The mantra of "Why would you make this when [thing] exists already?" is played out.
With the rise of AI tools like Claude Code and Cursor there is no excuse not to build something you want, exactly how you want it.
People love to laugh and complain about yet another to-do app but they all have a reason for existing.
High subscription price? Build your own.
Don't like the design? Build your own.
Lack of specific features? Build your own.
Scared it might shut down in a year? Build your own.
So many recipes for making the same meal exist. Some people only want it done a specific way. Others are fine with whatever as long as it has the same shape and form.
Those who end up cooking something that tastes great to the masses are able to turn it into a business.
After all, the cheeseburger from McDonald's did not start as an item eaten by billions. Two brothers had to make a burger they liked first.
Focus on what you want and what works well with your mental model. The hypergrowth mindset will only kill your desire to make something good and have fun while doing it.
Software for one+
Build it for yourself first then share it with friends.
For some people your app's mental model might fit their own and they'll love it. Maybe they will give you some useful suggestions on how to make this even better for both of you.
(This is what happened with my iOS app Pixeldrop)
But if they don't, they can create their own version because there's nothing stopping them now.
Use existing systems
Sometimes you don't even need to build a full app, you can just use an existing API and create something small that fixes what the original product lacked for you to be fully satisfied.
I use an Oura Ring for sleep tracking but I didn't like how my sleep pattern data was displayed in the Oura app.
Looking around the web for solutions produced results that were either too much effort to set up or did not match my mental model of what data I wanted to focus on.
So instead I found the Oura API and looked at what I can extract from the responses. This kicked off a custom interactive dashboard with my sleep data.
I published it online and sent a link to my friends. This tool ended up being super helpful because now they bully me to go to sleep earlier if I'm still up sending messages.
Start small and get it done. You might be surprised how fun it is to solve your own problems with software tailored exactly to your needs.
If you need an affordable and performant way to host your app, bot, or microservice I can recommend using Railway.
