What do you do when competition signs up for your service?

I'd take this as a good sign, and even an opportunity to reach out to them.

I have a funny story (but too long to get into) where I met the founder of a start-up that was in "stealth mode" and not very good at it, who told me all about his company before he found out I worked for their biggest competitor (it wasn't malicious, he just dumped all this info out).

We ended up bringing both teams together for drinks after we landed and good talks about the industry ensued, but no secrets from either side were divulged.

One way to look at it is that you've just found a group of people who look at the world the same way you do. You have a lot in common. Yes, you are going to compete for customers, but that can be viewed the same as trying to score a point in sports. Each point doesn't equal winning the game, but you want to compete for each point.

This conversation came up at work this week as we have a somewhat well funded competitor, but they are also at the very early stages, similar to us. My co-founder asked if we should reach out to them.

I didn't feel the need at this point, but have no fear of doing that later in the future.

Imagine this. If you were both at a conference together, wouldn't it be nice to be able to say hello, know who each other are, and potentially respect each other rather than put your face in the clouds and pretend they don't exist?

So, let them check you out, you can check them out. Maybe even connect on linkedin if that's your thing.

If you don't take the initiative to be a host, how would you feel if you end up being treated as a guest?

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

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".

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

If you have not done this to them, then consider this your first opportunity to learn from a competitor.

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.

(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!

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.
  }

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.

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.

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.)

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 !

Use it for marketing. "Even our close competitors use our service!"

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.

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.

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.

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.

Five minutes spent thinking about this question is five minutes you could have been talking to customers instead.

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.

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.

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.

They’re being transparent, I think that’s really respectful.

"There are many ways to center a business. You can be competitor focused, you can be product focused, you can be technology focused, you can be business model focused, and there are more. But in my view, obsessive customer focus is by far the most protective of Day 1 vitality.

Why? There are many advantages to a customer-centric approach, but here’s the big one: customers are always beautifully, wonderfully dissatisfied, even when they report being happy and business is great. Even when they don’t yet know it, customers want something better, and your desire to delight customers will drive you to invent on their behalf. No customer ever asked Amazon to create the Prime membership program, but it sure turns out they wanted it, and I could give you many such examples."

Jeff Besos

I think focusing on your customers should be the most important. Learn about competition, but don't act according to it, and let your competitors be that way if they want to

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.

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.

Reach out and say hello. Being friendly rarely backfires and often helps a lot, especially in ways you can’t predict. You might acquire them someday. They might acquire you. You both might start comparing notes. Or work together to handle an incumbent.

> 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

C'est la vie. Focus on building your product.

> 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.

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 $$.

We have a really simple way to deal with this. When competitors sign up for our platform, we send them email asking them if they see an opportunity to partner and if so to join us for a call. It's a nice way to start an open-ended conversation. Sometimes competitors actually are doing things that complement your products. We've had a number of these conversations.

As for people who just want to do competitive research and don't want talk? We reject the request. Trials cost us money and it would be silly to fund their research.

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.

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.

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-...

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...

I'm signed up for all of my competitor products. It's pretty normal I assume.

It's your product.

Add to your terms of service competitors are not allowed.

Tell them to eat grass.

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.

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.

I would sign up for their service and see if it looks like they're stealing code/patented ideas. Maybe say howdy to them via email.

At least you can snoop on what they are trying out. If they had used some disguised email, you wouldn't have this information.

Treat them as any other user/customer. Obviously you are doing something right and they want to check out their competitors.

You're a SaaS. Let your competitor discover your Software. Let your Customers discover your Service

I’ve seen this before with a startup I started years ago. in a few years we were acquired by that competitor :)

Unless you’re really big and mature company - you don’t yet have competitors - only opportunities.

I usually send them a note inviting feedback from them, and offer to do the same for them.

Provide them great service. Competition is inevitable and obscurity isn’t going to help.

I'm kind of late to this, but hopefully you see my post.

You have fallen into a losing trap.

What's your goal in this losing trap? You want to be better than that competitor? Lets say you are #1 against them. You then go looking for that next 'competitor' and you end up spending all your energy worried about being #1. There will always be someone bigger and better than you. You might grow to a point where you're comparing your dic... i mean jet size. So successful. But then Elon Musk lands his cyberplane next to yours and you lose your mind.

The moment you put this losing trap out of your mind and say to yourself... i have no competitors. You take that reclaimed energy and put it where it matters. What could your product do better? Go spend that energy on that instead. Instead of spending time on this thread, could you have instead improved something

You have no competitors. You don't even need to concern yourself with possible competitors. You are entirely focused on value. When you do this, you never have to worry about these alleged competitors.

What is a day 2 operation?

George Clooney can go watch a Brad Pitt movie, can't he?

I’d extend their trial period if I was in a cheeky mood

Build a shadow ban mode and assign them to it :)

Seems absolutely normal, nothing to worry about

Focus on your customers, just forget about it.

Your competitor may also be on HN.

Why should you do anything?

I'd just refuse to serve them. I don't think there's any law forbidding it.

be good to them, because you'd want them to be good to you.

Be glad you were able to identify them. I would’ve used a personal email with fake info.

Man, being a founder seems fucking awful. Just be the 10th employee...

One word: Recruit!

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.