TLDR:
- Just like the Samwer brother, see what’s clearly working and introduce it to markets where it doesn’t exist
Leeching your way into millions parasitically
The best way to steal a successful startup idea is to introduce it to countries where it is not available. The chances for success are higher in the case of third-world countries, where most major startup ideas are almost never even talked about.
And if your home country happens to be third world, you’ve hit the jackpot.
To steal a successful startup idea and introduce it to other shores is essentially a parasitic relationship, one the Samwer brothers from Germany had with American startups.
In 1998, Marc, Olivier, and Alexander saw the rise in the popularity of eBay, and the thought of having a German iteration crossed their mind.
They pitched the idea to the then-eBay executives, who rejected it. However, the following year, they launched Alando, and in a twist of fate, eBay became its parasitic host, acquiring the company for $43 million just 100 days after launching.
The Samwer brothers continued to be parasites, leeching off the success of various American startups, formally establishing it with Rocket Internet, a venture studio dedicated to this art.
German iterations of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Amazon were all bought off each time for hundreds of millions, for why wouldn’t you want to parasitically leech off the concept known as capitalism?
Today, all 3 brothers are said to be worth around $1.2 billion, and these are just one of 50 success stories talked about in this book.
However, the point isn’t that you have to be bought off to leech your way into millions like a parasite.
If you have the luxury of hailing from a third-world country and know that such concepts are nonexistent back home, you’ve struck a gold mine.
In this case, there’s no shame in leeching off the successful and stealing the idea, for if you think about it, it’s a win-win situation: your countrymen will be forever grateful to you, and at the same time, may have just generated enough revenue to buy off your financial freedom, by merely being a parasite.