These are the 4 business situations that you should not be afraid of, no matter how and when you encounter them.

• Somebody has already built what I am trying to build.
• Somebody is already marketing what I am marketing.
• Somebody has already sold to the customer I am selling to.
• Someone is trying to sell to someone I already sold to.

Scenario one is really good because that means you can skip a lot of log work that comes with ideation and narrowing down on a concept that can be called a product out of infinite possibilities. Someone has put work in to figure out what could be the viable form you can improve upon. It’s not like you should blindly accept it, but let’s say you do a lot of efforts. You should thank them. Another point is that someone else also sees value in your vision. That’s why they have committed so much time and effort to it. It’s a good sign; it should bolster your effort to move forward.

So if someone only has built something, it can be a case that it was an open source project or something they did not follow through. But if someone is marketing it, then again you don’t have to do a lot of work – they have figured out what ICP to target, what messaging to have, and again you don’t have to blindly accept. These are the incredible fruits of competing.

It is already sold to a client. You want to sell to that means the client understands the need of the product. Now you just need to outmatch them in terms of value or user experience or price. Though I won’t recommend price. Essentially, all of the scenarios that you are afraid of are validating. Instead of taking away, they are adding more credibility to the fact that you should do this.

Well, if someone is trying to sell to someone you already sold to, hey, your product better be good enough that they wouldn’t want to switch. Other than that, I don’t know what to say. Anyone can come up with a better price.