I was a part of a project like this. A LOT of money was dumped into development, we built stuff from scratch, took months and months of hard work - and it felt revolutionary.

Then HUGE COMPANY X released the exact same product but 50x further along and we could never compete.

We all walked away feeling like shit, with a lot of money and time down the drain, and our tail between our legs. Most of us on the team haven't spoken since and it's been about 12 years.

Now-days I work on projects where competition doesn't really matter. There's a lot of other people doing the same thing, but we're all a little different, and just different enough that everyone who likes these types of products buys them all if they're good.