Friendly Competition?Don't count on it. If you do, your rivals might just steal your customers from under your nose.
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Felicia Lindau knows they're out there. Potentialcompetitors for Sparks.com, an online retailer of real greetingcards founded by the San Francisco entrepreneur one year ago withpartner Jason Monberg, 27, run the gamut, from the corner gift shopto Amazon.com. That awareness was brought home during a recentmeeting with executives of another company, supposedly to exploresetting up a strategic alliance with Lindau's 70-personfirm.
"One of them laid down a briefcase and out popped one ofour business plans from a year ago, which they had clearly[obtained] through channels we had not intended," recallsLindau, 32. "Someone to whom we had given a confidential copyof our business plan had shared it with our competition."
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