Otonomo, with nearly $55M in funding, is cloning our product
That is pretty egregious, and its also par for the course.And that is why startup companies go through all the hoops of being "stealth" and having NDAs and what not. There was a German VC firm that was, as I recall, very upfront about this. Clone a successful US company before it got to the European market.On the one hand it is great to have validation of the idea, on the other its a pain to have someone with more money in the bank able to spend it on marketing and spinning the narrative in their favor.Since the ability to get a foreign company (in this case Israeli) to do anything is limited, your best bet is to out execute them. Also, love them or hate them, having patents helps in situations like these.The reality is that if an idea is really good, the people who came up with it know it better than anyone and that gives them a tremendous advantage in terms of knowing what is important and what isn't. Companies have been known to talk about expensive and complicated features or options in order to get people trying to copy their success to waste time and money on something for which there is no actual demand. It is no doubt worth investing in understanding how one's enemies are getting their information and shutting that off if possible.