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Or rather evaluate how long it would take you to catch up with them (in their existing state) including the hardware part - acquiring it, stocking, selling, supporting, etc - and then see if you are willing to do that knowing that you will also need to out-market them. Then sit down and think about it. Realistically you are too late and you are too few. Think about it a bit more and then drop it.
I am confused. Your reddit post[1] had some really good suggestions and advice. What makes you think HN is less hive mind-ish than most other places? And what does hive-mind has to do with the topic?
I just think that point was in bad form. There are good and bad points of reddit community (just like any other online community), this example is not one of them.
[1] http://www.reddit.com/r/startups/comments/c9q1x/so_i_have_bu...
Also; the Square site is quite confusing and unclear. You could definitely outmanoeuvre them with some effort.
Eh? So when you say "parity" you actually mean they've got heaps of features that you don't?
My advice would be to look at the niche that they're trying to serve and attack it from another angle. They're a "everyone can use it to get paid" company, maybe you should focus even more specfically on shopkeepers or tradesmen?
This will at least let hundreds of people build their own readers, and potentially educate most of them in magnetic stripe encoding.
Alternatively/Additionally the Square reader is miles away from ergonomic and by having another design out there you can make a small profit by selling more reliable readers.
The real question is not "some one else is working on this, should I quit?" To me, the real question is "someone else is working on it, the problem is real and there is market demand - am I ready to do whatever it takes, for however long it takes, to make this company successful?"
This looks like a phisher's dream to me.