It depends on your market. Some ideas are winner take all (e.g., Google, Facebook, Linkedin, Youtube) while other ideas can have multiple major market players (

It depends on your market. Some ideas are winner take all (e.g., Google, Facebook, Linkedin, Youtube) while other ideas can have multiple major market players (e.g., Uber, Lyft, etc.). Depending upon your market, you may or may not have to worry. In my opinion, the best way to a successful start-up is to ensure that your own economics works (cost of customer acquisition + cost of serving customer < life time value of the customer). If your company can be profitable, it really doesn't matter what your 'competitors' are doing. In fact, focusing too much on your competitors can be a very bad thing. If you idea falls into the camp of winner takes all, then you will need to raise money to capture the market. In reality, very few start-ups fall into winner take all and the fact that there is funding in this space is a good thing. You don't ever want to work on an idea that cannot be validated in the market.