Trends business idea: Poorly executed but popular apps

Source: Statista. Note: Doesn’t include 1.59m apps that are not rated (have fewer than 3 ratings)

If you’re looking for your next business idea, sometimes the best place to look is… at ideas that are already validated.

Earlier this month, Huszko Jozsef posted his pet project on Product Hunt. It’s called Validated Ideas, a list of 5k+ popular apps (100k+ downloads each) that have been poorly executed (ratings lower than 3.2).

“Coming up with innovative ideas is hard and time-consuming,” Huszko writes. “You don’t need to reinvent the wheel — just execute better.”

Below we’ve summarized the 20 categories with the most downloads, which together account for ~90% of the whole database.

We’ve sifted through thousands of these apps and pulled out some opportunities worth noticing. Here are 3 to get you started:

• Acute Art: A 2.6-star-rated augmented reality art app with 100k+ downloads described by users as a “great app” but “super buggy.” Competing app Artivive also has 100k+ downloads and only 3.6 stars.
• TalkingParents: A glitchy co-parenting app with 100k+ downloads and a 2.9-star rating. A competitor with seemingly bad UI design, coParenter, has 50k+ downloads and 3.5 stars.
• Draw My Story: An app that helps users create animated drawings, memes, presentations, and instructional videos. The app has 100k+ downloads and only 2.7 stars. One user wrote, “I like the concept, but it still has way too many bugs.”

You can read our full write-ups on these and other ideas by signing up for Trends today with our 2021 discount.