discovered a competitor after a few weeks of heads down -- i will not promote

i started a contracting engagement recently that opened my eyes to an unserviced niche that i have some connections in. i had a list of about 50 prospective clients that were companies taking requests via web forms, likely minimal or weak CRM, no ability to buy immediately on the website, etc. it seemed like a golden goose, and somehow I missed someone doing exactly what I was about to start proposing to these clients. i discovered they'd also raised ~$8M since 2021, although they pivoted 2 years ago into