What if another indie dev launches a product similar to the one you are building?

There are lots of bread at the grocery store

I would say keep going. If their product is similar, find ways that your product stands out. Make sure to push that aspect and what makes you stand out!

just ship it!

Depends on your strategy of execution.

For eg. I am building a habit tracker and there are tons of them already in the market which were launched years ago and are doing their best at the moment.

Now breaking into such a market is surely tough but there is gotta be something that you have unique that others don't. You need to capitalize on that small fragment of the entire app that is unique, be it even design.

Next comes user acquisition and marketing. You need feedback from your customers or users to understand what is working and what is not.

Next comes customer conversion, you need to have paying customers to sustain and provide validation of your idea and business.

All in all, I would say there are a lot of steps responsible for the success of a product. Beat your competition in any of the steps and you would take the lead.

Keep building imo, most people will quit after a few months

Actually it is very common. If you have good ideas people will copy you and you will have competition. If you idea is bad then nobody will copy you.

As hard as making private rocket, spacex have blue origin to copy them . It all about how you out compete them. I would say if you know how to learn and copy what your competitor is doing it will benefit you.

You can learn from their mistake and make better move.

You just need to learn how to do it. Maybe you can checkout this article : Copy other people business is the easiest way for success

Doesn't matter if someone does the same. World is huge and there are 8 billion people on our planet. Screw It, Let's Do It ( c) Branson. Let's get as an example vehicle's produce companies. How many brands do you know? And all of them run businesses and generate income ( let's not deep into the details :) ). So you will always get a piece of pie, the question is how seriously you consider your own project and are you ready for fight?

Team up

Contact him and launch together

Keep going, it’s a big world, you never know what’s going to happen.

Netflix was terrified of Blockbuster’s online movie streaming service which was later killed off by their management not understanding the power of streaming.

I realized people customers aren't as aware of the similar tools as you are. Why do your competitors a favor?

I also struggle with that idea before. But I think it doesn't matter. Anyway, the world is a very big place.

Wait...you're building a todo list app too? ;)

I've thought about this a lot as well. Today I found an app on Twitter that answers questions with any document and I thought: I came up with this idea a long time ago! It's the classic problem with "I thought up an idea and someone else did it".

A few months ago, I presented my demo to a prospect who told me she's using another product that Google developed, and I was crushed by it, but then I realized I forgot to show her another feature that I didn't see any other competitor did, so it made me feel a bit less bad.

With that said, I tend to agree with the other comments below. See how yours can be different, and identify the exact audience if need be. If there's something you could do better that the other competitor doesn't, implement and market it. That could be a part of your USP

Then it's game time.

I think you can analyse his app, Identifying disadvantages and make yours better

big question is it better? basically the same?

different use cases? how are you marketing. is it different from them?

if your plan is to put it on product hunt and that's it then you probably should find something else.

if your doing cold email out reach or some other sustainable marketing method and you know you can build something useful I say go for it.

lol..

Continue to build.