There's nothing wrong with some healthy competition, but most business leaders would probably draw the line at spying and stealing. That's what San Francisco payments app startup Eco is alleging about a New York fintech.
Eco CEO Andy Bromberg posted a thread on Twitter Monday accusing competing startup Pebble of creating fake accounts to surreptitiously collect information about Eco's financial product to replicate key details. TechCrunch first reported the news.
"They stole our blog posts. They stole our marketing copy. They copy/pasted our T&Cs and Privacy Policy. They copied our funnel questions. They stole our idea of checking if users have Metam*sk. There’s too much to post," Bromberg tweeted.
Uber co-founder Garrett Camp founded Eco in 2018 as a decentralized cryptocurrency project, as Fortune reported at the time. It now offers users a high-yield savings and spending platform that offers up to 5% cash back and 5% earnings on deposits, as well as what it calls an "open rewards currency," or Eco Points.
"Eco is one simple balance that lets you spend, send, save and make money," the website says.
Eco has raised nearly $95 million through a Series B that was announced last year and its investors include Andreessen Horowitz, according to PitchBook.
New York-based Pebble was founded three years later by CEO Aaron Bai and CTO Sahil Phadnis and was accepted into Y Combinator's Winter 2022 batch. The company has raised just over $6 million from investors including Y Combinator, Lob and Alt founder Leore Avidar, Soma Capital and Odell Beckham Jr., according to Crunchbase.
Pebble also offers 5% cash back, 5% earnings and a rewards system "without barriers" which it calls Pebbles.
"We're the first app that pays you to save, spend, and send your money — all in one balance," Pebble's website says.
The marketing copy at both websites definitely looks very similar.
Both companies market themselves as "not a bank," and Bromberg alleges that Pebble's founders didn't just take inspiration from Eco, but rather, that they pretended to be users to steal intellectual property.
He's not interested in suing Pebble, though, according to TechCrunch.
"If the copycat founders liked our ideas, they could have come to us and worked together on something — even as their own company. In fact, they still can," Bromberg tweeted.
Bromberg also posted screenshots of conversations that he presumably had with investors who apparently passed on Pebble because they could tell the startup was copying Eco.
"I mean, these guys are comedians," one message says.
He then speculates that they were either duped or "turned a blind eye," and tagged several investors including Y Combinator, Eniac Ventures, Lightshed, Montage Ventures, The House Fund, Global Founders Capital, Bluewatch Ventures, Odell Beckham, Jr., Leore Avidar and Matt Bellamy.
Pebble's co-founders reportedly got in touch with Bromberg after the Twitter thread was published. Bai and Phadnis told TechCrunch they had a "respectful" conversation but maintain a "difference of opinion." And Phadnis confirmed to TechCrunch that he created multiple fake accounts to access Eco's platform essentially for research.
I reached out to Y Combinator for comment and will update this story if they respond. An email that I sent to Bai requesting comment immediately bounced back as undeliverable.
