Initially, I thought the question was referring to a project on strictly technical terms. After thinking, I soon realized that it's not all about technicalities and complexity in code, rather it can be taken as why would the atmosphere, communities, ease of use, value, services, etc. that your project will create be difficult to duplicate by competitors.<p>Surely, big companies such as Google, etc., can probably code any given project in fractions of a time less than the time say a couple hackers can complete it in, but I believe it's the environment and quality of service that you provide that differentiates one project from a duplicate.<p>
At least that's how I interpreted it.
It wouldn't. But many people prefer to think up something new rather than compete with someone who's already in the market. And the others tend to be dissatisfied with an existing product and therefore implement an improvement on it rather than simply clone.
I'm thinking about the YC question, "why would your project be hard for someone else to duplicate? My partner and I could duplicate any given YC company, feature-for-feature, quickly. So, to first order, the answer to this question is, "It's not hard." <p>But just duplicating can't be the real worry here. Is the underlying question, "Why won't your competitors quickly duplicate what you're building?"<p>