After years of building in public, I'm scared that you're right. But the problem is, my app is now live (benji.so), and it's publicly out there for people with VC money to start copying features from it ...
author here: for me it was important because after a while the app I was using was stale and wasn't shipping updates anymore. Also, as I was learning more about productivity, I reached the limits of the app. I wanted more features and I was coming up with tons of ideas that I could implement into my app, and other devs wouldn't care about implementing these ideas. I wanted control. So I finally shipped Benji (https://benji.so)
It's named after my dog Benji haha. Yes you're right, I'm not gonna mention any competitors, especially on a viral HN article :) There's a chance I might make a /comparison page in the future though.
Sorry to hear that. As someone who actually shipped a lot of things, i'm still going through the "I believe in it" and "don't believe in it" cycle almost daily. Don't let that stop you.