> If you never contemplated the possibility that you'd have competition, and that the competition might be better funded and further along than you, which is almost a given in today's market, you did not start your venture with realistic assumptions.
We always saw a lot of competition in the market (at the end, there are millions of ways people buy clothes) but didn't expect someone to be so spot on with our vision. This was real shocker. As you said, we didn't have realistic assumptions - it started as fun project and we thought we will abandon it like previous one. Only with time we realised this can really be something.
> If the existence of competition worries you enough to consider abandoning your venture before you have even launched and after you have asked others to invest money in it, you must honestly ask yourself whether you will have the stomach to keep going when you encounter real challenges, like technical hurdles that threaten your existence or disagreements with your friends/co-founders.
That's excellent questions. Luckily, after initial shock, I think this motivated us to work even harder. We don't want to give up on idea we really believe in just because someone else was couple months faster. We were postponing launching our app for a long time, and now we decided to just finish most important missing items and put it in Play store.
It also finally motivated me to reach out my network and try to at least have initial meeting with real investors in London. So far we only pitched to friends who probably might have been a bit too supportive.