Angel Investing, Entrepreneurship & Learning

How would you handle this situation if you were in my shoes?

Over the past year, we’ve noticed quite a few people copying different features and models from FundingUniverse.  Of course, we have taken notice and been a little bothered, but didn’t think that it was that big of a deal.  However, this situation takes the cake and so I thought it deserved a blog entry.

Over the weekend, I found out that 2 “members” of the FundingUniverse network have blatantly copied a ton of the FundingUniverse model to try and start their own competitive company.  When you check out Plan Heaven, you’ll notice a lot of really familiar features.  For example, you’ll notice their sorting features and table… plan name, state, industry, rating, comments, and VideoPitch — that all sounds VERY familiar.  You’ll see that they have “real-time alerts” for their investor network.

What’s even more interesting is how they have found all of that information.  It appears that the 2 have been active members of our site since February.  One of them has signed up for our entrepreneur network and has conveniently been asking a ton of questions about FundingUniverse.  The other has joined the angel network and has reviewed over 100 plans on our website.  Hmmmm… smells fishy to me.  This last week, he sent me an email to find out how he can contact the rest of the investors in our network — pretty funny, huh?

To be honest, I kind of like to see other people try to copy you.  As mentioned above, we’ve seen it quite a bit with some of the innovations that we have created (VideoPitch, SpeedPitching, Weekly Chats, etc.).  We’ll just keep doing our thing and take it as a compliment when someone copies our stuff.

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A few weeks back, we hosted a Dixie SpeedPitching luncheon in partnership with the new Dixie Angel Group and the Vegas Valley Angels. It’s exciting to see some of the angels in St. George become more structured and organized.

After the SpeedPitching luncheon, we facilitated an investor-only meeting for the 2 groups to discuss the deals and decide on interest. It appears that they’ll be taking a closer look at 3-4 of the deals that pitched at the event including:

1. uPillar.com (coming soon)
2. Browz
3. D.A.M. Truck Tools
4. In2Networks 

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Chris Knudsen wrote a blog entry about a year ago about the difficulty of being a CEO. While I don’t argue that being a CEO is difficult, it’s the “specialists” and the “monday morning QBs” (as he puts it) that really allow the company to grow and be successful (Chris: I still love ya :)). Here are a few of the people in my life that work their tails off to make FundingUniverse (and me as the CEO) look good:

1. My wife: I don’t want to get too personal here (because I could go on all day about her), but my wife is truly amazing. Her support, encouragement, patience, and love is what motivates me and keeps me going.

2. My partners: Trent, Jeff, Briana, and Josh are incredibly talented. They have made a ton of sacrifices to make FundingUniverse into the company that it is today.

3. The team: when it comes down to it, you always need people on the ground (specialists) that are making things happen. We’ve got fantastic employees, partners, contractors, and advisors that know how to execute.

Sometimes the CEO will have a lot of people telling them how great they are and they soon begin to believe it. They forget that there are a whole lot of people at their side that are making things happen and ultimately results in them (as the leader) getting recognition.

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