HN Explorer

Ask HN: Cloning a US startup for a european country ?

41 points by al_ ↗ HN
Hi everybody, I was wondering what do you guys think about cloning a US startup for a european market ?

There is this american startup that has a great product, but there isn't any equivalent in my country ( France ). I'm thinking about cloning it because I felt in love with the product and think it could be a success in my country. Originally I didn't want to "clone" any product, but seeing this one really made me want to develop it. Anyone has done it before ? What are the different things to consider before starting such a project ? Would it be viewed as "bad" to do such a thing ?

25 comments

[ 4.7 ms ] story [ 63.3 ms ] thread
david927
It happens all the time and it's a great business model.

There have been a lot of successes with this. I'm shocked it doesn't happen more often.

There's no moral imperative saying it's "bad". In fact, quite the opposite. Just don't violate copyright.

nico
It also happens the other way around, for example with Zopa and Prosper.
shpxnvz
Just don't violate copyright.

Or trademark, or patents, for the sake of completeness.

troels
although software patents would be ok to violate.
medianama
Go for it. Just make sure you are not violating the copyright.
jkaljundi
Go for it, just do it! If it's an useful service, you'll make people in France happy. They are your customers. No reason to feel bad because the US services don't want to provide their services locally in European countries (and no, translation does not equal localization).
pkirk
I often think about that many times. But I believe the best solution is to get in touch for a collaboration.
forcer
It can work but you need to evaluate the local market and see the differences. I had a few projects were this strategy failed because the market was different and I ignored it because was so convinced it must work. Also, I have one project which I still think will work but will take time (maybe years) before it can start to be profitable as the market is not mature enough.
swombat
Please don't sign your posts. It's against the guidelines. If people want to know more about you they can click on your username.

See: http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Please don't sign comments, especially with your url. They're already signed with your username. If other users want to learn more about you, they can click on it to see your profile.

forcer
Sorry, my bad. Signature removed.
revorad
Please clone mint.com :-)
forcer
yeah..just use yoodlee and go bust in year or two like kublax did :)
al_
For this I would need an equivalent of Yodlee in France ;)
antirez
I (and a friend of mine) cloned digg/reddit (it's something like a mix between the two) about 4 years ago, as there was nothing alike in the Italian market. It worked very well and the product (called Oknotizie, http://oknotizie.virgilio.it) did a successful deal with Telecom Italia.
sgdesign
I'm french too, and currently involved in "cloning" (although there will of course be some differences) a US concept, so I just hope it's not the same one!
al_
Drop me an email, check out my profile ;)
l0stman
There's no email in your profile. You should put it in the ``about'' field, the ``email'' field is not visible to other users.
al_
Corrected. Thanks for noticing.
fbailey
Go for it, some will view it as bad but just ignore them.

Interestingly enough we thought about offering localization services for international startups, the complete set (marketing, strategy, translation, management, sales, partnerships)as a package to get started at least far enough to make the market entry for clones unviable.

Any thoughts on that?

_delirium
It's probably fine as long as you stick to mainly cloning the idea or functionality, ideally perhaps modifying or extending it to fit your understanding of the local market.

The main place people go wrong is also cloning the look-and-feel, or making the name be an obvious pun/derivative/translation of the original. Not only for legal reasons (though it matters for those too), but it can make the clone feel too derivative, like it's a generic-brand knockoff instead of a product in its own right.

gizmo
Cloning a concept is fine, but cloning the (entire) interface is not.

As with all things moral, the moment you have to ask if it is moral, guess what, it isn't!

klozetgeek
This has been in my mind too, in another european country not France.
ndc
How about contacting the original site, maybe you can become its affiliate in France?