I've freelanced on projects before where this has happened. It's just validation of the idea.
In my, admittedly limited, experience, when a project carries on regardless, usually it means the project managers can use weaknesses of the new competitor to further improve their product.
In my one experience where they canned the project as someone had already beaten them, I remember noticing some time after that the competition were no longer operating.
On a side note, I'm working on some smaller scale SaaS side project pieces, I have no idea if I have any skills that could be of use but let me know if some assistance could help you out.
In my, admittedly limited, experience, when a project carries on regardless, usually it means the project managers can use weaknesses of the new competitor to further improve their product.
In my one experience where they canned the project as someone had already beaten them, I remember noticing some time after that the competition were no longer operating.
On a side note, I'm working on some smaller scale SaaS side project pieces, I have no idea if I have any skills that could be of use but let me know if some assistance could help you out.