Don't You Hate Looking At The Others?

We have to do a competitive analysis for the business plan, and I admit that I hate the exercise. I want to believe that we are the first and only ones with the ideas, but we have to recognize that what we are doing is not new. What we do recognize is that we are approaching credential verifications in a different manner that will wonderfully differentiate our service / product (still don't know which to call it). Still, that doesn't take away the "I wish you didn't exist" feeling I have whenever I discover that there is another guy offering similar services. I KNOW that ours is better and more innovative, but I am sure that is how Ray Kroc felt when Wendy's popped up next door. A business associate gave me a great outlook. He said that we should welcome competitors because it justifies our existence. If no one wanted to get in our market, then investors would have a very hard time seeing the benefit. Now that is what I call a positive view! On another note, we need to change the name. My business partner hates Verify-crED. I thought that it was great because it continued the self-explanatory naming convention (it stands for "Verify Credentials"), but she thinks that is sounds like "crud". So, we decided to use our difference of opinion to our advantage by having another naming campaign. The great thing about this campaign is that we will invite our voters to use the service to better understand the great service we are providing. We are hoping that this approach will begin a PR campaign of sorts for us by others wanting to get in on the fun. We had a campaign to name Verify-ID and it was fun, so we are looking to repeat that success. If you would like to participate in the campaign to rename Verify-crED, shoot me a quick email message (jware@verify-ed.com) and I will add you to the list!