Hightouch is Just Blindly Copying Rudderstack
Move fast and steal things?
Of all the silly data companies making point solutions and running up VC funding, Hightouch may be the funniest and most unethical of all.
The recent announcement of Hightouch Events, a solution that competes with CDPs, Google Analytics, Snowplow, and Rudderstack among many others, came with much fanfare and hype.
So surely Hightouch Events must be game changing? It must be revolutionary? Surely the $38M in new money at a $615M valuation announced is being put to good use, right?
Well, no.
It seems that Hightouch has just copied competitor Rudderstack’s code almost 1-for-1, with negligible changes other than removing “Rudderstack” and “Rudder” and instead slapping on Hightouch’s name in the code.
You can view this here, including many of the code changes performed by a Hightouch employee named Nick Stefan, which changes the code to Hightouch branding.
It’s shameless. It’s hilarious. It’s Hightouch Events. It’s exactly the kind of thing you should be aware of when evaluating vendors, because all Hightouch is going to do is upcharge on this, then when many companies don’t take the bait a year from now anyone who did take the bait is going to be upcharged even further to meet Hightouch’s new valuation target, buying software made by a company that hit “command+F” and took someone else’s code. Not only this, but you are opening yourself to litigation risk when using vendors that blindly copy code from others. Are you willing to waste time and put your employer and yourself at risk for commodity event tracking?
Additionally, a company like Hightouch that handles customer data is completely out-of-control and sloppy for having a Hightouch employee keep a GitHub repo open showing that Hightouch Events is just Rudderstack. Can you trust an immature organization like this with your own customer data? No. They can’t even keep their own data private.
Of course, Hightouch’s venture capitalists are excited by how fast Hightouch ships, and happy to promote this amazing velocity.
It is very fast. Hightouch just did ‘command+F’ for “rudder” in Rudderstack’s SDK code, they changed the words around, slapped on some marketing, and there you go.
That’s Hightouch Events.
Go check out the code and diffs yourself before it gets taken down. Hurry!
Me? I’m ready for Hightouch’s hypothetical IPO.
First, they may have to learn how to keep repos private.
— — —
Lauren Balik has no financial relationship with Hightouch, Rudderstack, or any other near competitors. Lauren spends her time living in reality.
