Rocket - MOBILE

Predictably, the company takes a lot of flack, from the companies they imitate, patent lawyers, and even their own employees. But Rocket argues that there's nothing wrong with the sincerest form of flattery. Facebook sued them over intellectual property infringement in 2009 and lost. “In the internet industry, there are Einsteins and there are Bob the Builders," Oliver Samwer has said, according to The Hustle. "I’m a Bob the Builder.” So whether you're booking a Megabus—ahem, Clickbus ticket in Brazil—or ordering clothing from Zappos—er, uh, Zolando in Germany—you might be doing business with a Rocket Internet linked start-up.

uh oh! zillow is not available. :(

Lamudi launched in 2013 and currently operates in 32 countries. According to Techinasia, it has 800,000 property listings globally.

nested origin: the u.k. founded in 2015

lamudi origin: germany founded in 2013

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Pinspire lasted for less than three months before it collapsed under the weight of Rocket’s win-at-all-cost MO. Employees attempted to bribe the tech press with money and gadgets in return for positive coverage, as well as creating fake pro-Pinspire Twitter accounts.

Pinspire origin: singapore founded in 2011

uh oh! megabus is not available. :(

By the end of its first year in business, Clickbus had booked more than a million trips.

clickbus origin: brazil founded in 2013

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Rocket invested $2.5 million in Airu, the Etsy of Brazil, while the Samwer’s own Global Founders Capital, whose very name bears a “I think I’ve heard of them,” genericness, has funded crafts-market startups in Indonesia (Qlapa) Germany (Dawanda) and India (Craftsvilla).

Airu origin: brazil founded in 2011

uh oh! eharmony is not available. :(

eDarling copied its source material nearly down to the name, epitomizing Rocket’s occasional approach of aiming to be acquired by the mimicked. Like its progenitor, eDarling’s rating hovers around 3 stars on the Google Play store.

edarling origin: germany founded in 2008

uh oh! blue apron is not available. :(

Hello Fresh is the rare Rocket success to become a viable competitor to the American original. It’s now the second-largest meal-delivery service in the U.S. (Its office also happens to occupy the two floors directly below Ceros. Hello, neighbors.)

hello fresh origin: germany founded in 2011

uh oh! square is not available. :(

Rocket’s Payleven wasn’t the first Square clone—that would be SumUp, also based in Berlin, which acquired Payleven in 2016 to become one of the largest payment processors in Europe.

billpay origin: germany founded in 2009

billie origin: germany founded in 2016

payleven origin: germany founded in 2012

uh oh! funding circle is not available. :(

After just 20 months, Zencap became Europe’s fastest growing peer-to-peer lender, forcing Funding Circle’s hand to acquire the knockoff in October 2015.

iwoca origin: the u.k. founded in 2011

lendico origin: germany founded in 2013

sonovate origin: the u.k. founded in 2012

uh oh! birchbox is not available. :(

In 2017, Glossybox, Rocket’s 6-year old beauty-focused version of Birchbox, was acquired by UK e-tailer THG for an undisclosed sum.

Glossybox origin: germany founded in 2011

naturals @home origin: germany founded in 2011

vaniday origin: germany founded in 2011

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Rocket’s Autotrader was one of the company’s losers. In 2017, one TechCrunch reporter wrote that he had “tried calling the Carspring telephone number but a recorded message seems to perpetually say all operators are busy.”

AutoDa origin: germany founded in 2010

carmudi origin: germany founded in 2010

carspring origin: the u.k. founded in 2015

uh oh! airbnb is not available. :(

Airbnb sent an email to 100k hosts warning, “these scam artists have a history of copying a website, aggressively poaching from their community, then attempting to sell the company back to the original.” They even set up an email for complaints: detectives@airbnb.com

hometogo origin: germany founded in 2014

nestpick origin: germany founded in 2014

airizu origin: china founded in 2011

wimdu origin: germany founded in 2011

uh oh! grubhub is not available. :(

Analysts estimate that online food orders will capture 58 percent of the global food-delivery market by 2020, and Rocket already has companies in several countries. In 2017, the German-based Delivery Hero went public. A year later it has a market cap of 7.2 billion Euros.

Delivery Hero origin: germany founded in 2011

caterwings origin: germany founded in 2015

Everdine origin: the u.k. founded in 2016

foodscovery origin: italy founded in 2013

La Nevera Roja origin: spain founded in 2011

uh oh! amazon is not available. :(

These are the online shopping services that Rocket Internet modeled after Amazon.

Jumia origin: Nigeria founded in 2012

Daraz origin: asia founded in 2014

Lazada origin: singapore founded in 2012

Linio origin: mexico founded in 2012

Home24 origin: germany founded in 2009

uh oh! booking.com is not available. :(

The Myanmar-based Jovago was a flop. “Every journey must come to an end,” its website currently reads. “This is the end of our journey.”

campsy origin: germany founded in 2016

jovago origin: nigeria founded in 2013

traveloka origin: indonesia founded in 2012

travelbird origin: The Netherlands founded in 2010

zen rooms origin: singapore founded in 2011

yamsafer origin: palestine founded in 2011

Zillow

Megabus

Etsy

eHarmony

Blue Apron

Square

Funding Circle

Birchbox

AutoTrader

AirBnB

GrubHub

Amazon

Booking.com

For German startup factory Rocket Internet, imitation is the sincerest form of fortune.

bootleg Billionaires

words by Sharon Kelly design by Tri Vo

tap on the apps you know and (possibly) love to see their Rocket offspring.

American inventor Charles Kettering, who led research and development at General Motors from the 1920's to the late 40's, once said that "people are very open-minded about new things, as long as they're exactly like the old things." At Germany’s Rocket Internet, that one-liner could serve as the company motto. Founded in 2007, Rocket responds to entrepreneurial originality with near-instantaneous mimicry: Show them a viable American business model and in due time, a boiler room full of coders will reverse engineer a knock-off. It’s a process that has spawned more than a hundred companies around the world. Known as the "clone kings," brothers Marc, Alexander and Oliver Samwer have made billions with companies like Alando, an eBay lookalike launched in 1999 that, two months later, was acquired by eBay for $40 million. And in what became a lucrative tactic of knocking off—then being acquired by—the originators, they sold their own eDarling to a dating site you might have heard of, eHarmony. The Samwers have aped hundreds of companies—as Bloomberg put it, "churning out copy cat start-ups"—as they've sold off an empire of clones.

uh oh! storage.com is not available. :(

But don't worry! We have another storage service at Rocket Internet.

SpaceWays origin: the u.k. founded in 2014

Storage.com

uh oh! something went wrong. we can't open zappos. :(

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uh oh! something went wrong. we can't open zappos. :(

Etsy

Zynga

Paypal

Trulia

Uber