Ask HN: Competitor launched – reach out or keep going?
2 grandinquistor 2 5/25/2025, 10:49:33 PM
I've been building an MVP for a startup idea after doing some market validation. It’s a solo side project (currently work full-time). I’ve put together a business plan and started development.
Just a few days ago, I discovered that another solo developer launched a beta tackling the exact same problem, with a similar approach. From what I can tell, they’re a recent grad and appear to be working on this full-time.
Now I’m unsure between two options:
1. Keep going and treat their launch as validation. The downside is they have a head start and more available time, so I risk playing catch-up.
2. Reach out and see if there’s an opportunity to team up. I have more experience, and while I don’t have a working product yet, I do have a solid business plan and partial development. I’m just not sure what kind of leverage or value proposition I’d be offering right now.
Has anyone here faced a similar situation? Any advice would be appreciated.
Estimate demand (e.g., through search engine keyword volume), estimate monetization (e.g., by working out how much you can charge in your niche) and then decide whether it is sane for more than one provider to exist in that specific niche.
If you decide to compete, realize that better execution followed by better SEO/marketing will always prevail over any head-start a competitor has. (SEO positioning takes quite a long time, so make up an excellent website and start SEO/content-marketing even before you have a product ready.)
Also, being the very first in an uncharted niche might be a disadvantage as opposed to an advantage. If you manage to learn about your competitor's mistakes (e.g., analyze on-site or app store feedback, etc.) and prevent those mistakes in your own product, you will not be wasting considerable development time/resources as your competitor did.