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I feel like every time I come up with an app idea, there are 5 or 6 identical apps out there. How do you compete?

donutdan4114 6y ago
"Stop Worrying About the Novelty of Your Ideas", https://apple.news/AP_mqERGaRDiL0w2N1qhtvA https://apple.news/AP_mqERGaRDiL0w2N1qhtvA Generally it comes down to building things better and easier to use than the competition. It would definitely be very hard to compete against an app that's Free or $5/mo and has 500 5-star reviews and isn't a dumpster fire. I tend to look at creating apps that are more complicated than what the average joe could build. One of our apps is an automation app (like Shopify Flow but 10x more useful). It's so stupidly complicated that nobody in their right mind would compete with it in a short time period. To match our features would take at least a year. Generally we have found that all of the low-hanging fruit and quick ideas have been taken. But the more specific and complicated problems are still worth solving, even if there's one or two other apps out there that are similar. Definitely looking for ideas with the least amount of competition is good, and really trying to figure out what kind of differentiator you can bring to the table. Usually there's at least one angle to compete on, whether it's price, simplicity (ease-of-use HUGE), hands-on support, features, beautiful UI, responsiveness, integrations... Sometimes its hard to find the right thing to build if you don't know enough about store owner problems. There are _entire verticals_ that have unique problems that are hard to "know" about unless they tell you. Lots of different types of stores exist on Shopify. People sell classes, events, digital goods, bookings, AirBnB style stuff, equipment rentals, services (hourly based).. There are probably some available ideas that are geared more to those specific verticals.

"Stop Worrying About the Novelty of Your Ideas", https://apple.news/AP_mqERGaRDiL0w2N1qhtvA https://apple.news/AP_mqERGaRDiL0w2N1qhtvA Generally it comes down to building things better and easier to use than the competition. It would definitely be very hard to compete against an app that's Free or $5/mo and has 500 5-star reviews and isn't a dumpster fire. I tend to look at creating apps that are more complicated than what the average joe could build. One of our apps is an automation app (like Shopify Flow but 10x more useful). It's so stupidly complicated that nobody in their right mind would compete with it in a short time period. To match our features would take at least a year. Generally we have found that all of the low-hanging fruit and quick ideas have been taken. But the more specific and complicated problems are still worth solving, even if there's one or two other apps out there that are similar. Definitely looking for ideas with the least amount of competition is good, and really trying to figure out what kind of differentiator you can bring to the table. Usually there's at least one angle to compete on, whether it's price, simplicity (ease-of-use HUGE), hands-on support, features, beautiful UI, responsiveness, integrations... Sometimes its hard to find the right thing to build if you don't know enough about store owner problems. There are _entire verticals_ that have unique problems that are hard to "know" about unless they tell you. Lots of different types of stores exist on Shopify. People sell classes, events, digital goods, bookings, AirBnB style stuff, equipment rentals, services (hourly based).. There are probably some available ideas that are geared more to those specific verticals.