Small apps that solve one annoying thing each
A site and a set of tiny practical tools, built and hosted on our own infrastructure.
- Website
- Mini apps
- Tracking
- Hosting on our own server
Billion is not a product with a roadmap. It is a growing collection of small tools, each one built because some ordinary task was more irritating than it needed to be.
That sounds modest. It is actually the harder discipline, because a small tool has nowhere to hide. There is no onboarding to explain it, no dashboard to impress anyone, no second screen to make up for a confusing first one. It either does the thing immediately or it gets closed.
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One job, no account, no wait
Each app follows the same rules. It opens fast, it does one thing, and it does not ask who you are before it will help you. Nobody creates an account to convert a unit or work out a date.
Building that way removes the usual excuses. There is no loading state to hide behind and no framework to blame for the weight. The tools are small because the problems are small, and keeping the code proportional to the problem is most of the work.
Measured, lightly
Tracking is there to answer a short list of honest questions. Which tools people actually use. Which ones get opened once and abandoned. Where someone gives up halfway.
That is enough to decide what to build next and what to quietly retire. It is a good reminder that measurement is not always about revenue. Sometimes it is just about not wasting the next month.
Living on our own machine
The whole thing is hosted on Digitalizen's own server, alongside the rest of our stack.
That is a deliberate choice, not a cost saving. A collection of small free tools is exactly the kind of project that a per request billing model punishes for succeeding. On a machine we own, a tool going unexpectedly popular is a good day rather than an invoice.