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Comment by reynard_le_faux | Hacker News Reader

Why? I'm European and I don't really have any strong feelings about it. Isn't this capitalism at work? I'm really having trouble seeing the issue. If laws have been broken that's one thing but fair competition is another entirely.

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In some recent posts, the founder of the german studivz (facebook copy cat) accused the Samwer brothers and other german copy cat incubator leaders of tax fraud and very bad behaviour against their employees e.g. using ~90% interns, make them work 12-14 hrs for near-no-pay, headhunt people from concurrent companies just to fire them 2 weeks later to "burn" them for "both" companies.

In the so called "management" level some people should got fired just right upfront a deal or deadline to rip their bonuses.

While I was not involved personally, I often hear and read about this and it looks to me that competing companies did/do it the exactly same way, not only the Samwers/Rocket.

That's why the "German startup industry" is broken. If you can only clone ideas, twit employees and (as someone claims) rip off dumb billionaires, this should not be a role model of entrepreneurship on HN.

You know, I see your point. Our mantra is "ideas are worthless, execution is everything". Rocket is an execution machine, and they deserve recognition for that. The problem is that because they are so successful at copying ideas and executing them in other markets, it reinforces the stereotype that this is what all European startups do. Maybe it's simply a matter of lack of confidence on the part of us Europeans, but I think a lot of people agree with me on this.

From the article they have expanded to doing this in Brazil and SE Asia now too which makes it a more interesting business.

I don't think this is true. I follow tech trends fairly closely, but I use very few of the consumer tech startups, with the exception of Spotify, which was created in Sweden. Those on HN may have this perception of the Europe startup scene, but most consumers only care about whether the product is valuable to them, not whether it is original.

Rocket Internet identified a market in the fact that American companies often ignore the European market for years.

Because of their large home market, American web startups can grow to considerable sizes before having to worry about multiple languages, multiple export rules, multiple tax systems, multiple consumer protection regimes, multiple payment systems etc. That is a huge advantage that American companies have over European startups. Rocket Internet and their like are levelling the playing field a bit.

All business ideas are to large extend inspired by others. Maybe some of the companies the Samwer brothers "cloned" were truly first in their field, but if they had taken the German market serious the Samwer brothers wouldn't have had a chance. It's their bad.

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