Unicaus NEWS
A founder claims that he was threatened and bullied by a customer over a simple tech glitch (Representational image)
Who is Om Patel?
Om Patel is the Indo-Canadian founder of BigIdeasDB. In a September 2025 interview with Indieniche, the 16-year-old had described his startup as “a platform that helps entrepreneurs and founders discover validated startup ideas by analyzing real user complaints from G2 reviews, App Store reviews, and Reddit threads.”
Patel learned to code at the age of 12, during the Covid pandemic. He launched BigIdeasDB in early 2024, and it has since generated over CAD$23,000 in revenue ( ₹15 lakh approximately).
The customer’s problem
Earlier this week, a customer named Adam emailed Om Patel and called his product a scam. Adam demanded an immediate refund, failing which he threatened to post negative feedback about BigIdeasDB on “every Hackernews article and Reddit post”.
“Hi, as you know, this product is clearly a scam.
“The content is fake, the login does not work (redirects to localhost), the platform is broken. Either refund immediately or I will:
– Charge back via credit card
– Contact Stripe and ensure they remove your integration
– Comment on every Hackernews article and Reddit post mentioning this platform,” the email said.
Founder’s response
Adam’s email was sent at 9.45 pm. Within four minutes, Patel responded saying an update had been pushed which would fix the problem within 30 minutes.
“Somehow, a pull request was merged into main with a redirect to localhost (that’s why you weren’t able to get in) after the Stripe Webhook was created,” he explained.
“I can assure you this product is NOT a scam, just a simple misunderstanding and that’s 100% on our part,” the 16-year-old tech founder added.
The customer, however, failed to buy this explanation and reiterated his demand for an immediate refund.
Founder hits back
After the customer’s last hostile email, demanding a full refund, Om Patel took to X to share screenshots of their exchange. He accused Adam of trying to “destroy” his startup and his reputation.
Patel claimed that the customer’s threats continued even after a refund was processed.
“Someone just tried to destroy my startup and reputation over a 30-second bug fix,” he said. “despite immediately fixing the issue, he called it a “complete scam”, threatened chargebacks, threatened to contact Stripe to remove our integration…” he wrote.
Patel explained that the customer, Adam, had purchased a subscription to his product but found the login issue within minutes.
“I offered a full refund immediately. No questions asked. Problem solved, right? Wrong. Even AFTER processing his refund, he continued with threats and hostile messages,” he said.
(Also read: Indian tech CEO gets dragged for his reply to a customer’s complaint: ‘You clearly have no idea’)
The 16-year-old entrepreneur accused the customer of bullying him because of his age.
“Imagine being so entitled that a 30-second technical glitch makes you try to destroy a 16-year-old’s entire future,” he wrote on X.
The internet rallied behind the young entrepreneur, with many advising him to focus on building his startup rather than engaging with difficult customers.
