A stealth project disrupted
mechanical_fish: This is awesome news. Read this:http://www.ericsink.com/Choose_Your_Competition.htmlThe big problem with avoiding competition is that you are also avoiding customers. The existence of a competitor indicates the existence of paying customers. If you can't find anyone who is making money with your idea, you really need to wonder if there is any money to be made there at all.Now you're primed to understand me when I say: Don't give up yet. This startup is doing valuable research for you, and it isn't costing you a dime. See if you can figure out if they're making any money. See if you can find some of their customers and ask them what they think of the product. Try the product. Take their product to one of your potential customers, demo it to them, and see if they like it or not -- think of it as a prototype for your own product, except that all it cost you to develop is the cost of buying a copy from your competitor.If, perchance, the existing startup has uncovered a huge market for this kind of product, chances are they can't capture the whole market. You can grab some of it. If their product rocks and has a plugin architecture, sell a handy plugin and expand from there. If their product sucks for a certain subset of the market, build your own version. If their product just plain sucks, and they have a market anyway, take them on -- there's gold in them thar hills!More likely, there is no market and this startup will obligingly discover this for you by building a decent product and then failing anyway. You will learn from their failure, while spending nothing! And they have a three-year head start on their failure, so you might not have to wait too long!I haven't said anything about the idea, and I don't have time to research it... but based on the one-sentence pitch I urge you to read this and come to terms with it before you proceed:http://neopoleon.com/home/blogs/neo/archive/2003/09/29/5458....It's hard to believe how true that cartoon is until you've lived it. So be careful, or your customer support costs will eat your business alive.