I build small apps for myself all the time. Most of them start because I have a problem and I want to fix it fast. Some I use for a week. Some I keep using.

Two of them I kept using. So I thought, why keep them to myself?

This week I made both of them open source. Anyone can take the code, set it up and use it for free. No sign up with me. No payment. You run it on your own account.

Here is what they are.

GrowthHub for growth work

I have done growth work for many years. Every time I look at a new company, I do the same things again. How big is the market? Who are the competitors? How good is their marketing? How is their SEO? How do they rank on the app store? Do the unit economics make sense?

I used to do this in sheets and docs. It took days. So I built one app that does it in one place.

You put in your website or app link. It walks you through the rest:

  • Market size, how big your market is (TAM)
  • Competitor overlap, who you fight with for the same users
  • Marketing audit, what you and others are doing well and badly
  • SEO and ASO, how you show up on Google and on app stores
  • Growth playbook, what to try next
  • Unit economics, whether the numbers work

It works for any company in any domain. A fintech, a D2C brand, a SaaS tool. It does not matter.

Code: github.com/dabbot/growthhub

Family Vault for family documents

This one I made for my own home.

Every family has the same mess. The passport is in one drawer. The car insurance is in someone's email. The PAN card photo is on an old phone. And when you need it, nobody can find it.

So I built a simple family dropbox. Each person gets their own folder. There are shared folders too, like car insurance or health insurance. Everyone logs in and sees their own files. The admin can see everything.

A few things I like about it:

  • It reads the document for you. Upload a passport or a policy and it picks up the name, number and expiry date.
  • It reminds you. You get a mail before something expires or a premium is due. It can also add it to your Google Calendar.
  • You can just ask. "When does the car insurance expire?" It tells you and shows the file.
  • It uses your own storage. Connect your Dropbox or Google Drive. Files you upload go there. Files you put there come into the app.
  • You can email files in. Forward a document to the family address and it gets saved.

You set it up once for your family. The first person who logs in becomes the admin and adds everyone else.

Code: github.com/dabbot/family-vault

Before I shared them

Both apps had my own data inside. Company names I had tested with. My family's names and emails. Keys to my accounts.

I removed all of it. The code you get is clean. You plug in your own accounts and your own data.

How to try them

You need a little bit of tech comfort. Each project has a README with the steps. It tells you what accounts to create and what to put where. If you have set up a small web app before, you will be fine.

If you get stuck, open an issue on GitHub. If you make it better, send a pull request. I would love that.

I will share more of my side projects like this. Let me know what you build with these.