I'm in the situation where my product overlaps significantly with others but brings (IMO) some missing features and a better overall experience. I would love to launch quickly but feel I need some feature parity with competitors first.
You can't reach feature parity to an active product.
Say they have 10 developers and 200 features. You can go from 0 to 200 features in 2? years. How many new features have they added in 2 years, 100? So the cycle repeats.
Do a subset of the competitor but do it really well.
Remember the Innovator's Dilemma. Worse is better for new products, because competitors over time add so many features that they become bloated, and so a newer entrant can create a basic version that doesn't have all the features, but it has the top 1 or 2 or even 3 features that most customers want, for a lower price. This usually will win out and the cycle continues :)
I'm in the situation where my product overlaps significantly with others but brings (IMO) some missing features and a better overall experience. I would love to launch quickly but feel I need some feature parity with competitors first.