Hey, first things first - yes I understand that we failed on the market research part if we only now found our exact competitor, but that is the current situation so any advice is much appreciated.
Essentially we have been building a startup for freelancers (consultants) where they can share their personal page, schedule bookings, have a chat, video calls and accept payments from a single platform.
And through googling we found that no one else is doing this - so we went ahead. Got accepted into a pre-accelerator and are planning to launch at the end of this month.
But today my co-founder found this Estonian startup that launched on May 2020 with 300k seed funding which is doing the same exact thing. Like exactly the same thing.
So now obviously the question arises, is there even a point in continuing? Their website looks nice and functions really well.
I'm thinking that theoretically there is nothing wrong with having a competitor and that with this hurdle we can think even harder about how to appeal to our target audience and bring a competitive advantage. But the thing is they have done everything really well. And it's hard to think of a competitive advantage on the spot. Of course, you can try to differentiate through marketing and the product's message - but ultimately the functionality that we're offering is the same - except they have the first movers advantage.
How do you normally proceed in this case? Carry on as if nothing happened? Re-evaluate your life choices? Pivot? Niche down?
Thanks!
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