Copying, Executing, Building

Image credit: Vanitymom.wordpress.com

This post by Lee Jacobs really caught my attention today. It talks about clone startups who copied ideas from the US and implemented them in other countries. I urge you to give it a read.

For this case, Lee talks about Brazil and it is a familiar situation that we’re in in Asia. I shared my thoughts about a similar topic before but I thought I should expand on it a little here.

Why? Because as I dig deeper into the ever-confusing (but interesting) tech scene in Asia — China and Indonesia specifically — the more lost I sometimes feel. Many others feel the same way too. But my thought for now is that copying as a start could be a good thing. It’s not everything but it is a start for any opportunistic entrepreneur. One who identifies that a certain idea could work in a different market. What’s left (and what’s the hardest part) is of course to localize and execute things well.

The ‘idea’ is sometimes overly romanticized here in Asia, and I think that execution and teamwork aren’t that well celebrated. If we look at China, a lot of services mirror U.S. ones: Weibo vs Twitter, Whatsapp vs WeChat, eBay/Amazon vs Alibaba Group and many more. Some scoff that China copies almost everything. True… And guess who has the last laugh? Yup, the entrepreneur who doesn’t give a shit about ideas and would rather spend time executing and building. Sina Weibo, WeChat, and Alibaba Group are doing fantastically well today. The Great Firewall of China also played some part in it, but we will leave that for now.

Let’s just say that there isn’t a need to reinvent the wheel. I personally feel that there isn’t a need to be an inventor, as you can be an entrepreneur that solves problems and makes money. Your invention comes from within, and how you make things work in your own market. And that isn’t easy. As a Singapore-based startup, we’re forced to expand so we know that first-hand. It is obvious that we draw inspirations from many publications in the West who do things well, but we rely far more on execution through a solid team of entrepreneurs and go-getters. And there’s always a little luck involved as well.