[HN Gopher] Ask HN: What do you do when competition signs up for...
___________________________________________________________________
Ask HN: What do you do when competition signs up for your service?
I'm founder of robusta.dev which automates day 2 operations and
monitoring on kubernetes. In recent months we've seen a close
competitor sign up for our SaaS service (using email addresses and
names that clearly identify who they are) and experiment with the
platform. This is a similar sized startup in the exact same market
as us, competing over the exact same customers. Is there anything
we should or even can do about this? Or is this form of competitive
research simply unavoidable? We also have an open source offering
which obviously everyone can try and even reuse. We're ok with
that, of course
Author : nyellin
Score : 140 points
Date : 2022-03-26 14:26 UTC (8 hours ago)
| unstatusthequo wrote:
| Would be fun to do a press release calling them out as "even our
| competitors use our service!" And provide proof. Then wait a week
| and disable their domain. And refund them. Win.
| detaro wrote:
| That's the best advertising for your competitor you could make.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| Hell, I'd reach out and ask if they have any questions.
|
| It's possible your targeting slightly different consumers. Target
| definitely sends people to check out Walmart and vice versa. I
| even remember a marketing dude getting in trouble for taking
| pictures at GameStop.
|
| IMO, this is a fantastic problem to have. The alternative is your
| product isn't even worth looking at
|
| Edit if it's open source where's the code !
| nyellin wrote:
| github.com/robusta-dev/robusta
| rasengan wrote:
| Provide them great service. Competition is inevitable and
| obscurity isn't going to help.
| edmundsauto wrote:
| Pretend you never saw it, and take it as a compliment. If you ack
| that you know thh hh is, you may be tempted to peek into customer
| information that you have no right to mine for competitive intel.
| Worse, they might be somehow leading you on about which features
| they use, etc, as part of a deception campaign.
| bayonetz wrote:
| Build a shadow ban mode and assign them to it :)
| werber wrote:
| They're being transparent, I think that's really respectful.
| zepearl wrote:
| > _we 've seen a close competitor sign up for our SaaS service
| (using email addresses and names that clearly identify who they
| are)..._
|
| In general it's for sure very nice that a company doesn't try to
| hide its identity when having a look at the competition.
|
| But maybe I'm being (again) too naive?
|
| Question: might the use of official email addresses signal some
| prep work to prosecute (e.g. for a potential patent
| infringement)? Something like "this screenshot shows myself on
| behalf of company X being logged in on Y at W using functionality
| Z which is actually copyrighted by company X".
|
| Just purely asking - maybe I have become too careful/suspicious
| of everything hehe :P
| stadium wrote:
| Logging all of their interactions is probably a good idea in
| case you do need to lawyer up
| tjbiddle wrote:
| C'est la vie. Focus on building your product.
| indymike wrote:
| I usually send them a note inviting feedback from them, and offer
| to do the same for them.
| icedchai wrote:
| Be glad you were able to identify them. I would've used a
| personal email with fake info.
| daliusd wrote:
| Using personal email for investigation of competitors is
| illegal. I am not sure in what situations but that's what we
| were trained when I was working in US company.
| icedchai wrote:
| It may be in violation of corporate policies, or perhaps the
| other company's ToS, but I very much doubt it is illegal in
| the criminal sense. If you have a link to prove otherwise,
| I'd love to see it.
|
| At a previous startup, both the founders and various
| employees would often sign up for competitors using our
| personal, "spare" emails. We were doing competitive research.
| kingcharles wrote:
| Certainly in the USA violating a website's ToS is a
| criminal offense. e.g. using a fake name to sign up with a
| site is at least a misdemeanor and sometimes a felony
| carrying several years in prison.
| icedchai wrote:
| Not sure where you heard that, but ToS violations are
| absolutely not a criminal offense. See
| https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/07/court-violating-
| terms-... and
| https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/01/ninth-circuit-
| doubles-...
|
| At best, they are a civil violation. This means the
| company is going to have to initiate a lawsuit, which is
| very expensive. Assuming that happens, which is extremely
| unlikely for a fake name, you certainly will not be going
| to prison.
| kingcharles wrote:
| Sadly, you are wrong. This same statute exists in many
| states.
|
| (720 ILCS 5/17-51) (was 720 ILCS 5/16D-3) Sec. 17-51.
| Computer tampering. (a) A person commits computer
| tampering when he or she knowingly and without the
| authorization of a computer's owner or in excess of the
| authority granted to him or her: (1) Accesses or causes
| to be accessed a computer or any part thereof, a computer
| network, or a program or data; (2) Accesses or causes to
| be accessed a computer or any part thereof, a computer
| network, or a program or data, and obtains data or
| services;
|
| [...] (a-10) For purposes of subsection
| (a), accessing a computer network is deemed to be with
| the authorization of a computer's owner if:
| (1) the owner authorizes patrons, customers, or guests to
| access the computer network and the person accessing the
| computer network is an authorized patron, customer, or
| guest and complies with all terms or conditions for use
| of the computer network that are imposed by the owner;
|
| [...] (b) Sentence. (1) A
| person who commits computer tampering as set forth in
| subdivision (a)(1) or (a)(5) or subsection (a-5) of this
| Section is guilty of a Class B misdemeanor.
| (2) A person who commits computer tampering as set forth
| in subdivision (a)(2) of this Section is guilty of a
| Class A misdemeanor and a Class 4 felony for the second
| or subsequent offense.
|
| [Class A misdemeanor is one year in a county jail. Class
| 4 felony is 3 years in prison.]
| icedchai wrote:
| Sorry, I'll trust the EFF. TOS violations aren't
| "tampering." The fake account was created through
| authorized means, etc.
| patmcc wrote:
| What law would this possibly break? You think a Netflix
| employee can't sign up for Disney Plus on their personal
| account?
| fizx wrote:
| Every competitor that has signed up for any service I've been
| involved with has tried to hack us. Whether it's something
| relatively benign like some querystring manipulation, or
| something interesting like an elasticsearch zero-day, they all
| try.
|
| This is a good time to think about security. Can they find
| competitive information in your urls (you use sequential customer
| ids?)? Are there areas not locked down?
|
| Remember their IP addresses and cookies, and do a scan of your
| logs in a month.
|
| Still, it's not worth the trouble of kicking them out. Fake
| emails are a dime-a-dozen.
| driverdan wrote:
| Many years ago found a data disclosure issue with a
| competitor's API. I immediately disclosed it to them and they
| fixed it.
|
| If you have competitors that aren't giving you that courtesy
| you should submit a complaint to law enforcement.
| phphphphp wrote:
| Perhaps this is true in the hyper-competitive world of silicon
| valley startups where it's better to ask for forgiveness (from
| a judge) than permission, but outside of sv I have never, ever
| experienced a startup actively exploiting a competitor's
| systems -- I can't think of a single example. Signing up to a
| competitor to understand what they're doing, and sometimes
| cribbing ideas, sure, all the time, but hacking?
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > Every competitor that has signed up for any service I've been
| involved with has tried to hack us.
|
| That sounds wonderful; hand the evidence to Legal and go tear
| them to shreds in court!
| fizx wrote:
| There's only been one time that did real damage. Talked with
| a security firm, got an audit, and the bad guy did a good
| enough job of covering their tracks (did the recon with their
| account, actual attack over TOR) to make it hard to
| prosecute.
|
| Another time, when one of our competitors was creating a
| bunch of spam accounts on our app, we just had our VC call
| their VC. They blamed it on an intern and stopped.
|
| I was at a drinking event at a conference 3 years after an
| acquisition talk fell through, and an employee of the
| acquirer told me that they got our customer list from a
| specific endpoint manipulation, and that caused them to lose
| interest.
|
| Everyone tries querystring and url manipulation. It's too
| tempting not to poke around.
|
| In the real world, you can't prosecute any of this.
| echelon wrote:
| > they got our customer list from a specific endpoint
| manipulation
|
| - Never use monotonically increasing IDs as the keys for
| GET endpoints of single entities. These can be enumerated.
| Only use tokens composed of random entropy for externally
| facing keys.
|
| - Carefully consider what your list endpoints reveal. Scope
| them down to the minimum possible result set. As a bonus,
| encrypt your cursoring API so it doesn't leak information
| about your scale. This isn't hard to do. Send down an
| opaque encoding of pagination state that is server side
| encrypted and that the client code never needs to unpack.
| The client just sends the direction, sort key, and encoded
| token.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Curious what space are you in?
| patio11 wrote:
| Five minutes spent thinking about this question is five minutes
| you could have been talking to customers instead.
| stadium wrote:
| IANAL but Oracle v SAP was about accessing and downloading files
| from a competitor. I vaguely recall that Oracle won a settlement
| because their TOS had an enforceable provision about commercial
| use and licensing. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-oracle-sap-
| se-settlement-...
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I don't quite understand. You have a public product that anyone
| can sign up for, and it turns out some people signed up for it.
| You don't get to pick and choose your customers.
| ReaLNero wrote:
| Businesses definitely have the ability to choose customers,
| barring violations of the Civil Rights act of 1964.
| anarquist wrote:
| To everyone saying that it's a waste of time to even think about
| this, I would just remind them that Uber signed up for Lyft to
| sabotage them for years:
| https://www.theverge.com/2014/8/26/6067663/this-is-ubers-pla...
| b20000 wrote:
| https://en.meming.world/images/en/thumb/d/de/Leonardo_DiCapr...
| rvense wrote:
| You make it sound like you aren't checking out what your
| competitors are doing. Why not? They probably have some good
| ideas that you can try to implement better than they have.
| geocrasher wrote:
| You're a SaaS. Let your competitor discover your Software. Let
| your Customers discover your _Service_
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| It's a game of chess, not poker.
|
| What do you do now? What do you show them? There's many win
| conditions.
|
| Sign up for their service in return, tell them, may the best man
| win. Think also that winning is for the benefit of your
| customers, and for each competitor to be the best possible.
|
| As long as you're not competing directly against yourself ie.
| stolen IP, it'll be fine. On that note, you ought to conceal some
| amount of your source in some way.
|
| Don't be completely open source, have some small thing that can't
| be copied. The intent of being open source counts. One good way
| to do this is to have a more efficient algorithm than what's
| available publicly (talk to me) and then your open source
| offering has the regular algorithm, but your closed source
| advantage is a much more efficient algorithm that represents a
| competitive advantage. Like say multiplication, simple example,
| suppose you're working with crypto and want fast multiplication,
| if you can do it faster with some hot algo, you aren't forced to
| share that, users copying your source can use the run-of-the-mill
| algorithm. It's the same thing, exact same thing, same input same
| output, just that you happen to have a faster algo you keep to
| yourself. You don't even have to tell people! Still open source!
| Anybody can run all the code!
|
| Because it's strictly necessary to have IP, or tech if you want
| to call it tech, that can't be copied directly and trivially.
| Mark Lemley at Stanford says so in his IP law class: "Suppose
| there's two competitors, one does all the work of creating or
| inventing something new. The other just copies it. Costs nothing,
| it's a sure thing. I'd love to be that guy!" It's not as
| unreasonable as the internet makes it seem.
|
| So you just have to know the system because there are gotchas,
| like with any law that tries to be fair. So for one, for USPTO,
| deadlines are deadlines. Death. You missed the deadline? You
| cannot ask forgiveness for your mistake, they're completely
| unsympathetic (and it's because people try to hack them so hard).
| So actually becoming familiar with IP law, and then _routing your
| business in the direction of what you can protect_.
|
| Analog is another form of protection, that's very common in high-
| precision manufacturing in Germany, basically you have an
| industrial Excalibur in your factory that your competitors don't
| have.
|
| And what I would do is, sign up to your competitor's service in
| return, and try it out. Also: try to differentiate somehow. I
| created a theorematic pricing algorithm and the idea was you just
| can't charge the same price as a bunch of other people, you have
| to be different, undercut or mark up, whatever it takes to be
| alone in the price curve. And when you do go up or down, adjust
| your product accordingly and according to the specific needs of
| customers who want to pay that price for it.
|
| That algo is also for sale.
| ipaddr wrote:
| "Suppose there's two competitors, one does all the work of
| creating or inventing something new. The other just copies it.
| Costs nothing, it's a sure thing. I'd love to be that guy"
|
| The first company controls the market the second responds. The
| second is always later to market. Without those development
| costs company 2 has more money but they need to use it to
| reduce prices to get others to try their product and they need
| to spend it on marketing.
|
| If company 2 has another advantage like unlimited money or
| relationships.. they can kill company 1.
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| Everybody who knows what they're doing and has a sound
| business has unlimited money right now.
|
| It's good to have cofounders, but...relationships, yeah, I
| don't know, I don't believe in allies, don't believe in the
| concept. How would ally and I decide who takes charge? In
| chess allies are worth nothing.
|
| The enemy of my enemy is Daniel Cussen. That ought to be
| enough.
| rossdavidh wrote:
| If you have not done this to them, then consider this your first
| opportunity to learn from a competitor.
| hogrider wrote:
| I'd just refuse to serve them. I don't think there's any law
| forbidding it.
| zeroxfe wrote:
| Others have commented here that this is normal, but since you're
| surprised about this, here's some actionable advice (as someone
| that's worked in very competitive spaces):
|
| 1) You should be doing the same thing. If you're not on top of
| the competition, they will chew you up, especially if they're
| better funded.
|
| 2) When you're doing your own competitive research, watch out for
| EULAs and ToS -- they're typically not enforceable (or very
| expensive to enforce), but many of them explicitly disallow this
| kind of thing. Use fake addresses.
|
| 3) Make sure your EULAs and ToS have similar provisions. Again,
| these are very difficult to enforce, but consider them as very
| cheap defence-in-depth.
|
| 4) Restrict your most innovative features (while they're in beta)
| to whitelisted user accounts. Again, not a perfect solution, but
| defence-in-depth.
|
| Being a founder in a competitive space requires wartime thinking.
| As shitty as it is, your competitors are breaking rules and
| violating laws all over the place.
| nlitened wrote:
| I think all that is a waste of startup founder's time. Focus on
| your product, make sure your customers love it, and more new
| customers get to know about it. If you do that, competition
| does not matter; if you don't do that, you lose regardless of
| competition.
| trinovantes wrote:
| History has shown us that the best product doesn't always win
| e.g. LaserDisc
| bradwood wrote:
| This. Also focus on your culture, your staff, and and other
| things that cannot be seen in functionality, like performance
| or running costs. If the competitor does copy your feature,
| will be built as efficiently, as scaleably, as flexibly, as
| cost-effectively as your implementation? These are attributes
| that the competitor cannot steal and the sum-total of these,
| plus your feature, will ultimately see you win out.
| abraae wrote:
| That's a bit simplistic. Do you really think that there
| aren't at least a couple of things that your competitor has
| done better than you? Don't you want to know about them? You
| don't have to copy them slavishly but maybe you can be
| inspired by them for one of your own upcoming features.
| lanternfish wrote:
| Focusing on your product presumably involves improving that
| product.
|
| Improving the product presumably involves understanding the
| end user.
|
| Understanding the end user presumably involves understanding
| their alternatives.
| OJFord wrote:
| Not GP, but I think it's the last point that isn't
| necessarily.. necessary.
|
| It's one tool for sure, but not one I think you absolutely
| have to use - unless you have some indication people are
| increasingly picking the competitor over you, or especially
| and more simply leaving you in favour of the competitor.
| Mr_P wrote:
| > unless you have some indication people are increasingly
| picking the competitor over you, or especially and more
| simply leaving you in favour of the competitor.
|
| If this happens, you've already lost. Software
| development has long lead-times. By the time there is
| significant customer attrition, bending the curve will be
| immensely difficult.
|
| Good engineering strategy requires over-reacting to the
| right signals, and trends in the broader ecosystem are a
| wonderful source of signals. Large tech companies know
| this, and there's a reason why they'll quickly throw
| billion-dollar budgets behind exploratory efforts in
| response to competitors.
|
| That said, it certainly depends on the industry. Some
| sectors are more fast-paced and competitive than others.
| zeroxfe wrote:
| > Focus on your product, make sure your customers love it,
| and more new customers get to know about it. If you do that,
| competition does not matter; if you don't do that, you lose
| regardless of competition.
|
| Ugh. I think these types of platitudes really trivialize the
| immensely difficult job of being a founder.
| newaccount2021 wrote:
| aaronblohowiak wrote:
| is making a product that customers love a trivial thing?
| AreYouSirius wrote:
| CodeWriter23 wrote:
| > Ugh. I think these types of platitudes really trivialize
| the immensely difficult job of being a founder.
|
| Which includes creating EULA and ToS. How much time does
| one "waste" by adding a couple of extra paragraphs that can
| probably lifted from some standard copypasta boilerplate?
| sangnoir wrote:
| > Which includes creating EULA and ToS. How much time
| does one "waste" by adding a couple of extra paragraphs
| that can probably lifted from some standard copypasta
| boilerplate?
|
| If you intend to use this adversarially, or if there's a
| chance it'll get tested in court - don't cheap out. Hire
| a lawyer to do this.
| thfuran wrote:
| >If you intend to use this adversarially, or if there's a
| chance it'll get tested in court
|
| And if not, why have it at all?
| btown wrote:
| Agreed. Competitors can come in all shapes and sizes. Some
| can be real bullies or suck oxygen out of the room, some
| will be actively pulling away from your niche giving you
| tremendous opportunity to _position_ your product as they
| misstep, and it 's important to keep tabs on product
| changes and understand what kind of love (or ideally hate)
| your would-be customers are feeling from the incumbents.
|
| What's _most_ important, in this context, is to have a
| founding team approaching the dynamics from different
| viewpoints, who can rein each other in if the instinct to
| monitor one 's competition ever exceeds the strategic
| value, and share the burden of understanding the landscape
| of what customers need and what they think they can get
| elsewhere. IMO, having a great team is just about the only
| "startup rule" that is true without exception.
| pvg wrote:
| "This is war" is a platitude/power/martyrdom fantasy that
| is far more likely to get you into legal, reputational and
| other workplace trouble than "build something people want".
| renewiltord wrote:
| It's just market validation for features for a product. You
| think it is inefficient to search in competitors' feature
| space for prospective features? Like the only real source of
| features is ex nihilo followed by customer research?
|
| Interesting.
| driverdan wrote:
| This is not good advice. In order to understand your market
| you need to understand your competition.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| I hate that "put unenforceable restrictive clauses in your ToS"
| is likely good advice.
| nyellin wrote:
| Thanks. Assuming we have a ToS which forbids this, is there
| anything even worth doing when it's violated?
| seshagiric wrote:
| +1 to update your EULA and ToS. Specifically mention that one
| cannot use the service with the intent to reverse engineer it
| or build competing services. Both these are standard in most
| online services like Google APIs etc. Google for example, asks
| that if someone publishes metrics comparing Google API
| performance with others then they must share information about
| the performance testing with Google (test data, test
| methodology etc.).
|
| On the other hand, remember that its perfectly legal for your
| competitors to gather publicly available information about your
| service. Good thing is other party is not hiding themselves so
| maybe they are playing fair. Btw your neighbor visited your
| home so be polite and visit them too :)
| webmobdev wrote:
| Or, reach out to your competitor and explore whether there is
| an opportunity to merge and grow together.
| lxgr wrote:
| > Use fake addresses.
|
| Not a lawyer, but wouldn't that approach the domain of
| misrepresentation?
| lelandfe wrote:
| Sorry, are you saying that signing up for a service using
| e.g. temporaryaccount123@gmail.com is illegal? I doubt there
| is any contractual language that could mandate you to use a
| personally-identifiable email address.
| sangnoir wrote:
| It wont look good if it goes to discovery or otherwise ends
| up before a jury, it's a big flashing sign that says _mens
| rhea_ if you 're violating legally enforceable TOS/EULA
| terms. Dilligent competitors will still sniff you out by
| other means (office IP address, or if you're working from
| home, your work VPN)
| serf wrote:
| yeah no kidding -- "avoid the legal hassle of EULA and ToS by
| just lying on the contract yourself!" seems like pretty
| terrible advice without being accompanied by a huge
| disclaimer.
| [deleted]
| scarface74 wrote:
| How is he breaking rules and violating laws? They used real
| email addresses that easily identified who they were.
| svnt wrote:
| The flip side of OP's point is that successful competitors
| will use this rationalization to give themselves some ethical
| standing when they are actually the first-mover bad actor.
| Whether or not the competition is doing it, the belief that
| they could drives the Machiavellian preemption described
| here.
|
| That said, it is the nature of the game. If you want to
| preserve your ethical stance sometimes the only winning move
| is not to play.
| ankit219 wrote:
| The answer varies on what kind of space it is.
|
| Scenario 1: If it's a smaller space, and your odds of raising the
| next round are better if your competition raises a round - shows
| a market is expanding- then show them around the product,
| figuratively speaking. Send a mail to a few of your customers
| (and include the competitor), asking them to sign up for beta
| access for first priority on new features being launched. This
| way, both of you build similar stuff, onboard similar customers,
| and expand to similar adjacent markets. (and tell investors
| similar stories, reinforcing a social proof)
|
| Scenario 2: Insanely competitive market. Think like a wartime
| guy. What can you do to mislead them? In these markets, there is
| a huge focus on competition, and to match the offerings from
| others. You have their email, they may be playing it right, you
| can tell them about launching a new feature you know won't work,
| and then launch something different. They wasting their time
| means more leeway for you to work your magic.
|
| (if it's not the two extremes, don't bother. Just build and keep
| finding more customers)
|
| Altogether, these signups usually mean nothing. I was a PM/Growth
| guy at various companies, and had a habit of signing up for every
| new product I heard about - including ones from the competition,
| and play around for a bit. I still get emails from those guys. It
| was just to see user experience and offering, and we did not do
| anything around it.
| dylan604 wrote:
| >Think like a wartime guy.
|
| What ever you do, don't do an Uber
| [deleted]
| hsnewman wrote:
| I used to work for a computer company. The building had empty
| floors, one day we were hanging out and went upstairs to one of
| the "empty floors". It was full of terminals and printers from
| various manufacturers. We made terminals and printers. It was
| clear that they were checking out their competition's products.
| Nothing wrong with that.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| On a sidenote: It shows of good business etiquette that they are
| using their identity and don't hide it behind other names. That's
| good.
| the_common_man wrote:
| Seems absolutely normal, nothing to worry about
| throwaway7477 wrote:
| (using a throwaway for obvious reasons)
|
| Working for a startup in a competitive space some years ago, we
| noticed that an employee of one of our competitors signed up for
| our service. We logged their password, just to make sure they
| were not reusing that of their corporate mailbox... Unfortunately
| (for them), they were; no MFA on the mailbox either... But, you
| wouldn't think they reused that same username and password for
| their admin backend access, which was conveniently hosted at
| https://competitorname.com/admin/?
|
| Long story short, we had access to their entire mailbox and
| backend.
|
| We had a quick look around, then realized it was probably not
| worth the legal risks exploiting it. Plus we weren't really
| comfortable on a moral level: it was clearly below the belt. Eh,
| at least we had a good thrill!
|
| Note: don't do this, it is obviously illegal.
|
| Second note: when signing up at your competitor's, don't reuse
| your password!
| Faaak wrote:
| Third note: when accepting passwords, hash and salt them !
| tr33house wrote:
| hashing and salting wouldn't really have helped in this
| situation
| version_five wrote:
| The worst part about that story to me is that you are storing
| your customers passwords in plaintext apparently? Is this
| common practice?
| aeyes wrote:
| "logged their password", so my guess is that they did
| something like: if(login == competitor): print(password)
| throwaway7477 wrote:
| Yes, that's what we did, then waited for their next login.
| version_five wrote:
| Ok understood. I guess it shows how much trust you are
| putting in an org by using their software, (and anecdotally
| how apparently willing people are to break that trust)
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Sort of.
|
| But trusting an organization not to look at your password
| _shouldn 't_ be something you ever need to do.
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| As a user, you should always assume
| incompetence/maliciousness and avoid password reuse.
|
| Password managers make this dead simple; You still have
| to trust someone (sort of, Bitwarden is open source), but
| it mitigates this attack elsewhere.
| phyzome wrote:
| << We logged their password, just to make sure they were not
| reusing that of their corporate mailbox >>
|
| "Just to make sure", for what, altruistic reasons? Just say you
| did it for shits and giggles, which is probably more accurate.
| [deleted]
| wly_cdgr wrote:
| Man, being a founder seems fucking awful. Just be the 10th
| employee...
| Edmond wrote:
| This should be considered perfectly normal :)
|
| Usually a competitor would disguise themselves but in any case,
| you're a publicly accessible service, if you're doing something
| right you should assume competitors are going to take a peek.
|
| Maybe you too should take a look at what they are doing, but
| otherwise keep "keeping on".
| varun_ch wrote:
| This is actually really motivating.
|
| I'm 15 and building an edtech product with my friends, and we
| noticed 2 employees from a very big edtech company (direct
| competitor) signed up (with company email addresses) and tested
| some features out. I don't know if my site will ever be
| anything more than a hobby project, but the fact that two
| employees of the site that inspired my own signed up makes me
| feel like we might be doing something right! I just wonder how
| they found it.
| 0xabe wrote:
| Ask
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| Honestly, if a company _isn't_ signing up for competing
| services and trying them out, it's approaching negligence.
|
| Understanding the market landscape and competition is a top
| priority for any startup. That doesn't mean you should be
| mimicking your competitors or trying to clone what others are
| doing, but you must be aware what others are doing in your
| space.
| ghiculescu wrote:
| In our early days if this happened I'd cancel their account just
| for kicks.
|
| These days I think the best thing you can do is ignore it. Let it
| distract them more than it distracts you. As you mature you'll
| find it's tempting to go look at competing products. Fine, do it,
| but people get so distracted patting themselves on the back for
| sneakily signing up for a free trial with a fake email - it's
| mostly a waste of time.
|
| If you are in a competitive space and competitors have features
| you lack, prospects/churns will tell you. If they never do, you
| gain nothing by checking the competition out.
| pid-1 wrote:
| It's your product.
|
| Add to your terms of service competitors are not allowed.
|
| Tell them to eat grass.
| op00to wrote:
| Why should you do anything?
| productceo wrote:
| Say there are two companies, A and B.
|
| A spends time and effort thinking about how to block B from
| getting better.
|
| B spends time and effort thinking about how to be better for
| customers.
|
| Which do you think will win? Or should win?
|
| Guide your actions accordingly.
| InCityDreams wrote:
| Isn't it all eventually just down to luck?
| productceo wrote:
| Depends on what you mean by luck.
|
| If you mean waiting idly wishing that a particular event
| would happen in this world, then no.
|
| If you mean taking the same event that happened, and finding
| how to find ways to make the most out of it, then yes.
|
| It is always about luck, not one you wish to receive from the
| outside, but one you create from the inside.
| smoe wrote:
| Be happy! You have gotten big enough for someone to care enough
| about you to include your company in their competitor analysis. I
| reckon most founders don't get that far.
| brobinson wrote:
| Post about it on HN, free publicity to a relevant audience that
| won't feel like advertising.
|
| Kidding. Just look at it as a sign that you've made it. You're
| now on the radar. Get back to work and stay ahead.
| anthropodie wrote:
| This is so true.
|
| Once the world recognizes that you have made it, it kind of
| turns on you. But hey, what does not kill you only makes you
| stronger.
| perlgeek wrote:
| Use it for marketing. "Even our close competitors use our
| service!"
| altdataseller wrote:
| I've seen this before with a startup I started years ago. in a
| few years we were acquired by that competitor :)
| the_gipsy wrote:
| At least you can snoop on what they are trying out. If they had
| used some disguised email, you wouldn't have this information.
| version_five wrote:
| I don't really see how your question is materially different from
| "what do you do when you have a competitor". Unless your business
| model or strategy explicitly assumes you can keep some piece of
| knowledge from the competition, you should expect competitors to
| know about your product and it's features, and need to plan your
| strategy accordingly. What do you feel is changed by the fact
| that you've observed them sign up for your product?
|
| FWIW, I personally believe that companies can and should co-exist
| peacefully in the same space. I would love an opportunity to talk
| to anyone who runs or works at a company that competes with mine,
| and as others have mentioned, you should take the opportunity to
| reach out, tell them about your business and answer any questions
| they have, and ask them all the questions you can. This is a way
| for both of your companies to learn and grow, and understand each
| other better so you can play to your own business's strength.
|
| Unless you're in some weird "there can only be one" market,
| competition is not something to fear if you have a solid product
| dazc wrote:
| Your competitor may also be on HN.
| xory wrote:
| Early on, we obsessed over this--researching every odd-looking
| email. Being in regulatory compliance, we had no shortage of
| attorneys around us, so I asked our main one about it, and to my
| surprise, he's like, let them in, let them pay. Let them focus on
| you while you focus on their customers.
|
| At a minimum, you can tell potential customers that they are a
| paying customer when asked about them (that's the best way for
| them to find out, you know).
|
| At most, you have, in some cases, paid proof and audit logs of
| your competitor is spying on your product. Assuming your Ts and
| Cs are decent, wait until they grow or raise and drop a lawsuit
| or threat of one in their lap. Send a copy to their suitor. That
| will affect their raise or acquisition.
|
| Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer, I just spend a lot of time talking
| to them.
| D-Coder wrote:
| > At a minimum, you can tell potential customers that they are
| a paying customer when asked about them (that's the best way
| for them to find out, you know).
|
| "Even our competitors are using our product!" I love it.
| corobo wrote:
| I'd extend their trial period if I was in a cheeky mood
| ffhhj wrote:
| Years ago I found a niche on creative editing, checked all
| editors and found these lacked a good visual tool. After several
| months of work released the first no-code tool in this niche.
| About a year later competitors arrived, one from Asia and another
| from Brazil. They made simpler copies of my tool, but got
| something right that I didn't understand previously: users wanted
| pre-designed assets and scenes. They also had communities already
| created to support with installs and ratings. Didn't get annoyed
| at this, I could still build a better tool and copy their ideas.
| I would be annoyed if a large company was the one smashing my
| app. In some way they contributed to my way of thought teaching
| me something valuable on user needs and promotion.
| mmaunder wrote:
| Don't let them live rent free in your head. Innovation comes from
| a calm and quiet place. Focus on your customers and invent new
| ways to use your team's unique superpowers to delight them.
| matchagaucho wrote:
| The "right" thing to do is anticipate their gtm strategy and
| compete head-to-head.
|
| The "fun" thing to do is write code that in effect does:
| IF( user.email.endsWith( COMPETITOR_DOMAIN_NAME ) ){ //
| Troll away. Lull them into thinking you have limited features.
| }
| kingcharles wrote:
| I actually did this at one company, but based on their IP range
| of their offices, and in the page load function.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Treat them like any valued customer and book their payments!
|
| You can't stop it from happening, and if you can't serve your
| customers better than the competition, consider being cheaper.
| Remember, you can only pick two of:
|
| 1. quality
|
| 2. service
|
| 3. price
|
| It's how the free market works.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| When I worked at future shop / best buy 25 years ago, it was part
| of our job to weekly go to Staples / Office Depot / Radio Shack
| to write down prices, product placement, customer experience,
| worker knowledge etc.
|
| Not saying I enjoyed it, but it taught me at early age that
| Competition awareness in some form or another is a baseline for a
| business owner.
|
| They seem to be upfront and open about it. Depending on your
| market and placement, you can even use it as an opportunity to
| reach out. In some markets it's a closed sum, in some markets
| it's a rising tide lifts all ships.
| davidkuennen wrote:
| I'm signed up for all of my competitor products. It's pretty
| normal I assume.
| js4ever wrote:
| Hey Nyellin, my competitors are doing it as well, I do it myself,
| everyone is doing it. From my POV it's perfectly normal and you
| should be expecting it and ready for it.
| nyellin wrote:
| Thanks, appreciate the answer
| intrasight wrote:
| I assume that you also sign up for their services. It's an
| important part of your business research and is totally legit.
|
| The weirdest thing that ever happened to me was when someone, in
| same line of work as me, signed up - and he had the same first
| and last name as mine.
| rg111 wrote:
| Yes, this is normal.
|
| I have even seen non-Saas competitors sign up under false
| pretense, names, new emails- and get private demos, special
| trials, and so on.
|
| Here, their honesty is a positive point.
|
| If I were you, I would even reach out to them for direct
| feedback. They are paying customers, and you are the provider,
| and you are within your rights to reach out to them.
|
| It will be a show of good sportsmanship.
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| Good point. They have already shown good sportsmanship by
| signing up under real identities, so it's quite possible
| they'll even extend that to providing useful feedback.
| ewalk153 wrote:
| You might even be able to recruit them at some point in the
| future.
|
| Every touch is an opportunity.
| ISL wrote:
| I'd go so far as to see competition doing research as a
| compliment.
|
| Keep an eye on features that they find interesting. There may
| be a reason.
|
| As far as reacting to their presence on your service, the
| golden rule is a great place to start.
| anonymousiam wrote:
| Great point. Reaching out to them is an opportunity to
| understand their use-case and motivations. Perhaps they are
| interested in some sort of merger/partnership?
| someweirdperson wrote:
| A partnership like agreeing on prices for the same kind of
| service? I skipped my last mandatory compliance training, but
| something tells me that this might not be a good idea.
| JTBooth wrote:
| A partnership where you send each other customers that are
| a better fit for the other's product, is the standard
| level-1 truce here. If a customer calls you ticked off that
| you don't have some feature, and you know the competitor
| has it and you're not going to build it, fire the customer
| at your competition!
| unyttigfjelltol wrote:
| And you can remind them your TOS that they accepted does not
| allow reverse engineering.
| fsckboy wrote:
| ... but they can download your open source, it's easier
| anyway
| kingcharles wrote:
| I had this happen, but it created an ethical and legal problem
| which I had to solve.
|
| I ran a site taking mortgage leads from websites and auctioning
| them off to brokers. The bulk of the site was the dashboard for
| brokers buying leads. You had to be a real (legal) broker and to
| see the whole system you had to bid on and buy leads of real
| people.
|
| One of my competitors managed to get a real broker ID and get
| registered and bid on some leads and bought some. They didn't
| call the customers, but that alone made our system look bad as it
| is presumed the customer wanted to talk to a broker.
|
| I actually called the competitor up and got hold of the tech guy
| who had made the account. We had a good conversation and I
| suggested we exchange dummy accounts so we could see inside each
| other's systems, in the spirit of friendly competition. He
| agreed, and from then on we could see inside each other's sites
| and bid and buy fake leads.
|
| (Disclaimer: I was already seeing inside their system as I had a
| broker friend near the office who would let me go to his office
| and watch over his shoulder as he used their system.)
| bg24 wrote:
| You solve a problem in this space in an elegant manner. I have
| seen your product in action.
|
| Interestingly, your space is part of a broader observability
| spectrum, so expect your tech and workflows to be copied by
| competition. The challenge will be when it is offered as a
| feature as part of a broader product by your competition.
|
| As for direct competition watching your product, IMHO you should
| prevent it to an extent possible - particularly the closed-source
| (eg. UI workflows) part. It is hard to see someone else copy your
| idea even before you had a chance to make $$.
| rvz wrote:
| > Is there anything we should or even can do about this? Or is
| this form of competitive research simply unavoidable?
|
| It is unavoidable. The best example of this is Clubhouse. Many of
| the top social media founders created accounts there, all
| chatting and agreeing that _' it is the future of having group
| discussions'_ only for them to copy Clubhouse later and never
| come back. This is what they do.
|
| You have to be paranoid and ask tons of _' what ifs'_ about your
| competitors next moves and get there before they try to roll out
| something that can seriously lure customers away from you.
| [deleted]
| Vaslo wrote:
| What is a day 2 operation?
| js4ever wrote:
| It's monitoring/maintenance after day 1 (initial setup)
| nyellin wrote:
| Monitoring, responding to alerts, tracking changes that
| developers roll out (so you can realize when one causes a
| problem), etc
| hedora wrote:
| You need to figure out what your competitive moat will be, and
| then focus on that.
|
| It needs to be something the other startup cannot easily
| replicate. It could be core technical competence in your team,
| having the only product that doesn't completely suck (easier done
| than said, it turns out) or business innovations, such as
| disintermediation of an incumbent.
|
| If you can't do any of these things, then you're just one of
| multiple non-differentiated offerings in your space, and you are
| at a scale disadvantage vs some incumbent.
| frindo wrote:
| I regularly chat with folks running competitors to my business.
| It's a fairly niche space so there's not many people who
| understand what we're dealing with day to day.
|
| I remove them from my user forums when I see them join, mostly
| because I like to post my product roadmap there. They could join
| pseudonymously, but time spent worrying about competitors is time
| better spent thinking about other stuff.
|
| End of the day, a competitor can only beat you by building a
| better product or doing better marketing. Neither of those is
| possible by copying.
| drfuchs wrote:
| One word: Recruit!
| riffic wrote:
| be good to them, because you'd want them to be good to you.
| tluyben2 wrote:
| I would say it is unavoidable; you can kick them off but then
| they will sign back on with something you cannot identify. I
| myself always try to communicate with them and see if there is
| room for cooperation. You would be surprised how much we got from
| that. Notably companies we thought were far more advanced (size,
| sale or feature wise) than we are and finding out they are not.
| And in one occasion we ended up buying them because they were
| incompletely over their heads and were trying our system to see
| if we had the same issue (we did not).
| ilikehurdles wrote:
| At least they're being honest. Product people at a company I used
| to work for about 8 years ago would make calls to competitors
| pretending to be an interested client, and gather details about
| their offerings from their sales people.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-03-26 23:01 UTC)