First of all, you wrote the other party has put it on Kickstarter. That doesn't mean the product exists yet. They are just announcing it. They might in fact nev

First of all, you wrote the other party has put it on Kickstarter. That doesn't mean the product exists yet. They are just announcing it. They might in fact never ship (this happened to countless Kickstarter projects). Announcements are so much easier than actually shipping product and making customers happy so I wouldn't be too concerned about timing right now. To your questions: 1) Yes, but so what? They are probing the market for you and you get to enjoy free market research. If their KS succeeds then you know you're working on something valuable. If they fail, then either there's no demand for the product or they haven't executed well (which would be a chance for you to do better). 2) Sit back and enjoy the show. And keep working on your product. There's likely a lot of opportunity to differentiate down the road. 3) Continue and watch how their KS goes. 4) Of course not. But it's not necessarily a bad thing.