I run a knowledge base software company (Helpjuice). For years, our main competitor has been copying our features with remarkable precision. At first, we thought it was normal competition, but it's gotten... interesting.<p>The pattern:
- They sign up to our platform / or see ongoing developemtn
- Study our feature changes
- Launch identical copies 2-6 months later
- Even inherit our exact bugs
- Copy our marketing copy word-for-word<p>Some examples:
- They copy our feature names exactly
- Used our headline as their email subject
- When we have a bug, they get it too (6 months later)
- Their UI/UX is identical (but purple)<p>The fascinating part? They've done this to multiple companies in our space. Other CEOs (KnowledgeOwl, Slite, Bloomfire) have similar stories except with malicious marketing practices from them.
Even better: They write comparison pages with false information about competitors, get caught, apologize, then "accidentally restore" the same false claims months later.<p>When we launched our latest feature (Wizardshot - got 6,000 users in 2 months), their team immediately signed up. Our engineers are running a betting pool on when - not if - they'll copy it.<p>Questions:
- How would you handle this?
- Has anyone experienced something similar?
- At what point does copying cross the line?<p>Context: Been in business 13 years, bootstrapped, profitable. This isn't hurting us - it's almost entertaining at this point. Just curious how others would approach this.
don’t have personal experience with this, but it sounds super frustrating!! On the flip side, maybe take it as a compliment if they’re that fixated on copying you.
Just focus on your own race, hard to see what else you could realistically do about it.