He even signed up using an email address from the competing product domain. At least maybe use a gmail or something like that 
What do you do in this case? Cancel the account, contact him or just let him have some fun? I’ll just cancel the account for now.
I always just leave them. They can always sign up with gmail and you’d never know so what’s the difference.
Expect the competition to come in and have a look-see at any time. Ignore them. Stay focused on your customers and solving their problems. Make them really successful. Nothing else matters.
Congratulations. You just need to be hacked/cracked and then you can consider yourself an industry veteran. ;0)
What do you have to hide? If you are worried they are going to copy your features that can only mean they are playing catchup.
Not sure I would cancel the account as it may just make them pay even more attention.
The good news though, if they found you, so will some of their potential and existing customers. Feels like a good thing to me ;0)
Thanks for all the good feedback guys. I’ll just let him go nuts with his trial and keep focusing on my customers
Heh, we always get competitors sniffing around our app. They follow us on twitter, email in using fake e-mail addresses to ask questions about how we do certain things. I’ve even had a competitor contact us for a demo, which we duly obliged
90% of your business is under your product. I wouldn’t worry about it at all. We just did a whole podcast episode on why you shouldn’t worry about competitors that you can find here.
http://www.startupsfortherestofus.com/episodes/217-why-you-shouldnt-worry-about-competitors
Bottom line, let it go. It’s not a big deal.
That’s a great episode!
The more you concentrate on competition, the more you lose your own edge.
Also check your competitor’s terms of use before signing up. The terms often contain a no-copy, no-derive clause so that they can sue any competitors signing up.
Thanks! I’m putting a similar topic into my book.
Wow, I hadn’t even considered the possibility that someone might add that to the TOS. Seems to me like that might be pretty tough to enforce. I’d love to see the legal precedent where someone was sued over this kind of thing and it actually held up in court. My guess is that it’s there as a scare tactic rather than something that’s really enforceable.
In my day job I work for a large enterprise. Competitors sign up for demos all the time. We often suppress their domains from marketing comms, but other than that it isn’t something we lose sleep over. I would take it as a complement.
There are occasional legal battles, but this is the enterprise so it probably not worth your time to go beyond getting basic TOS etc.
I agree that you shouldn’t be focusing on the competition. It’s good that they are focusing on you