Micro App Builder
Hi everyone — I’m Bill.
I’ve spent most of my career working with databases, software development, and technology consulting. Over the past year, I’ve also become interested in building small, focused apps that solve specific problems.
Some of my recent projects include a subscription manager, a YouTube channel analysis tool, a thumbnail generator, and a loan payment calculator.
My latest project is BizRadar, a tool for discovering businesses surrounding a particular address or location. I originally built it to help identify potential local advertisers, but I’m now exploring other uses such as sales prospecting, partnerships, and location research.
I’m looking forward to meeting other builders, learning how people are bringing their products to market, and sharing what I learn along the way.
Nice meeting you all!
Bill
Replies
Bill, the list at the end is the most useful line in your post, and I do not think you should keep it. Local advertisers, prospecting, partnerships, location analysis. Four uses means the use case is still open, and I have been on the wrong side of that one more than once. We had a catalogue of things we could sell, and the thing that eventually worked was the one we were already running on ourselves. It was also the cheapest item on the list. So pick the one where you feel the pain personally. It is the only one where you can tell whether the output is any good without having to ask a stranger. On BizRadar specifically: finding businesses near an address is a maps call. The hard part is knowing which of them is worth contacting, and that signal is not on the map. Which makes the product the filter, not the radius. What do you throw away?
@rabnoor_s The filter point is right, and for something like this the cheapest filter that's not on the map is probably business age at that address. A location that's had three different businesses cycle through in two years is telling you something a radius search never will, bad spot, bad lease terms, whatever it is. That's the kind of signal you only get from watching the same address over time, not from a single lookup.
@raffay_sajjad Business age at the address is a better filter than anything I suggested, and it has the property that matters: the data is already public, it just needs someone to keep a history instead of a snapshot. Three tenants in two years is a lease problem or a footfall problem, and either way it is not a lead. The interesting part is that nobody can buy that signal, you can only accumulate it, so it gets more valuable the longer you run and it cannot be copied on day one by someone with more money. That is a rare shape for a small tool. Are you already storing snapshots over time, or would that be new?
@rabnoor_s Honestly just riffing, not something I've built. Would be new, and the annoying part is you can't shortcut it, no way to buy two years of history for an address you just started tracking today. Starting early and letting it compound is a strange thing to have as your only moat, but it does mean whoever ships this first and just keeps running it wins by default.
@raffay_sajjad @rabnoor_s Interesting idea! Yes, business residence age would be new. Thanks for your insight!