---
title: Copy or innovate? Differentiating in a "saturated" app category
slug: differentiating-in-saturated-app-categories
summary: Jake Castillo's view that saturation means proven demand (win with a novel, easier feature or a hyper-specific niche, and avoid social apps), Gleam's "copy Duolingo's defaults, add a twist", and Nami/Storemaven's warning against copying competitors' pricing and paywalls without knowing why.
domain: mobile-apps
tags: [product-strategy, differentiation, positioning, niche, competition]
related: [app-founder-case-studies-common-patterns, localizing-a-proven-app-for-a-new-market, app-idea-tentacle-strategy, app-mvp-single-problem-scope, removing-product-friction-pivot, setting-initial-subscription-price]
sources: [yt:OxE79rpGioI, yt:s8Rped5LuWw, yt:_KilixPWX-c, yt:Eg93po_DAYo]
updated: 2026-10-24
---

# Copy or innovate? Differentiating in a saturated category

## TL;DR
- **"Saturated" = people are actively engaged.** With a feature clearly better than incumbents', the market is "ripe for the taking" (Cal AI vs typing every meal into MyFitnessPal).[^1]
- Innovation = make it **easier** or make it **cheaper**.[^2]
- **Don't ship a plain clone** of a winner in the same market; if you can't think of something different, pick another niche.[^3]
- **Niche down hard**: "the workout tracker for new moms" makes marketing, creator choice, ad style and even UI obvious — style it like the apps that audience already uses.[^4][^5]
- **Avoid social/network-effect apps** (cold start) and anything you can't improve; look for categories that haven't changed in ~5 years.[^6]
- **Copy proven UX defaults, innovate on the core**: Gleam wasted time reinventing flows (voice onboarding was "catastrophic") that Duolingo had already A/B-tested hundreds of times.[^7][^8]

## Details
**Jake Castillo's sequence ([[people/jake-castillo]]):** niche → marketing angle → UI. Knowing the ICP tells you what influencers, UGC creators and paid ads should look like.[^4] Any feature can be made "sexy" by gamifying or a unique spin — calorie tracking wasn't fun before Cal AI.[^9] A niche also lets you charge more ([[setting-initial-subscription-price]]).[^10]

**Gleam's version ([[people/kelvin-zhang]]).** Take what works as your defaults and add your twist on top for the best baseline metrics. They tested a premium (Equinox/Seed-style) brand against a Duolingo-like mascot style and chose the functional Duolingo direction because gamification, chests and animations fit it without feeling gimmicky.[^8][^11]

**Don't copy what you don't understand (2022, [[people/dan-burcaw]]).** A common mistake is copying competitors' prices and paywalls: "a pretty good app doing a pretty good job" isn't the optimum, and if you mimic 8fit without knowing how it reached its choices you can't iterate from there.[^12][^13] Host [[people/esther-schatz]]: mid-core games all copied Supercell's screaming-man icon, which only worked because Supercell had developed characters; when developers stopped copying they found better results.[^14]

**Invent something (Stella).** [[people/sarah-pearl]] says the app space is full of copy-paste and Stella succeeded because nothing like it existed; she sees under-served problems women face that male builders don't think of.[^15][^16]

## Disagreements / caveats
- Straight copying worked when the *market* differed (Cal Buddy, Symmetry — [[localizing-a-proven-app-for-a-new-market]]). Jake's "don't clone" is about the same market.
- Steve P. Young's [[app-idea-tentacle-strategy]] also borrows proven demand but targets an un-owned keyword rather than a better feature.
- Gleam's "copy defaults" vs Nami's "don't copy blindly": compatible if you copy *tested UX patterns* but still run your own tests on price and paywall.

## See also
- [[app-mvp-single-problem-scope]]
- [[removing-product-friction-pivot]]

[^1]: yt:OxE79rpGioI @ 05:27 — Jake Castillo
[^2]: yt:OxE79rpGioI @ 07:01 — Jake Castillo
[^3]: yt:OxE79rpGioI @ 07:55 — Jake Castillo
[^4]: yt:OxE79rpGioI @ 12:16 — Jake Castillo
[^5]: yt:OxE79rpGioI @ 13:46 — Jake Castillo
[^6]: yt:OxE79rpGioI @ 09:07 — Jake Castillo
[^7]: yt:s8Rped5LuWw @ 07:42 — Kelvin Zhang
[^8]: yt:s8Rped5LuWw @ 08:32 — Kelvin Zhang
[^9]: yt:OxE79rpGioI @ 10:07 — Jake Castillo
[^10]: yt:OxE79rpGioI @ 37:49 — Jake Castillo
[^11]: yt:s8Rped5LuWw @ 10:05 — Kelvin Zhang
[^12]: yt:_KilixPWX-c @ 30:42 — Dan Burcaw
[^13]: yt:_KilixPWX-c @ 31:55 — Dan Burcaw
[^14]: yt:_KilixPWX-c @ 32:57 — Esther Schatz
[^15]: yt:Eg93po_DAYo @ 14:01 — Sarah Pearl
[^16]: yt:Eg93po_DAYo @ 05:06 — Sarah Pearl