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Early-stage Startups: I have been developing an idea on my own for sometime now. Recently,a potential competitor has surfaced. Should I reach out to them? What should I do?
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Paige Oldham, Strategic CFO for 30+ yrs. Startups to $100M+ answered:

Agreeing with all the other comments, Other questions to ask are: What are the gaps in the competitor's product? How can your product fill the gaps? Can your product be a complement to their product (if they sell more, piggy-back off that so you sell more with them)? Can your product do a deeper dive in solving the customer's problem (pick a finer aspect of the solution to delve into instead of trying to do a broader solution)?

Competition doesn't have to mean head-to-head equal products duking it out. How can you work with the competition instead of against them?

Then TAKE ACTION!!! Everyone has ideas. Very few people act on them. In the land of app development, waiting a month is too long. There are precious few unique ideas out there, only limited people acting on them.

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