Going anonymous for that one... I am in a similar situation. I am trying to bootstrap my startup, and someone who has exactly the same idea got some funding -

Going anonymous for that one... I am in a similar situation. I am trying to bootstrap my startup, and someone who has exactly the same idea got some funding - I don't know how much, I would guess between $500k and 1M. I spoke to the guy about two months before he got his funding, to see if we could work together, and at the end I chose not to because it was clear to me that he had no clue on how to build the product we both had in mind. How did I react to the news of his funding? I personally took it well. I am not too worried about competition given the size of our market, so it validates my idea. And if things don't go well with my unfunded startup, I will probably be able to get a job for him, so it becomes an insurance for me. So, unless your product is in a very small niche, you shouldn't worry about that. I don't recall his exact essay, but Paul Graham said that what kills startups is not competition, but rather the lack dynamism to try and try new ideas. best of luck!