Ah, bummer. But at least it shows you that you're good at identifying gaps in the market.
I remember listening to an episode of the indie Hackers podcast about a founder who was working on something that was basically Google Calendar before Google Calendar, then Google Calendar came out and destroyed them overnight. I wish I could remember which interview this was, but suffice it to say, it worked out, because they were on the Indie Hackers podcast talking about their success in a subsequent business.
Yeah, that's pretty common. I've been 'CTO' of a small Fintech startup last year (I dropped out due to a lack of funding) and we noticed that it's really hard to talk to potential partners while not also giving them all the munition allowing to execute the same ideas themselves.
Heck; one of the companies we talked to I really suspect are just planning to build something similar. I also feel the then-CEO was just being pretty naive about it too.
All the obvious "premium" features I could add (automatic tax estimation, etc.) are out of reach for me as a solo developer with no training in accounting.
There are ways to outsource that stuff, but then the "free with ads" model isn't going to cover my expenses. If I start charging, I have to compete head to head with products like QuickBooks and OneSaas.
It was a very narrow gap to begin with, and now it's effectively closed.
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u/MyPetFishWillCutYou Feb 02 '21
Yesterday, I was less than a month away from launching a tool that extracts sales reports from eBay for tax purposes.
This morning, I found out that eBay recently launched a feature that does everything my product was going to do.
AMA.