Originality is overrated.
Smart people copy smart people.

June 2023, we are having it easy, watching tennis, eating pizza, Djokovic beats the young Alcarez. The Spaniard got cramps, it was all over after 1-1 in sets.

Etoro commercial pops up, saying you don't need to know shit about trading, investing. Just copy the moves of other "smart" investors with their app feature: CopyTrader. They finish it off with: "Originality is overrated. Smart people copy smart people."

I was like damn, that's smart. It got stuck in my mind ever since.

if we type "copy others" into search engine...

Medium article: Creativity Is Just Copying Other People

• Creativity is a collection of ideas in my head.
• Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things. — Steve Jobs

HubSpot article: Nothing Is Original: Why The Most Talented People Copy

• We worship originality, but actually, copying is an innate human skill -- one we need for survival. We copy to learn, to understand, and to gain social status by mimicking others.
• The point is to copy badly (or loosely), to copy with the point of including variations or to fix known problems. You can also copy from "far away" -- studying other industries and applying these to your own.
• Copying has long been the go-to tool for the most innovative and creative people -- from scientists to athletes to artists to musicians.
• Most problems are like other problems, which means most solutions require similar approaches. It’s the errors, the small variations, made by the hands of a person newly approaching the issue, that makes anything truly unique.

Fortune article: Why Smart People Copy Great Ideas

• Don’t listen to the pundits that only espouse focusing on product innovation and building whole new product categories from scratch. There is no need to reinvent the wheel.
• Being original is overrated. If you want to maximize your odds of success, find what works already, copy it, improve it, and market it better.

don't start from zero, start where others have finished...

Starting a business? Don't start from zero. Research the market, check how the competition is doing, start from there. Improve, simplify, add your own flavour, launch.

Creating content? Search the topic online, read/view 5 different articles, take the good stuff, mix it up, add your own 50 cents. Whola, you have got an article. You are a blogger now, or Youtuber, if you prefer to work with videos.

Producing music? Check your favourite tracks, get inspired, reuse or make something similar. Most of modern music is just classical music in a new skin.

Trading? Just use Etoro's CopyTrader, apparently. (That's what they say in the commercial — see the intro.)

few copy examples...

Uber was first just a black-car service for reach people, until they copied Lyft's ride-sharing model.

Guys who started Ehrana: they have seen the business model in Germany, while studying abroad, liked it, launched it at home. Btw, Ehrana: first Slovenian food delivery service, bought by Glovo in 2021.

Oakberry Tomšičeva: dude was travelling in Brazil, eating acai berries bowls everyday, saw a business opportunity, brought it to Ljubljana. (I thought that was something new, not a global healthy fast food chain.)

Ljubljana By Bike: I have met the guy, who does guided bike tours in Ljubljana, guess how it started? He saw it in another country during vacation.

Let's not forget: still NOT EASY, even if you just copy, because there is thousands of micro variations, when you actually try to execute.

When I started the Frlan website, I was super panicking about writing "original" content. Fuck that. Tons of good shit has already been invented, we just have to find it and re-invent.