In the age of AI, it’s never been easier to copy existing products. However, competitors who are copying you forget one thing: The hard side.

Competition is great. It keeps companies on their toes, fosters innovation, and constantly challenges your product.

At Yonder, the B2B SaaS company I co-founded, we’ve seen competitors entering our domain by bluntly copying our wording, and we’ve seen competitors trying to acquire us.

Every time a competitor launches an initiative, it’s easy to get intimidated. Most of the time, you will learn from your competitors’ initiatives on LinkedIn, which often paints an incomplete and overly positive picture (those who read my articles regularly know that I deleted my LinkedIn profile).

Why do people get intimidated by competitors’ initiatives? Because in the age of AI, it’s never been easier to copy a software product. But is it really that easy? Let’s look into some examples.

Example 1: Wimdu vs. Airbnb

As described in “The Cold Start Problem” by Andrew Chen, Airbnb was challenged in its very early days by a fierce competitor named Wimdu. The Rocket Internet-backed startup mirror-copied the Airbnb product and tried to take the European market in a blitz. Assisted by 90m EUR in funding and employing questionable tactics such as posing as guests at Airbnb hosts, they grew to 400 employees at a time when Airbnb had 40 employees.

Then, something unexpected happened. Wimdu went back to zero, eventually folding its operations. Why did this happen? Although their growth numbers sounded exciting, they didn’t nurture the hard side of the market. The hard side is the most important part of a business with network effects, but also the hardest to copy and the most time-consuming to build.

Example 2: Copying the Wording

In both my previous company and at Yonder, the B2B SaaS company I co-founded, I experienced competitors copying our wording exactly.

In both cases, initial outrage was great — hey, this is ours! How do they dare to copy us?

Sleeping over it, if somebody copies your wording, that’s a compliment. It means you are on the right track. And remember the Airbnb vs. Wimdu example — even if they copy your wording, building the hard side will take more time than creating a product webpage.

Example 3: Strategic Interest

Now and then, we get acquisition interest from other companies. Some of them have a real strategic appetite for our technology, while others make the impression that they want to take our technology off the market to market their outdated technology without the competition of more advanced products.

Both types of interest are a compliment and a confirmation that you are on the right track.

Conclusion

It’s easy to get agitated by what your competitors do or don’t do. After a few years in the business, my advice is to keep calm and carry on. There is no better thing than defining a strategy and then following it. Even if this means saying no to many hypes, buzzes, and agitations.