Exporting successful Internet ideas to other countries

This week Professor Edward Roberts talked about how commodity ideas in the US would be great ideas somewhere else. He gave the example of the founder of IDC, who created a ~$100M fund in Vietnam to replicate any single company successful in the US: Amazon, eBay, etc.

There are plenty of opportunities with successful internet companies in the US that need to be in a different language (or need to be local) when they target a different country. A lot of people in other countries cannot read/write in English. Martin Varsavsky, founder of FON, already wrote in his blog about how he made his fortune copying ideas from the US (e.g., he founded among others Ya.com, which was sold by $550M to Deutsche Telekom). He recently gave the example of how hard is for Spanish or French people who cannot speak English to chat, program the avatar, etc  in Second Life. He thinks that there should be a Second Life in French or Spanish and he has even bought a domain for it.

Five months ago I talked to my friend Alberto Lopez  to try to create a Del.icio.us in Spanish and for Spanish websites. We have not done it because we are too busy with Tabarca Networks. And nobody else has done it as far as we know.

Comments

[Francisco]

Interesting, but, isn't that funnier not to copy things?

[martin varsavsky]

Sorry but very few people who look at Fon would think of me as a person who copies American ideas and brings them to Europe. Google News BT Fon and read what the press says pls. Fon is a very original, very European idea of solidarity brought to America.

[Inaki Berenguer]

Martin,

I fully agree with you. I think that FON is original and with global impact. I always talk to my international friends about FON I am proud that the idea comes from Spain.

Regarding the info I give in the post, I was not clear and I did not mean that you copy ideas. I just meant that you adapted Ya.com to the Spanish market and there exist other opportunities to adapt successful ideas in America (or somewhere else) to the Spanish market (or any other country with a different language).

But FON is another story and I acknowledge that it is original, very European and brought not only to America but globally. A lot of friends at MIT from other countries also know about FON.

Inaki