When something can be copied, it is worthless. And how to make something that can't be copied.

Pretty much anything can be copied. The only moat you really have is the time it takes to build the product, which will dissuade most if it takes more than a year to build.

If your idea is copied, it probably means that there's a market for it. You can feel more confident about the idea validation part.
Still, you need to have differences with potential rivals: maybe a feature, a good community/userbase, a technological advantage, more money..
Not all is about the product itself. It sometimes comes down to the environment your product/startup is evolving in ;)

I would change that to "copied easily".

If it can be copied by the average person easily and quickly such that they have a free product they made themselves, then you have no business selling it (literally).

But copied by other competitors easily? Just make sure to differentiate yourself.

Though I'm not one to talk, since copying what I'm developing Evoke (setting up cloud infra) is quite difficult.

Though I did have this experience when I did dropshipping. Immensely oversaturated market, so had to differentiate.

I believe your argument reinforces the fact that people need to think how they can be different. Yes being copied is a good sign that other people are validating your idea, but then you might loose your differentiation point.

In this case other factors should come into play such as building a community around the brand, offering other services that require more effort to execute on, or handling extra associated problems that are still within your solution's vision.

Think how Bezos built his own supply chain, which makes it 1000x more difficult to compete directly with him. But Ali Baba, which is a similar business model but different target market, came in and innovated how the original Amazon business model could be done.

This way you can stay ahead of the market, in other words, innovation. A lot of ideas out there can be copied, and they will be copied. But the added value is what sets apart an idea that connects and grows, from one that is trying to survive based on lowering prices just to stay afloat.

Thanks for bringing up this topic, it really is a good reminder to keep innovating and adding extra value even to original ideas, just because original ideas won't stay original forever if they're not continuously tested and improved.

I disagree with this. Copycats can validate a market. Competition can provide a measuring stick. Execution is what builds value, not uniqueness.

This concept is what changed everything for me. I only sell to Agency Owners that use "GoHighLevel" for this reason. You can create custom solutions, or change offers so they are not commodities. "Selling in a vacuum" is a game changer. In 2022 I made well over 1000 affiliate and reseller sales to the community (after not making any sales for a long time). *The key is to identify what group of people you can offer the most value to, and then craft your offer so it can not be directly compared to anything else due to the specificity of who you are selling to. It's the same reason why Agency Owners tell you to find an "obscure" niche...You can, and should, do the same if you sell software or services. *Make your goal to help people succeed. That's how you win long term in the same vacuum of buyers. Thanks!

I wonder how much this premise has changed in the last decade since the write-up came out 🤔

When everyone operates on similar principles, can we really still call those principles the basis for something "un-copy-able"? It's like bildungsroman. Not about not being copied, but about standing apart on your own merits

Kevin Kelly is a brilliant Technologist. And his books changed my thinking about what technology even is. So I'm excited to see a link to his writing here on Indie Hackers. Thank you for sharing this link.

The speed of execution + distribution I think is quite important. avatarai copied astria, and the founder used his existing network (200k followers) to quickly distribute his platform to more people. Lensa was slightly late, but because they were able to use their apps and market knowledge in the appstore to acquire more users. I did try to copy avatarai, but we were 2 months too late since we tried to roll our own system.

certain qualities that cannot be copied, and that these "generatives" can be sold instead. These include things like trust, immediacy, personalization, authenticity, accessibility, embodiment, findability, and patronage

easy to build, easy to copy

Wow! Mind seriously blown! I had this problem for many years - how do you create something that hasn't already been created? In the end, I could think of nothing, and so instead I followed my passion and made my own version of something that already existed. I didn't even think about the eight generatives you described yet, several of them make up my USP, specifically and especially personalization and authenticity. Yet, I never even looked at it this way before. I now see creation and selling in a whole new way. Thanks for sharing👏

In a marketing lecture, I remember hearing a lecturer say something similar. In discussing how to stand out from the crowd, authenticity was mentioned. Even though I recall thinking it was a fantastic talk about https://apkcounty.com/, I seem to have forgotten about it. So I will bookmark this in case I forget it again.

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I remember being told something similar by a professor once. It was part of a marketing lecture I think. How do you stand out from the crowd, and I know authenticity came up and maybe some of the others. I remember thinking it was a great lecture but it goes to show how easy we forget things. Thanks for reminding me. I'll bookmark this so I don't forget again.