The Rise of Micro Apps: The New Era of Software Creation?
I’ve been hearing a lot about the rise of micro apps, a trend that’s been making waves in the tech world. Essentially, micro apps are small, personal projects that people are building for their own use, rather than trying to make a fortune off of them. And the best part? You don’t have to be a developer to create one!
I stumbled upon this concept while reading about Rebecca Yu, a college student who spent her summer break building an eating app that suggests restaurants to her and her friends based on their shared interests. Yeah, she’s not alone. With the help of AI technology, people are creating their own apps for personal use, and it’s not just limited to coding web apps. Some folks are even building mobile apps that run solely on their own phones and devices.
I came across Jordi Amat, who built a fleeting web gaming app for his family to play during the holidays and then shut it down once the holiday was over. Talk about a seasonal treat! And then there’s Shamillah Bankiya, a partner at Dawn Capital, who’s building a podcast translation net app for personal use. Even professional developers are getting in on the action, like software engineer James Waugh, who built an online app planning instrument to help with his cooking hobby.
As AI technology improves, we’re seeing the early rise of micro apps, which are essentially super context-specific, handle niche needs, and then disappear when the need is no longer present. It’s like social media trends, where something is hot for a minute and then fades away. But now, it’s software itself!
I chatted with Christina Melas-Kyriazi, a partner at Bain Capital Ventures, who compared this period of app building to social media and Shopify, where it’s easy to create content or a store online, and then we see an explosion of small sellers. She even said that building micro apps is like building a private social network, where you can share your creations with a select group of people.
Of course, there are some challenges to building micro apps. For one, it can be tedious to build an app, even for those without technical expertise. Yu mentioned that her eating app wasn’t hard to build, but it was just very time-consuming. And then there are quality issues, like bugs or critical security flaws that can’t just be bought as-is to the masses.
However, there’s still significant potential in this era of private app building, especially as AI and model reasoning, quality, and safety become more refined over time. And as high school student Hollie Krause said, “I was like ‘wow I hate Excel but I’d like to make an app for our family.’ So, I spun it up and hosted it on Tiiny.host and popped it on our cellphones.”
The future of app building is exciting, with the potential to fill the gap between spreadsheets and full-fledged products. As Melas-Kyriazi said, “It’s really going to fill the hole between the spreadsheet and a full-fledged product.” And for Yu, the possibilities are endless. She’s now working on six more app ideas, saying, “It’s really exciting to be alive right now.”
So, what do you think? Are you ready to join the micro app revolution?
