Yesterday I found an interesting product created by two indie hackers - quickmetrics.
My first reaction was - wow! How brave are these guys?! If I were in their place with such an idea, I would research the market and google the competitors. And what would I see? That an ocean is red, many sharks eat each other and everything around them.
You have myriads of startups that work with metrics, and you have myriads of open source projects that solve the metrics problem.
I would be afraid a lot. I am sure that the folks did analyze the market and that they knew about the competitors. But they anyway decided to build the product, and they have first real paying customers, which proves something.
For me, it proves that: The world is vast, and there is enough space for everyone, and there are enough problems to solve. You do not need to be a sizeable monstrous corporation to build a product in a highly competing area. You can still stay small and develop products and compete with enterprise giants.
I assume that the folks used some solutions but were not satisfied and decided to solve their problem.
For me, it is a brave step. Thank you, guys, for the path that you light up!