, you think you will be able to screw their startup? Think again. It may not be as easy it might appear to you.

But again, should you copy the idea or do it better ? Sure, hell yea. Why not ? Most ideas are anyway a derivative of some other idea.

Stop worrying about this. Go build your stuff and ship it.

View on HN

When a startup gets cloned, the thing is that it is never just one clone, its is one hundred of them. If this startup is so lucrative and easy to copy, put your game face on the one hundred other competitors... As its your friend, you can work on his defense strategy or your offense strategy.

Copying and doing better isn't as easy as it looks, and has already been mentioned, this is exactly where competitors come from. There's nothing wrong with copying and improving an idea as long as you don't steal anything proprietary (obviously).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com