Searching for startup opportunities on the Google Workspace Marketplace, part 1 Searching for startup opportunities on the Google Workspace Marketplace, part 1<br>May 24, 2025<br>When I was looking for new startup ideas, I came across a software marketplace that I never heard of before:<br>the Google Workspace Marketplace. I then did some research into it;<br>one year later, I’ve decided to share my knowledge via a multi-part blog series.
Brief intro
Let’s start with some short explanations. You’re obviously familiar with the Google productivity<br>tools - Gmail, Docs, Sheets, Slides, and many more.<br>Well, it turns out that you can install extensions (called apps) on those tools!
Example of a Google Sheets app - I built this bad boy!
And, where do you find these apps? On the Google Workspace Marketplace.
The marketplace works in a similar way to Shopify’s - there’s a directory where you can search for these apps.<br>Each listing has reviews, number of installs, a label indicating whether it’s free or not (often misleading). The usual stuff.
Addressable market
These apps tend to be popular with smaller businesses, who use them as low-cost, flexible alternatives to<br>enterprise software suites.
Google Sheets app that replaces email automation services like Mailchimp
What you lose in terms of budget sizes, you gain in volume. Google reported<br>5 billion Workspace app installs back in 2021.<br>They haven’t published user stats since then, but the 2025 figure is obviously going to be much larger. It’s a huge market!
There are plenty of businesses making good money with these apps. I personally spoke to a couple of founders to confirm - unfortunately I can’t name them as they asked for privacy.
Methodology
Ok, so now that we now this is a market worth diving into, let’s come up with a way to analyse what startup opportunities there are.<br>My plan is to gather all the apps into a spreadsheet, filter out the unsuitable ones, and then analyze those that seem ripe for competition.
I did think about an alternative method - checking out the most popular YouTube videos on a Google service, and their comments. Problem is, I think there’s too much noise since you’ll have a ton content for people who are never open to paying for an app.
YouTube results for “how to” + “Google Sheets” - maybe Gantt charts are an<br>opportunity?
Data collection
I wrote a script that<br>tries to fetch all the listings on the marketplace. It doesn’t have 100% coverage, but I think it’s good enough.<br>It was pretty straightforward; Google doesn’t put up barriers to scraping.
After about 20 minutes, lo and behold - a Google Sheet spreadsheet with 5,300 apps that my little script picked up.
Next steps
Going through 5,300 apps? Yeah, that’s a bit much for one person! So, for my next post, I’m gonna shrink that down to something a bit more bite-sized. Stay tuned!
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