Ask HN: VC-funded startup lurking in my community Slack – how to respond?

You gotta trap them somehow and prove damages.

I’m not a lawyer though so just a guess.

Don't worry about it and just focus on serving the customers you have.

Hell, announce to the people that these guys are offering thousands of dollars to switch to the inferior product. Take control of the narrative and turn it against them.

- Make sure to post on the community that this is happening and people should help call them out

- Use this to bolster your messaging and differentiation. Needs work, but will pay off in long run

- Start monitoring their keyword/domain name via tools like F5bot (or others) and start inserting yourself in those conversations. AI agents now make this possible for small teams as well. Play their game. And beat them at it.

You could also ask your community members to adopt the email/messaging protocol which will require legitimate emails to include parameters which you and your community members can decide on.

Check this profile for the email if you wanna ask for more info or get updates.

Best defense is making your customers so happy they won't switch, but tactically:

- Create a private Slack/Discord for paying customers only (harder for them to infiltrate) - Move community to a platform with anonymous usernames (Something similar to Reddit-style forums or Discord with display names) - Add some soft vendor lock-in -- a bit evil but sometimes necessary - just maintain the balance between retention and not being user-hostile

On a positive side, if a VC funded startup is this desperate to poach your users, you're clearly doing something right.

- from fellow wannabe bootstrapper