[bootstrapper35]

I remember it too. I think it's not purely the case you described in your first comment. We are talking bootstrapping here but they have poured 10M into it of their own money, which is not a bad funding round at all? The competing product was another startup, not a big co.

Also, they not only destroyed them on marketing, but the founder himself admitted that he noticed their product just got better over time plus they had core issues with their own product (no cross platform apps from the start, bugs, they had to rewrite all their clients) - so the competing offering was not sub-par, at least not in the long term and it turned out that the original product had issues before the competing product even arrived.

I'm curious though, are there any examples of a big corp cloning a small product and driving it out of existence? Or similar VC-backed vs. no VC-backed startups.

[tpoacher]

yes I remember the full story was less black and white, but still something useful to keep in mind.