Are they just following you? If so, follow back and offer support. Even direct competitors can support each other in a way that becomes mutually beneficial. I support my fellow direct competitors all the time because customers/clients might need different things or prefer different brands, but I tend to be a "tide raises all ships" kinda person (and it's paid off).
Are they acting shady? Remove as a follower or block, whichever you feel like doing.
Considering it's Twitter, people can just make another account and look at your stuff from there, so I'd tend to just remove them as a follower UNLESS they're shitposting about you and trying to drag you or your brand down (then outright block, then write a post about why that behavior will sink a brand fast and destroy trust from future clients and fellow competitors -- basically use it to your advantage and control the narrative to make it good PR for you).
I just read the conversation between you and Joda. There's a difference between a direct competitor and someone who legit cloned your app.
If it's someone who cloned your app, I'd:
- remove as a follower then ignore them because ultimately they shouldn't affect what you're doing -- stay in your lane and worry about yourself and what you're doing
- write a post about it (in vague terms, not calling out the person) -- something about creativity and innovation aren't outright cloning and how we can all bring something different to the table to make similar-but-different products, etc.
Right, in the original case (not this person) where someone cloned my app after abusing a free trial to gain intel, I called them out directly on X, blocked them, and had my payment processor blacklist their email globally. Apparently they had been a problem for other businesses as well as I was told it wasn't the first time someone had complained about that customer email haha
Big fucking yikes. You did the right thing with that. What's funny is they're so stupid. You'd think if they wanted to be a sneaky-sneak, they'd at least create different emails lol
Yeah they were big stupid. They reached out in a "solo founders" telegram group I'm in to tell me that they liked my product and they were going to give it a try for their own group
Then I saw them start a trial. After a few days, when I noticed they hadn't done much with the trial except log into the dashboard and look at all the settings, I reached out -> radio silence
The trial expired and a charge was attempted and they used a stolen or limited credit card, so it failed. Then they quickly canceled their subscription, maybe hoping I didn't notice the failed charge. At that point I looked at their Twitter and saw they had just launched a competing product with a very similar logo and landing page haha
I called them out in that group for pulling that kind of move (and abusing a trial) as well as the tweet I mentioned.
So reckless and stupid. The community of people actually creating and shipping products is pretty small, so it's mind blowing people think they can get away with this...then continue to fuck over other people.
Anyway, I'm glad you were able to ban the email address, and hopefully he's too stupid to create a new one as a workaround. These people don't last in the game anyway.
Yeah, just a follow for now. They didn't clone anything as far as I know and I didn't even know they existed until recently; they started a few years before me.
I may follow back at some point, but I think it would be too tempting for me to keep looking at their posts and subconsciously adjust my own roadmap.
Instead I just want to focus on listening to what people ask me for and ship accordingly.
If following them back is going to derail you, it's not worth it at all. Stick with your game plan and strategy.
Ultimately, we don't know someone else's strategy (or if they have one (lots of people don't) or if it's even working), so if you start to switch up what you're doing/how you're doing it because you got distracted by someone else, it could lead you to a dead end.
Keep holding the line with your approach. You're already doing things right by listening to people and giving them what they ask for.
Are they just following you? If so, follow back and offer support. Even direct competitors can support each other in a way that becomes mutually beneficial. I support my fellow direct competitors all the time because customers/clients might need different things or prefer different brands, but I tend to be a "tide raises all ships" kinda person (and it's paid off).
Are they acting shady? Remove as a follower or block, whichever you feel like doing.
Considering it's Twitter, people can just make another account and look at your stuff from there, so I'd tend to just remove them as a follower UNLESS they're shitposting about you and trying to drag you or your brand down (then outright block, then write a post about why that behavior will sink a brand fast and destroy trust from future clients and fellow competitors -- basically use it to your advantage and control the narrative to make it good PR for you).
I just read the conversation between you and Joda. There's a difference between a direct competitor and someone who legit cloned your app.
If it's someone who cloned your app, I'd:
- remove as a follower then ignore them because ultimately they shouldn't affect what you're doing -- stay in your lane and worry about yourself and what you're doing
- write a post about it (in vague terms, not calling out the person) -- something about creativity and innovation aren't outright cloning and how we can all bring something different to the table to make similar-but-different products, etc.
Right, in the original case (not this person) where someone cloned my app after abusing a free trial to gain intel, I called them out directly on X, blocked them, and had my payment processor blacklist their email globally. Apparently they had been a problem for other businesses as well as I was told it wasn't the first time someone had complained about that customer email haha
Big fucking yikes. You did the right thing with that. What's funny is they're so stupid. You'd think if they wanted to be a sneaky-sneak, they'd at least create different emails lol
Yeah they were big stupid. They reached out in a "solo founders" telegram group I'm in to tell me that they liked my product and they were going to give it a try for their own group
Then I saw them start a trial. After a few days, when I noticed they hadn't done much with the trial except log into the dashboard and look at all the settings, I reached out -> radio silence
The trial expired and a charge was attempted and they used a stolen or limited credit card, so it failed. Then they quickly canceled their subscription, maybe hoping I didn't notice the failed charge. At that point I looked at their Twitter and saw they had just launched a competing product with a very similar logo and landing page haha
I called them out in that group for pulling that kind of move (and abusing a trial) as well as the tweet I mentioned.
So reckless and stupid. The community of people actually creating and shipping products is pretty small, so it's mind blowing people think they can get away with this...then continue to fuck over other people.
Anyway, I'm glad you were able to ban the email address, and hopefully he's too stupid to create a new one as a workaround. These people don't last in the game anyway.
Yeah this was over 6 months ago. He completely gave up as I predicted he would and the clone site is offline.
Very few people are actually willing to commit to building something over the long term.
Yeah, just a follow for now. They didn't clone anything as far as I know and I didn't even know they existed until recently; they started a few years before me.
I may follow back at some point, but I think it would be too tempting for me to keep looking at their posts and subconsciously adjust my own roadmap.
Instead I just want to focus on listening to what people ask me for and ship accordingly.
If following them back is going to derail you, it's not worth it at all. Stick with your game plan and strategy.
Ultimately, we don't know someone else's strategy (or if they have one (lots of people don't) or if it's even working), so if you start to switch up what you're doing/how you're doing it because you got distracted by someone else, it could lead you to a dead end.
Keep holding the line with your approach. You're already doing things right by listening to people and giving them what they ask for.