🪄 Copycat Startups (The Clone Factory)

Hey,

The Spells Master is back!

Welcome to the 24th issue.

Today's topics:

1. Copycat Startups (The Clone Factory)

2. A site to outsource your micro tasks

3. One recommended video on Stalking Influencers or Celebrities

/hCopycat Startups (The Clone Factory)

One sure-shot way to succeed in startups is by cloning successful startups.

Yet so few entrepreneurs do it.

Many entrepreneurs don't do it because others will shame them.

But some entrepreneurs clone billion-dollar startups.

I'm talking about The Samwer Brothers, the geniuses behind Rocket Internet.

Their idea is simple.

Clone an idea working in US or China and build it in your own country.

Its a genius idea to make lots of money fast.

The Samwer Brothers sent several emails to eBay suggesting that the company establish an online auction platform in Germany, and that they should be hired to run it.

When they didn't receive a reply, the brothers returned to Germany and, in January 1999, brought in three friends to develop their own platform, Alando.

It was a German copycat of eBay which they built it in a month.

Within 100 days of going live, eBay bought them for $43 million. In 2023, eBay's revenue was $10 billion.

They cloned a lot of fastest-growing startups like:

1. Zalando: Copycat version of eBay purchased by eBay for $43 million

2. Lazada: The Amazon of Indonesia

3. CityDeal: Groupon Clone (acquired by Groupon for $170 million only 6 months after launch)

4. StudiVZ: Facebook Clone (sold for $100 million)

Their goal was to be bought by the original startup.

They failed a few times like with AirBnB as they couldn't compete on the community aspect but won more than enough times to make up for it.

The Samwer Brothers aren’t the only ones who do it. Other entrepreneurs do it too.

Uber got cloned in India (Ola) and China (Didi) too. They launched after Uber.

Facebook was cloned in Russia and the founder launched VK. It is 10x bigger than Facebook in Russia.

Amazon sellers clone brands that are working well. Most of the time those different competing brands are often operated by a single person sitting in China.

Peleton got cloned by Echelon. Even their name is a clone.

YC companies nowadays (500 startups per batch) are often clones of big startups.

Shaan Puri wrote about this 3 years ago when YC had fewer startups per batch.

Now the startups per batch have exponentially increased.

These are the clones from the YC batch from a few years ago:

1. Fancy - goPuff (raised $850m+) for the UK.

2. Minimall - Pinduoduo for Europe

3. Sakneen - Zillow for Egypt

4. Flat - Opendoor for Mexico

5. Decentro - Plaid for India

There are days when I want US products but I can't order them because the product is often $15 and the shipping tax is $50-$100. That's just for simple wireless neckband earphones. It gets worse with heavy things like dumbbells.

Cloning in local economy is better if your country is behind innovation. Most countries are behind US and China by a massive margin when it comes to innovation.

At the end of the day, what matters is money in your bank so why worry about creating an original product? Its often not as original as you think.

Besides, cloning isn't wrong.

Either you consciously clone a startup or your subconscious stumbles upon an idea. This is "How Innovation Works" as explained by Matt Ridley in his book with the same title.

Once you learn how ideas are formed, you'll learn quickly that all ideas have a finite set of rules that can often be nailed down to a formula.

Clone and Own coined by Shaan Puri is perfect for this one.

A site to outsource your micro tasks

Micro Workers is a Crowdsourced site for Gig Workers who will do your micro tasks for very little money.

This is a perfect playground for when you want to do the boring tasks like creating new email accounts for Cold Emails.

When sending Cold Emails, you need 50-100 Gmail accounts if you want to send 2500-5000 emails per day. Doing all that boring work of creating new Gmail accounts is boring, you can outsource this to people on here.

Its very cheap. All you need to give them is an SOP.

This is even cheaper than having a VA. Most of them are for 3rd-World Countries who don't mind doing manual work.

They do everything from Transcribing to Solving Captchas and everything in between.

You can use them to rank your article on Medium as Google pushes for UGC-sites or get yourself some likes or comments on Twitter.

Outsource your boring work.

One recommended video on Stalking Influencers or Celebrities

If you want to get an influencer's attention, don't contact them via DM.

Their DMs are flooded with 100s of messages.

Try to get their email. Or better yet, get their phone number.

You can find their number very easily. This video shows you how to do that.

Use this for good.

Tweet of the day

Clone and Own but to the new startups that haven't even gained marketshare.

If you don't know the applications of AI Agents which is the 3rd AI Wave, then you can find YC Companies building for it and simply clone them.

If your SaaS becomes actually good, then find one channel that grows it to the next level.

Remember, you only need one channel to work.

Rabbit Holes

1. How to Find Customers on Reddit? - Reddit is a goldmine for marketers. Not enough people exploit Reddit to make it work for them. On Reddit, only quality content matters. Use it to your advantage.

2. The Ultimate Guide to Unbundling Reddit - Every Subreddit is a massive opportunity to sell a product too. This post describes how.

3. THE MARKETING STRATEGY OF A BESTSELLING AUTHOR - There's a lot that goes into being a Best-Selling author than writing a quality book. This blog peels back the curtain into one of the most popular books of modern era.

Startup of the day

Promotee is a startup that provides outreach on Reddit by utilizing AI.

Good thing about a startup like Promotee is it can market Promotee by using Promotee, essentially dogfooding their own product.

These are my favorite kinds of startups as the founder will know what the issue with the software is by utilizing it on a large scale by themselves.

Until next time,

Your Spells Master!

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More Startup Spells 🪄

1. Secret behind Airbnb's Billion-Dollar Empire? Spamming Craigslist (LINK)

2. Destroy competitors ranking with Blackhat SEO (LINK)

3. How Subreddits actually make money? (LINK)

Disclosure: Everything said in this post is for educational purposes only. Please follow the law. By reading this post, you accept full responsibility for your actions.