April 30th, 2010 
offermatic 
“Good artists copy, great artists steal” – Steve Jobs
“We have always been shameless about stealing great ideas” – Steve Jobs
I just did a google search for “Groupon clones” and got 701,000 results. It’s attack of the clones indeed. Of course, it’s expected that when a company such as Groupon crushes it the way they have that there will be copycats – and lots of them. That how it’s always been, and the low barriers to entry to get into the game with a web startup will only accelerate the cloning.
What’s most surprising is how these so called “entrepreneurs” are cloning Groupon’s product and business model without a shred of creativity or innovation. It’s almost as if they don’t want to ‘taint’ a pure and pristine formula. That’s simply weak thinking.
Just like in most markets in the online world, the top few players will become significant in terms of scale, impact, and value created – but the vast majority fight for breadcrumbs as they head into the sunset reading Teddy Roosevelt’s famous ‘man in the arena‘ quote while trying to figure out how they were left in the dust.
Any seasoned entrepreneur will tell you that “copying” is part of the game to some extent. They’ll also tell you it’s not the whole game. Embedded in any true innovation is a healthy portion of leveraging, borrowing, copying, and learning from others that have come before. It’s part of minimizing risk, which is logical and pragmatic. They key is to take those great ideas and learnings, and leverage them to produce something that creates or unlocks even more value.
Just ask Steve Jobs. Those quotes above that are always thrown about as sound bites can be misleading. When he talks about stealing ideas, he goes on to say, “Take the best things that humans have done, and try to bring them in to what you are doing”.
Which presupposes having an original idea or two yourself…
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As the founder of a company (DailyWorth.com) that’s very much a clone (DailyCandy.com) with some minor adaptations (emphasis on daily feedback and Q&A – still very 1.0 but we did get north of 100 comments on a post last week) – I don’t think “a shred of innovation or creativity” is a question you can ask without looking at the specific business in context. So many people have asked me: Why aren’t you more than an email? Shouldn’t you be developing tools? And my thoughts are: the model works. I’m simply executing in an under-served market (woman and finance) and I have to say, doing exceptionally well at it with 22,000 subs and growing. I do think about innovations but not for the sake of innovation alone, but in the context of 1) what my customers are asking for and 2) ** and this is the big one > make sure that it’s not a distraction from building a solid foundation on a business model that I know works.
Great post. Agree that there are way too many groupon clones…really kinda crazy!
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