Is making clones bad?
wheels: I have mixed feelings here.  On the one hand, from a market perspective I think, "Sure, why not.  Just exploit the race condition that exists between The Next Big Thing in the US and those startups recognizing the European market."On the other hand, as someone that cares about the health of the European startup scene, it doesn't set a good precedent that successful European startups tend to far too often just be knock-offs of American companies, and in fact the cycle feeds itself -- it's such now that European investors often want to see a "proven model", meaning a knock-off, which makes it harder for European startups to find funding when doing something riskier.