Designers spend a shocking amount of time looking for examples. Not tutorials, examples. A good onboarding flow, a settings page that doesn't feel like a tax form, a pricing table that someone clearly thought about.
Figma's community is enormous, and that is the problem. Search for "dashboard" and you get thousands of files with no way to tell which ones are worth opening.
The idea is a curated library of Figma examples, organized in a Google Sheet so the right example is findable in seconds. It is number 32 on my list of 100 business ideas in Google Sheets, and it rewards taste more than technical skill.
The idea
Curate a ton of screenshots in a Google Sheet. That's the core of it. But a pile of screenshots is not a product. What makes it a product is making it easy to find the type of example someone actually wants to see.
That means categorizing, indexing, and annotating are the real work. Every example needs a category (onboarding, checkout, empty state, navigation), a platform (web, iOS, Android), a style note, and a sentence or two on why it belongs in the library. The annotation is what people can't get from a Figma search. Anyone can find a hundred login screens. Nobody has told them which three are worth studying and why.
One feature that could make this sheet stand out is a checklist of Figma best practices. Naming layers, using auto layout properly, setting up components and variants, keeping a consistent grid. Pair each checklist item with an example from your library that does it well and the two halves reinforce each other.
Go a level deeper and catalog the pieces. A series of shapes, elements, and parts of good Figma designs: buttons, cards, modals, toasts, tab bars. Someone building a new interface rarely needs a whole screen. They need a really good card component and a reason to trust it.
Speaking of resources, a curated list of more examples, experts, and resources online could be awesome on its own. The designers worth following, the newsletters that consistently share good work, the plugins that save an hour a week. Curation compounds. Once people trust your picks in one column they'll trust them in the next.
How to build it in Google Sheets
Screenshots can't live in cells in a way that's pleasant to browse, so store them somewhere with a public link (Google Drive works) and put the link in the sheet. The sheet is the index, not the gallery.
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Examples. Columns: Title, Category, Sub-category, Platform, Screenshot Link, Figma Link, Source or Designer, Why It's Good, Tags, Date Added. Add a thumbnail column using the
IMAGE()function if you want a small preview right in the row. - Elements. The component-level breakdown. Columns: Element Type, Example Link, Notes, Related Screen (a link back to the Examples tab).
- Best Practices. A checklist with checkboxes. Columns: Practice, Why It Matters, Example That Does It Well.
- Resources. Designers, newsletters, plugins, and communities. Columns: Name, Type, Link, One-line Why.
- Browse. A front tab with two dropdowns (Category and Platform) and a FILTER underneath that shows only matching examples.
Features that earn their place here:
- Data validation dropdowns for Category, Sub-category, and Platform. Without them your tags drift and the Browse tab stops working.
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FILTER on the Browse tab:
=FILTER(Examples!A:J, Examples!B:B=B1, Examples!D:D=B2)where B1 and B2 hold the chosen category and platform. - UNIQUE to generate the dropdown lists from the actual data, so adding a new category in Examples automatically shows up in Browse.
- Checkboxes on the Best Practices tab so a buyer can audit their own file against the list.
- Protected ranges on everything except the checkboxes and a Notes column, so buyers can't break the index.
Who pays for it, and how to sell it
The buyer is a working designer, a product manager who has to review designs, or a founder building their first product without a designer. They all share the same need: show me something good, fast, so I can stop searching and start making.
They pay for the curation and the annotations. The time saved is real, but the taste is the product. A junior designer buying this is buying the judgment of someone more experienced.
A one-time price works if the library is big enough to feel complete. A subscription works if you commit to adding examples every month, because design trends move and last year's library looks dated. I'd lean toward a modest one-time price to start, then add a subscription tier once you have a habit of updating.
Sell it on Gumroad as a link to a view-only copy, or use OnlySheets, which shares the Google Sheet automatically with each buyer and lets you keep one master file that everyone sees update in real time. That second option is the one that makes a subscription painless.
For the first 10 customers, share three examples from the library publicly each week, with the annotation, wherever designers gather: design Twitter, a Figma community, a Slack group you're already in. The annotation is the hook. After a few weeks, point to the full library. People who liked the free three will want the rest.
Related ideas from the list
- Swipe File of Design Inspiration, the same curation mechanic with a broader net than Figma.
- Design Reviews, Breakdowns, Tips and Tricks, which sells the same buyer the commentary layer on top of examples.
- Facebook Ad Examples, a screenshot library for marketers built the exact same way.
Want the other 99? This is one idea from my list of 100 business ideas you can build in Google Sheets. Get all 100 business ideas as a free Google Sheet.
And if you want to learn how to package and sell spreadsheets, my course Selling Spreadsheets walks through exactly that.
