That's true, the MTurk questions he asked are very similar.
It could maybe be coincidental, since that's basically the default things you'd ask someone when trying to understand pain points and product ideas, but I do see your point since it seems like it's the same 4 questions.
I work in the eCommerce/re-seller business. In particular I sell products on Amazon. Specifically Amazon FBA.
As my business is scaling up it is becoming more difficult to keep track of what we scoured for product in the field and the costs associated with it. Tracking COGS and the sources to monitor and report would be great.
The software would need to be something mobile so I can put in the costs, source of product and expected profits. It would also need to be linked to Amazon.
Yes I would pay for this software.
Theirs:
I sell vinyl records on eBay, Amazon, Discogs, and Etsy.
I find it time-consuming to list products on each of these different sites.
Software that facilitated the listing and cross-listing of products would save me time and make me more money because I have far too much product on hand and not enough time to list it. Ideally the software could automatically pull info from one listing on one site and populate the other sites for me.
It's also possible he had the a related idea, saw yours, felt that it validated his thinking, then mostly stole your content and personalized it to himself.... however who knows what he'll do next. He could have done all those things just to get started because it was easier, now he could end up tweaking and refining it over the next month or so into something that may not even closely resemble your vision any more.
I've literally ripped a the summary i found from someone else's LinkedIn summary, tweaked (personalized for moi) it, published it because it was way better than mine and then over the ensuing week tweaked it again and again to the point that it didn't even resemble the original in any way. It just provided the foundation for moving in my own direction. Essentially i used that person's inspiration and came up with my own totally unique interpretation.
This guy could be doing that too. Good link bait though. Not classy, but good for sure.
Look, you're clearly very bitter about this. You should think about what you're doing for a minute and decide whether this is good PR.
If you think he's copying your MTurk generated ideas, go ahead and call him out. Don't write up a "competition is great" and "we're getting along well over the phone" nonsense. You're not buying it, we're not buying it.
What I recommend is you take the high road. As in don't dox your user base and keep on improving your product.
For what it's worth, you sitting on this until he paraphrased more than two email (e.g. like 10+) and then posting a "competition is okay, but plagiarism is not" article would have fared much better.
in this case surely he has 'stolen'/adapted/taken inspiration from your operations not the idea?
I am a big fan of anybody who manages to push a project into production, so the last thing in the World I want to do is be demeaning about somebody's project - nonetheless, I imagine at least one person has 'invented' a similar version of this idea every month for the past few years at least.
Luckily, it is operating that separates the wheat from the chaff.
It could maybe be coincidental, since that's basically the default things you'd ask someone when trying to understand pain points and product ideas, but I do see your point since it seems like it's the same 4 questions.