Clone The App

sleep category is growing.

thanks for sharing the store. i learned about the app and really like the app breakdown.

I know it's founder. he is really inspiring

it's a good app. i use it

the clone the app concept is really cool

This is a really interesting approach. I’ve found that the hardest part of building a product isn’t always the technical implementation—it’s identifying which existing workflows are worth improving or rebuilding.

I’m currently building EmpireRank, and a lot of the process has been similar: studying how people discover and compare businesses, then trying to simplify that experience rather than just adding more features.

Curious to see where Clone the App goes. The idea of learning by rebuilding proven products is especially useful for indie hackers.

I really like the simplicity of the webaite! Would be helpful to have more insights about the revenue and maybe about how quick they got their userbase. And something related to the acquisition channels.

Because I do the app, but I don't know where is best to promote it.

Currently working on my own app in completely different space. Cloning is intriguing. Makes me wonder if you could clone this and quadruple down on one gender. Female, spend ads only on Pinterest. Male, spend ads only on Reddit and YouTube. Probably exists, but I do like your business model idea.

The point about selling a feeling really resonates with me. People don't necessarily buy “meditation” or “sleep sounds” — they buy the outcome they want to feel.I think this is especially interesting for indie makers because it applies far beyond wellness: the product can be great, but the marketing should communicate the transformation, not just the features. Really interesting breakdown!

i know the founder. he is the million dollar webpage guy.

I guess the founder can now sleep properly haha

30m/month. insane!

In addtion to building the cloned app, are you also providing services to assist in playbook you provided? Are you helping with ASO and localizing it (keywords, images, description, etc) ?

this methode is the best starting point for new founders because it has low risk. the idea is validated and marketing strategy is also proven.

Great point that localization is much more than translation. I’d add one filter before building: validate the local distribution signal, not just the app idea.

A product can be proven elsewhere but still fail if the target market has different search behavior, payment habits, app-store expectations, or a strong local alternative. The best opportunities are often where a specific job already exists, but current apps explain it poorly or do not fit the local workflow.

Do you score ideas using signals like local search demand, review language, payment adoption, and competitor density? That would make the “clone” decision much more repeatable.

i was trying to build something new and failed. now i am gonna try this out. seems low risk to me than validating a new idea.

I think this playbook has low risk of failure

same idea, new market. that's a great point

Thanks for sharing the playbook.

This is the playbook most people ignore. Everyone chases "novel" ideas, but taking something that already works and adapting it to a new market is lower risk and faster to validate. 100K downloads proves the model. What was harder — finding the right market or adapting the product to fit it?

This is like improvising an already existing idea in the market. seems like a great idea

This tracks with what I saw scaling Henson Group across six continents: the products that traveled best weren't the most innovative ones, they were the ones we actually localized instead of just translated. What broke first when you moved into each new market, payment methods, ad platforms, or just user trust in an unfamiliar brand?

The “proven app in a different market” angle can work, but I’d validate the market before building anything.

Same product idea ≠ same demand, pricing tolerance, acquisition channels or user behavior.

I’d test 3 things first:

1. whether people are already searching for the problem,

2. whether local competitors are weak or just different,

3. whether the economics still work after localization and acquisition costs.

A small market teardown can save months of building the wrong version.

Same idea, different lever for me — instead of going after a new country, I went after an underserved slice of the audience. "AI legal tool" is already crowded, but most of the big ones are built for either "everyone" or enterprise legal teams. I went narrower: freelancers, renters, small business owners who just need to understand one confusing document (a lease, an NDA) without digging through a whole legal research platform.

Same lesson though — wasn't about inventing something new, just spotting a gap inside a space that looked "solved." Curious if you've thought about the flip side of your playbook too — once an app's crushing it in one market, does going audience-first (like what I did) or country-first tend to compound faster?

This resonates — I built my product with multi-language support from day one (English, Albanian, Italian, German, Spanish) partly because the "BI dashboard for small businesses" space felt crowded in English-speaking markets but much less served for smaller/regional business owners who don't think in English first.

Haven't scaled distribution yet, but the localization-first approach already changes how I think about what "done" means for a feature — it's not done until it works in the language the actual user thinks in.

This is exactly what I'm doing. Pocket shut down and left millions of users.

Instead of new idea, I rebuilt the proven read-later flow + added AI summary/search that Pocket never had.

Lesson: you don't need to invent, you need to execute better where the giant left a hole.

Currently at 100+ users, trying to hit first 1k.

this lines up with something i've been thinking about with my own thing too. localizing insurance guidance for india in local languages feels like the same idea, proven concept (plain language policy explanations) applied somewhere it's genuinely underserved. the "don't just translate, actually localize" point is real, generic translation would've missed half of what actually confuses people here. curious how much of their 100k came from one market vs spread across all five.

I ran a services company across six continents and the pattern held everywhere: the product travels fine, pricing and payment rails do not. Before picking an "underserved" market, check what people there actually pay for subscriptions and how they pay. A market with no competition but no local payment habit isn't underserved, it's unmonetizable.

Good framing, but a couple of traps in it. Low competition doesn't mean demand — sometimes the market is empty because three people already tried and died quietly. And demand doesn't mean people will pay: calorie tracking can be huge in Indonesia while ARPU is a tiny fraction of the US. 100K downloads is nice, but what's the paid conversion?

Also "localize deeply" is doing a lot of work there. For a food tracker that's a real local food database with real portion sizes, not translated menus. That's the hard part — though it's also the part the next copycat can't do in a weekend.

The "localize deeply, don't just translate" point is spot on — I've seen the same principle apply outside of consumer apps too.

I'm building Rivox (invoicing/payments for freelancers and agencies working internationally), and the biggest lesson so far has been similar: it's not enough to just support multiple currencies — you actually have to handle tax rules, invoice formats, and payment norms differently per country, or it feels broken to users even if the "translation" is technically correct.

Did you find certain markets needed way more localization effort than others, or was the depth fairly consistent across Indonesia/Malaysia/Vietnam/Gulf/Hong Kong?

How I wish I could have a platform to learn all these

Seems legit but If you can share i would like to know what is success ration for apps which actually work

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good

Yeah that's awesome

localization is the real moat right now. great insight.

Thanks for sharing the idea.

I thought I need a revolutionary idea to make money right now but you showed a different way. I will do some research and try to apply the same playbook.

Great advice looking in less competitive markets to grow sounds like a smart move. Was it hard to change markets from where you started?

Great breakdown! Localizing a proven concept for underserved markets instead of just fighting in the highly competitive US/EU app stores makes so much sense. Did they face any specific challenges with localization (like UI adjustments for different languages), or was just translating the text enough to gain traction?

Great point. Getting early traction is one challenge, but scaling the app into a production-ready product is where engineering really starts to matter. Teams like GeekyAnts can help with performance, architecture, integrations, and scaling once demand is validated.

Finding an existing proven idea and adapting it to a different market is an interesting strategy. Localization and understanding the target users seem to be the real challenges here, not just building the app. Curious what differences you found between the original market and the new one.

How to identify an effective opportunity?

find the market that already exists, then scale content

This is a sharp observation. Localization is underrated execution. Most founders think "new idea" is the moat, but "same idea, better market fit" often wins with less risk and faster validation.

What strikes me is the build cost side of this playbook. Even with a proven idea and a clear market, a solo dev still needs to ship the actual app — auth, admin, landing page, localization infrastructure — before they can test if the market responds. That is usually where the 3-4 month delay kills the momentum.

I ran into this exact friction building Nexus, my Next.js 16 starter kit. It ships with a 17-page admin panel so founders can localize content (pricing, FAQ, screenshots, reviews) without touching code. The idea is that if you are cloning a proven concept, your time should go into market research and ASO, not rebuilding auth and CMS infrastructure from scratch.

Curious, does Clone The App also factor in the build/execution cost for each idea, or is the focus purely on market demand and validation?

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this is a very good idea

It's a very good idea. I am gonna try it out. I need your help building it.

Really

Interesting.. distribution/marketing would be the key.

love the part that from one idea it is possible to build multiple part.

cool idea

Thanks for sharing the idea

Sleep is a real pain and i think the idea has huge potentiality

simple but useful app.

How do you know their revenue? And I bet, it's not a simple app. And one more point: even if it's "simple", the distribution is not.

Your idea is really good but few of us will get success.

Love the idea that from one codebase it is poossible to expand into multiple niche

who knows that a sound app would print that amount of money

Thanks for sharing. great idea.

New concept i learn today.

50k/month from a sound app. there is a huge demand,

that's mind blowing!

I will try it relaxation app

I am glad that your are gonna try it out. nice and can you customize ?

nice and can you customize or edit any sounds?

But people are already listening to music on YouTube to fall asleep. Why would they come to your app?

The interesting part to me is how little the core product actually needs to change. People search for very specific sounds, so creating separate apps around those intents could make ASO much easier. It’s a good example of how a simple product can still have room to grow if the distribution and positioning are right.

That's really goo idea

amazing concept

When mimicking what another app already does, what steps do you take to differentiate yourself?

i love the idea, but i hate the idea of having your phone on to have to relax. it feels a bit contradictory

One thing I notice with apps like this is that the product itself creates content. Watching someone do push-ups to turn off an alarm is naturally shareable, which makes influencer marketing feel authentic instead of forced. That's a very different challenge from building a B2B SaaS.

curious what the retention looks like — alarm apps get deleted fast in my experience. is the $50k mostly new installs or subscribers sticking?

The interesting part is that the product is simple, but the behavior is very visual.An alarm that forces you to do push-ups is basically built for TikTok. You don’t need a long explanation, and the “before/after” moment is obvious in a few seconds.Feels like the real takeaway is not “build simple apps”, but “build something where distribution can happen naturally through the product behavior.”

This was a great reminder that distribution deserves just as much attention as product development.

One thing I'm curious about: if you were launching the same app today with zero audience and zero budget, would you still start with TikTok and Instagram influencers, or do you think there's a better acquisition channel in 2026?

Would love to hear your thoughts.

hmm intersting

I agree with this

you are right , more easy app is more convenient for people to use

I can relate to this comment.
Most developers spend months building features. The best founders spend just as much time thinking about distribution.
This was the issue I had with getting into business with co-workers or friends. To much thought process will slow down any creation.

Timely thread — I'm building WakeWin (a gamified alarm you dismiss by solving a puzzle, then either physically moving via pedometer or photo-verifying an object), so I've stared hard at this exact space. My read: the alarm-app market is huge because the core job ("actually get me vertical") is genuinely unsolved for chronic snoozers, not because the tech is novel. The mechanic itself is easy to clone (as this post basically proves). The real moat is retention — streaks, a difficulty curve that scales with the user, and not being so annoying that people uninstall on day 3. Happy to compare notes with anyone else building in this space.

I am collecting my ideas to make this a type of security app that triggers unusual events and set an alarm or red alert for business

The interesting part is not the alarm feature, it’s the content loop.

A product that creates its own marketing is a huge advantage for solo makers.

I may be interested in this app and follow its to do the push up, but honestly, less than 5 day later, I will give up , close the feature, turn to bed, goodbye my app, have a nice sleep

$50K/month from an alarm clock app that forces push-ups is such a good reminder that simple mechanics can carry a whole business.

Prioritizing influencer deals with a view guarantee over ads is a smart distribution move most indie devs skip entirely.

It's pretty amazing but I think the money he spent on marketing the app gotta be pretty insane

amazing how a simple concept is still profitable ! the creator is a genius ! I tried and find it nice!

Interesting approach with the alarm clock + push-up combo! The forced physical action to dismiss alarms is a clever hook for habit-building apps. I wonder if this concept could extend to productivity tools — imagine an MCP server that refuses to return AI results until you complete a quick task. Gamification mechanics seem to work well in niche utilities.

People with distribution skills are really lucky!

Great find. proves yet again distribution is everything!

Great reminder. As a solo founder building Daycipline, this really resonates. It's easy to get caught up adding features, but users only come when you consistently focus on distribution. Building is optional. Distribution is mandatory. 🚀

insanely simple idea.

keep sharing more resources like this. really helpful!

thanks for the information. really informative.

The idea is really simple. I love how they executed it.

That's a very good idea.

good

I think this advice is based on a fluke; I've seen aggressive marketing campaigns that don't retain users because the app is simple.

The detail worth stealing here is the view guarantee, because it converts influencer spend from a lottery ticket into media buying with a floor price. Most founders negotiate on price per post when they should negotiate on guaranteed reach, then let the creative vary. I tell my portfolio founders the same thing about any channel: cap the downside first and the experiments get cheap enough to run weekly.

I think the marketing strategy is the real product here. "Do push-ups to turn off your alarm" is memorable enough that creators naturally want to make videos about it. Distribution becomes much easier when the product itself creates shareable moments.

Great example of distribution > features. I'm building VoxCut, a simple app that removes silences from audio/video files — one feature, does it well. The hardest part isn't building, it's getting people to discover it. Jake's influencer strategy with view guarantees is smart — you're basically buying guaranteed distribution instead of hoping for organic reach. Curious how he finds the right influencers though — trial and error or some tool/process?

Playbook scaling is underrated—most founders treat their path as bespoke when really the repeatable patterns (audience segmentation, pricing tiers, feature prioritization) are where the real insight lives. If you've done this across multiple apps, I'm curious: which of the 6 steps compressed the most from your first app to the most recent? That's usually where the learning compounds.

really cool idea.

Love this angle. The revenue numbers are what make it actually useful versus the usual app-idea lists that run on vibes. How are you sourcing and verifying the MRR figures? A few of these (Cal AI at $1.14M/mo, WeWard at $615K) are semi-public, but plenty of indie apps stay quiet about real numbers. Self-reported, pulled from Sensor Tower / Appfigures type data, or a mix?

This is a good reminder that distribution can matter more than product complexity.

The interesting part is that the app has a very simple core promise: “it forces you to wake up.” That makes it easy to explain, easy to demo on TikTok, and easy for influencers to create content around.

A lot of founders, especially technical ones, try to win by adding more features. But here the advantage seems to be clarity + a strong distribution channel.

Curious how you would evaluate whether an idea is “influencer-friendly” before building it.

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I have been struggling with marketing, now I have a proper roadmap. I don't know how to thank you.

Useful breakdown. One caution for anyone copying this in the app blocker or focus space: viral validation does not mean checkout converts. The video promise is usually one concrete enforcement rule, then the landing page has to take people straight to install or trial. If you route them through education, quiz, auth, or too much explanation first, you can lose all the demand the viral hit created.

These processes are so common, the main point is how to make it work, how to find potential customer!

The validate with content before building point is underrated for B2C apps. Pushscroll is a great example because the concept is so visual and immediate that a demo video basically sells itself. The harder question is how much of this transfers to B2B. Enterprise buyers don't discover tools through TikTok and a viral video doesn't close a procurement process. The validation still matters but the channel and the timeline look completely different. Curious whether anyone has seen the content first approach work for B2B SaaS or if it's mostly a consumer playbook.

Step 6 is the part most people skip past too fast. I make short-form ad creatives for apps in this exact bracket (habit and self-improvement), and the ones that keep growing past the organic wall are the ones that keep feeding new hook angles into paid, not just leaning on one winning organic video. Pushscroll is one I've been watching in the Meta Ad Library. They run a real rotation of UGC variants, not just one ad on repeat.

Step 6 is the part most people skip past too fast. I make short-form ad creatives for apps in this exact bracket (habit and self-improvement), and the ones that keep growing past the organic wall are the ones that keep feeding new hook angles into paid, not just leaning on one winning organic video. Pushscroll is one I've been watching in the Meta Ad Library. They run a real rotation of UGC variants, not just one ad on repeat.

On point. One of the things i did wrong was setting up no waitlist, and just building. Now, marketing is the biggest hurdle for me

The "validate with content before building"

approach is genuinely smart — most founders

do it backwards and build for months before

finding out nobody wants it. The push-ups

before social media idea is brilliantly

simple too — three words, visual, solves

a real problem. I did the opposite with

my product — built first, now figuring

out distribution — and it's much harder

this way. The waitlist capture at viral

moment is something I wish I had done

better. What niche are the highest

performing ideas on your list coming from?

Spot on. The biggest lesson anyone learns from cloning an app is that code is actually the easiest part of the business.

You can match the features, copy the UI, and deploy the app in days. But then you hit the absolute hardest part: distribution. Getting the right eyes on a product, especially in a niche market, requires a level of grit that no one can just "copy and paste."

Thanks for writing this, it's a great reminder that execution isn't just about writing lines of code! 🚀

"great point", "this matches my experience building LicenseTrack")

As a vibe coder, marketing is the biggest problem

The part that stands out isn't "go viral before you build." It's using content as a validation mechanism instead of a marketing channel.

A viral demo proves people want the outcome the product promises—not necessarily that they'll keep using or paying for it. The interesting challenge is designing the MVP to test whether that initial curiosity turns into lasting behavior.

The step most people skip is the one between 4 and 5: a viral video validates attention, not willingness to pay, and those are different markets. I've seen decks with huge waitlists and single-digit conversion the moment a price tag showed up. The playbook works, but treat the waitlist as a hypothesis and the first $5K MRR as the actual validation.

honestly a really professional looking app for a very real problem

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This hits hard. I've been obsessing over "originality" for months while building my first app — an offline AI assistant with persistent memory. Kept thinking "but ChatGPT already exists, why would anyone care?"Reading this made me realize: I'm not competing with ChatGPT. I'm solving a different problem for a different person. The one who doesn't want their journal entries training someone else's model. The one who needs the AI to remember what they said last Tuesday.Same core tech, completely different niche. Still wrapping my head around this, but thanks for the perspective.

That's a smart way to find out validated app ideas.

I was looking for an app idea but I think I found one. Thanks for the resource.

Excellent idea and resource - I will use it! Thank you. I have had no shortage ideas lately. My bigger problem is not creating the solution, but marketing it and placing it where it can find traction - just not a strong suit yet.

love the concept.

Great

I'm curious, can you reveal where you got the app revenue data from?

Really helpful to read this. As a non-technical founder I keep going back and forth on how much to build vs validate first — how did you decide?

Thank you for sharing, which benefits more people

One thing I've noticed is that successful "clones" rarely win because they copied features. They win because they found a different audience, a better onboarding flow, or a more compelling positioning. The product changes less than the story around it.

This is such a smart approach,

Too many founders waste months (or years) trying to invent something completely new when there are already proven concepts with paying users. Adapting a validated idea with better UX, niche focus, or marketing is way lower risk and faster to test.

The Quittr → STOPPR example is perfect. Same core idea, different niche, real money.

Thanks for building Clone The App — this is going to save a lot of people from idea paralysis. Definitely checking it out.

This is very useful

Great thinking dude

I got to admin this is a really wonderful informative post keep it up !!!

I built Henson Group in a category that already had hundreds of established Microsoft resellers, zero original ideas involved, and it still became one of the largest globally because we out-executed on service and niche focus. Proven demand plus better execution beats novel thinking in almost every market I've operated in or invested in. One caution from the investing side: the clone plays that win usually pick a niche the incumbent structurally can't serve, not just one they haven't gotten to yet.

nice

I didn't even know these apps existed. I like this approach of applying them to other niches.

Thanks, this really made me to rethink my entire process

Love this approach — adapting proven models to new niches is a smart way to get started.

I personally believe the most valuable ideas come from first principles: what are real users complaining about? What are they searching for but can't find a good solution? When you start from real pain points and unmet demand, the idea almost builds itself.

That's why I built RightIdea — you type an idea and it pulls real App Store reviews, Reddit discussions, and search volume data to show you where the real frustration and demand are. Validation based on real data, not guesswork.

Great post, saved it!

Nice idea

The quit-sugar example is a clean illustration of the idea because the demand was already proven, the audience was already paying, and the only question was whether the niche was underserved enough to be worth entering. That's a much lower-risk starting point than hoping a completely new problem exists.

The pushback about distribution and retention taking over once a niche gets crowded is the part worth sitting with. The cloning playbook gets you past idea risk but it doesn't get you past execution risk, and that one doesn't get easier just because someone else validated the concept first.

Clone the app concept is really effective to find out an idea really fast. I will try it out.

Thanks for sharing the process. It's a new way to find out an idea.

Fair, but every posted playbook has a half-life. Once everyone's cloning into fresh niches, the niche stops being the edge and it comes down to distribution and retention. The clone wars reward operators, not idea-finders.

Exactly this approach is why I built ZerfAI.

Instead of guessing, it scans real user complaints from Reddit, Hacker News & GitHub Issues, then uses 2 AI agents to suggest Micro SaaS ideas that are already validated by the market — perfect for adapting proven concepts to new niches like in your example.

What niches are you currently exploring?

Very true! I built Illumea while there are already so many chatbots around. The main thing is to figure out the differentiators. In my case, it was actionable insights/intelligence and proactive engagement which no other chatbots provide. Well, it could be better UX, more features or new ideas that could define things.

This is a valuable reminder that execution often matters more than originality. Understanding customer pain points and solving them better can be a powerful competitive advantage.

That's amazing, great idea

This is a solid reminder that execution beats originality way more often than people like to admit. Most “new” successes are really just removing friction from something that already had demand.

The hard part, in my opinion, is actually being honest about which friction matters enough to move revenue. Some improvements feel obvious in hindsight but don’t change behavior in practice.

Curious how you decide which “existing markets” are worth cloning vs just saturated with no real room left for differentiation.

Definitely a powerful observation, but that doesn't make the task of picking out the businesses or processes in need of refinement any easier.

You hit the exact point. Founders waste time trying to invent new behaviors. Customers do not care about innovation. They just want their current tasks done faster. You build a real business when you find a proven market and strip away all the friction.

most “new ideas” are just old markets with better friction removal.

the real edge is picking one bottleneck and going 10x on that, not polishing everything.

Agree with this completely. PM OS (SOW → project plan generator) isn't a

new category either — SOW-to-plan translation is a problem PMs have solved

manually forever, and there are established PM tools already. What made it

worth building was removing the specific friction: instead of a general

project management tool, it does exactly one translation step well —

upload a SOW, get a structured plan in 2 minutes, no setup or configuration

needed. I think the "better version of something people already pay for"

approach is underrated because you skip the hardest part of a new

category — teaching people the problem exists in the first place. They

already know they have it.

This is exactly why I started my own SaaS. I wasn’t trying to invent a new category—I was frustrated by the tools my own band was using every week. The lesson I’ve learned is that building the product is only half the battle. The much harder part is proving to strangers that your version solves the problem better than what they’re already using.

Couldn't agree with this more. I did exactly this with a discount grocery store app in South Africa and eventually sold to the retailer.

Do you have any community where founder can discuss their growth strategies?

please can you share the marketing strategy used

I agree. Validation often matters more than originality. A lot of successful products win by improving UX, reducing friction, or targeting a specific audience rather than inventing something entirely new. Execution and distribution usually make the biggest difference.

This resonates a lot. The hardest part of building a new product isn't the idea — it's having zero data on whether customers will actually pay. Cloning a proven app flips that: the market has already voted with their wallets, you're just competing on execution.

The acquisition + retention angle someone mentioned is key though. I've seen founders nail the product clone and then struggle because the original app owned the SEO keywords and had 3 years of reviews. Would love to see you document the distribution strategy as you go — that's usually where clones win or die.

great post ill be following up

  The cloning angle is interesting, but I’d be careful not to only clone the product surface.

  For a consumer subscription app like affirmations, I suspect the hard part is less “can you build the features?” and more “can you replicate the acquisition + retention loop?”

  — App Store keywords, short-form creatives, onboarding conversion, push notification timing, habit formation, and paywall testing.

  Would be really useful if you documented each week as an experiment:

  1. what assumption you’re testing,

  2. what metric would prove it,

  3. what you learned.

  A lot of people can clone the UI. Fewer can clone the growth loop. That would make this series much more valuable to follow.

I run a social scheduling tool in a category that already had Buffer and Hootsuite years before us, so I'm biased toward this. Cloning only works if you pick one segment the incumbents treat as an afterthought and out-serve them there. Copy the product and you're a worse-funded version of them; copy the idea and go deep on a niche they ignore, and you have a business.

This is a smart approach,

Too many founders waste months chasing completely new ideas when there are already proven ones out there. Cloning and improving an existing app (better UX, better marketing, different niche) makes a lot more sense.

Thanks for building Clone The App — definitely checking it out.

The clone-and-improve frame is right, but the trap I keep watching people fall into (and fell into myself) is assuming the improvement THEY see is the one users are actually paying for.

Cal AI didn't win because it was "better" across the board. It won because it picked one axis — friction of logging — and made that axis 10x. The UX polish and content were downstream of that bet. Founders cloning it who spread improvement thin across 'cleaner UI + better onboarding + more features' usually end up with something that's marginally nicer and totally ignorable.

So the question I'd add to your framework: before you clone, figure out which single dimension the incumbent is worst at that users actually complain about (not what YOU'd complain about as a builder). That's your wedge. Everything else is table stakes.

Curious which axis you're picking for the ideas you're collecting — speed, price, niche, distribution?

Great view

I think the biggest takeaway is that validation reduces risk, but it doesn't remove the need for execution. Two people can build the same type of app and end up with completely different outcomes because of UX, positioning, pricing, or distribution. Looking at proven markets is a much better starting point than trying to invent something no one has asked for. The challenge isn't finding an idea anymore, it's building something people prefer to use and then getting it in front of the right audience.

I think that's one of the biggest misconceptions in startups. Improving an existing workflow is often a better opportunity than chasing a completely new idea. Distribution and execution usually matter much more than originality.

Exactly, when they say History repeats itself its just those patterns that come across again and again. And here for people around to know there literally were 3 German brothers who became billionaires by cloning successful U.S. startups like eBay, Airbnb, and Amazon, and launching their replicas in Europe. And in this AI era no one can blame of not having velocity and scale on same scale.

Great insight. Most successful products don't reinvent the wheel—they solve the same problem with a better user experience. Reducing friction and executing strong marketing often matter more than having a completely original idea.

great insight!

that's a good way to find new app ideas.

Great point. A lot of founders underestimate how much distribution matters after product validation.
A better product + better positioning + consistent acquisition usually beats just having a "unique" idea.

This matches what I keep seeing too, but I'd push it one step further. The hard part usually isn't cloning the product, it's cloning the distribution. Cal AI's real moat wasn't photo calorie tracking, it was the short form content and creator engine they built around it. The tracker is copyable in a weekend. That marketing machine is not.

So when you rank these ideas, do you weigh how copyable the distribution is, not just the MRR? A $2M app that grew on a distribution edge nobody can repeat feels very different from a $200k one that grew on plain ASO. Curious if your list captures that.

Right. If the market is validated, there is no need for your own validation. Just make it better and easier.

I’m also building a SaaS tool for freelancers and facing the same challenge with conversion. It’s called Portal HQ, at my-portal .live if anyone wants to check it out. Completely free!

What’s interesting is that the whole business is the incentive layer and social mechanics stacked on top.

Really insightful, thanks for sharing — this is exactly the kind of breakdown I wish I'd read when I was starting out.

The part that stood out to me is that a lot of successful products don't create a new behavior—they make an existing one more rewarding or easier to stick with.

Sometimes the biggest opportunity isn't changing what people do. It's changing what they get back from doing it.

That's a cool idea. thanks for the breakdown. it is really helpful!

This breakdown perfectly captures why WeWard hit $615K monthly revenue without groundbreaking tech. They didn’t invent step tracking—they recontextualized a universal daily habit with tangible cash rewards, viral referral loops and streak retention mechanics. The core lesson hits hard: you don’t need new technology to build a profitable app; you just need to add layered incentives and shareable social hooks to an existing user behavior. The referral-first growth strategy is genius, turning every active walker into free acquisition channels, while media & celebrity collabs amplified trust fast. Super actionable case study for anyone brainstorming low-risk mobile SaaS clones.

Sometimes I ask myself who all those people paying for such a dummy apps are. I also noted a hype of posts motivating devs to start cloning successful apps. That will turn into millions of burned tokens. So, who would be real beneficiaries?

It sounds like a brilliant money-making approach but it's extremely difficult to repeat.

also interesting how referrals become the primary acquisition channel once daily usage is stable

The insight that "the product isn't the step counter, it's the incentive layer" is brilliant. Most founders spend months trying to invent brand new behaviors, which is incredibly hard to pull off. Taking an existing, proven behavior and just wrapping it in better incentives and distribution is a much smarter way to guarantee demand. Love the directory concept!

The $615K isn't coming from walking, it's an ad-arbitrage business wearing a fitness-app costume. Users get paid in "Wards" funded by brands paying for attention, so the real engine is the spread between what advertisers pay and what users redeem. Clone the step counter and skip that two-sided economics and you build the hook but starve the business; the hard part is lining up who funds the rewards before you start giving them away.

Fantastic idea, I am quite interested in how you marketed this app, how did you make contact with celebrities for the partnership and media coverage, was it all through paid routes or organic?

Interesting app. Seems like a good idea.

thanks for sharing

This is actually a pretty interesting idea. I wonder if they charge their user though cos that would be curious.

I don't like this type of app even though they are really successful. By the way,How did they acquire a large number of users in the initial stage? My products always got 1 download per a day. I'm so pitiful.

How do they make money?

Nice one ..

At zero cost can you then market your product efficiently?

great!! but still can't figure out how they generate revenue?

Worth flagging the part that's actually hard to clone: not the step counter or the streak, those take a weekend. The real moat is the supply side, the brand redemption deals and ad partnerships that fund the payouts without torching margin. Most reward apps die on unit economics, not on product.

I've been experimenting with content marketing for my retreat business goldenweeks.co. We're seeing good traction from Reddit and LinkedIn, but I'm curious about what other channels are working for you all. Any tips for getting in front of digital nomads and founders who are actively looking for accountability and community?

$615k for wrapping a pedometer in a streak and a referral link. the product was never the steps. it was the reason to keep going I guess

The insight isn't "add rewards to walking" , it's that streaks and referrals make the reward feel earned, not given, which is why it sticks.

Wow, Amazing..

Can you give me some personal tips?

What’s interesting is that the whole business is the incentive layer and social mechanics stacked on top.

I’m curious how much of that $615K/month is actually getting paid back out through redemptions vs. pure margin.

copying other people's ideas is not cool...

Curious if certain regional markets are just naturally more aligned with these gamified network effects, and which platforms can maintain retention numbers to make the rewards worth it

Very interesting. Was the growth mainly from SEO, paid ads, or social media?

like the directory.

It is short and that's what I need to know about an app. The idea, the mrr and the marketing strategy.

Good luck with the directory

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Thanks for sharing. I was stuck in thinking that all new apps need to be super complex or utilize super advanced AI. I was wrong.

Alarm clock is so important for active life so it is really nice to be upgraded and improved

Genuinely blown my mind.

Back to work on my app…

This is brilliant

Amazing! Thanks so much for compiling the ideas as well.. blown away by how simple Innertune is.

simple idea could make so much with better distribution

It's never just about building something even if it feels like a simple app and being able to earn that much. Making stuff is the easy part. The distribution has always been the hard part for most of us. Which the maker behind this seems to have cracked for this app.

Though, building clones of such apps with your own twist can be a good way to learn and practice the distribution part.

ohh man. can you believe an alarm clock could earn that much. It's a great idea , they gamified it and making so much from it.

This is such a great reminder that execution and gamification often beat pure novelty. As founders, it's so easy to overcomplicate things trying to find a 'never-before-seen' idea, when the real success usually lies in solving an everyday problem (like getting out of bed) in a much more engaging way.

Thanks for breaking this down, Hasib!

I agree: distribution is the key. How to make a new app visible?

Interesting and very new thought

$45K/mo from an alarm clock app is wild. This is proof that "it already exists" is never a valid reason to not build something. Execution and positioning matter way more than originality.