We talk a lot about monetizing side projects. About MVPs, product-market fit, and growth hacks. But some of the most interesting tools online weren’t built for profit — they were built out of necessity.
They solve a very specific problem for one person: the developer who made it.
It starts with a question: “What’s the smallest thing I can build that fixes this annoyance I keep running into?”
That was the mindset behind a small project I worked on recently. I needed a fast way to preview and debug HTML and CSS code without opening heavy apps or setting up a local environment. So I built a browser-based HTML compiler for myself.
It worked. It was fast. No signups. No noise. Just open the page and start writing code.
I didn’t think much about it until I started using it daily. Then I shared it with a few friends. Then someone thanked me for it. Then someone else bookmarked it.
And now? It’s quietly sitting online, solving a problem I used to run into every day. No logos. No pricing plans. Just this.
The Psychology of Building for Yourself
When you build for yourself, you don’t care about what’s “trending.” You don’t need a pitch deck. You aren’t trying to impress anyone on Twitter.
You’re solving something real. And real problems have a weird way of finding other people who need the same thing.
When Small Tools Become Infrastructure
Some of the most useful developer tools online were never pitched as startups. They just showed up, quietly did their job, and became part of someone’s workflow.
If you’re a dev, you’ve probably used tools like JSON formatters, color pickers, code beautifiers, or markdown previewers that saved you hours — and you never once wondered who made them.
But someone did.
And sometimes, that “someone” just needed it for themselves.
Closing Thought
Not everything has to scale. Some things just have to work. If you’re sitting on a little script or tool that helps you work better, consider publishing it.
You don’t need permission. You just need a browser, an idea, and maybe a few lines of clean code.
