Stop Being Original. Start Copying.

Most founders treat copying like a sin. Like it means you lack originality. But the best businesses aren't built on unique ideas, they're built on borrowed ideas executed better, faster, and by niching.

I know this because I wasted 18 months doing the opposite.

A Duolingo for finance. An "everything app" for closing deals. AI agents for calendar management. Carousels for creators. Each one felt original, at least from me. Each one flopped. Beautiful UI, zero users, and a graveyard of products nobody asked for.

Then it hit. I’m not good enough to be an inventor. So I’ll just start copying.

I copied TrustMRR to build TrustViews.

I copied OneDollarFeedback because it was so simple and nothing like it really existed.

Both of these apps are already more successful than the 13 projects I failed on over 18 months.

Copy the idea. Copy the product. Change the angle, niche down. Build on an existing audience and make it yours.

Here's how to actually copy without failing

1. Copy where traction already is: upvotes, MRR, views

Don't guess what people want. Look at what thousands of people already voted for, put money in or are visiting.

StartupHunt, my newsletter had an amazing launch because I'm not asking "what startup idea will be cool?", I'm asking "what startup idea already proved itself by getting 1,000+ upvotes or hitting $10K MRR?" The market is already validated. I'm just hunting the winners and teaching others to copy them.

This works for marketing too. Look at what's getting engagement in your niche on Twitter, LinkedIn, Reddit, whatever… Copy the structure, copy the format, copy the angle, then make it yours by adding a different perspective.

2. Build on someone else's audience

You don't have the audience to invent. Most of us don't.

But someone already does. Reddit communities, Twitter hashtags, Discord servers, Slack workspaces: these are audiences already gathered. Instead of fighting for attention, build into their ecosystem.

If you're building a SaaS for Slack, you're not building for "productivity people." You're building for Slack's 750M+ monthly active users. You're literally standing on their platform and capturing a slice of their attention.

Same logic applies everywhere: build a Twitter bot for your niche community. Build a Chrome extension for the audience already using that tool. Build a Discord bot for the servers already gathering. Borrow the distribution, own the niche.

And you know what? That borrowed audience might become yours.

3. Copy marketing strategies, then niche them

Stop creating from scratch. Look at what's getting shares.

Which startup announcement threads got 10K likes? Copy that format. Which newsletters have crazy open rates in your space? Copy that structure. Which YouTube creators in your niche have the most engagement? Copy that storytelling arc, the hook, the problem, the solution, the call-to-action.

Then change one variable: the audience, the vertical, the tone.

A thread about SaaS fundraising isn't different from a thread about indie hacker wins, they both have hooks, they both tell a story, they both end with a question. But the data, the examples, the details are what make it yours.

4. Stop shipping. Start scraping. Start asking.

The killer mistake I made with my early projects: I built in a vacuum.

Scrape what works. Ask what doesn't. Then build 10% of what's needed.

A cool rule you can add it : every time I want to add a feature/element, first remove 3. Then ask yourself is the one I want to add makes actual sense?

With StartupHunt, I could have built a monster dashboard with filtering, ratings, export to CSV, saved bookmarks, user accounts. Instead, I shipped a plain-text newsletter. The data came from scraping. The personality came from my own take. That's it.

Copy the business model (newsletter format = proven), copy the sourcing (data already exists), add personality, ship.

5. Build what you'd pay for yourself

My other project OneDollarFeedback started as a one-day build because I needed something cheap to collect feedback across all my projects. I couldn't find a simple, frictionless widget. So I built it.

I copied nothing, or rather, I copied everything (the concept of feedback collection, the business model, the simplicity), and compressed it into something so boring that it works.

The lesson: don't invent a new category. Build something so simple that people assume it already existed.

Why this matters (and why people miss it)

Copying gets labeled as lazy. But it's actually the opposite. It requires:

• Research: Know what's already winning

• Taste: Pick the right thing to copy

• Execution: Do it better, faster, simpler

• Uniqueness: Find the angle nobody else is attacking

The founders who fail at copying do it wrong. They copy the whole thing, the messaging, the design, the audience, the pricing, and then wonder why they're invisible.

The founders who win copy what works and own what's different.

Your Move

Stop brainstorming in a notebook. Start looking around.

What's already getting 10K+ MRR? What's already hitting 300 upvotes on product hunt? What newsletter already has 100K subscribers? Look at one of these. Understand why it's winning. Then ask yourself: where is the gap?

What audience isn't served? What angle isn't covered? What vertical isn't niched?

Copy the successful model. Own the execution.

If you want more insight, I'm sharing more on my newsletter : startuphunt , with an amazing tagline : Hunt startup worth copying.

The Best founders I know aren't inventors. They're students of traction.

They watch what works. They copy the skeleton. Then they add the personality, speed, a risky bet on a specific angle and call it their own.

Turns out, copying isn't about lacking originality. It's about respecting what already works while being brave enough to make it better.