How a Simple Excel Experiment Became a Tool for Many

Hi everyone! I’m Maksim, currently living in Krakow. I’m 34, and I’ve been in IT for over 12 years, ranging from CRM/ERP support to Senior Data Engineer. While I enjoy my current role, at every job I’ve always built little side projects—either for myself or for the company. Most of them addressed very niche problems.

The Idea & First Steps

Recently, I needed to compare two Excel files. Just for fun, I decided to create a mini-tool using “vibe coding” (coding for fun and experimentation).

• I installed Cursor, and within a couple of hours had a basic but working web app that could compare files in memory.
• This was followed by several days of improvements and testing to make it production-ready.

Since I needed access from different devices, I looked for a cheap hosting solution. Turns out, GitHub Pages works great for something like this — simple, free, and perfect for testing.

Domain & Project Name

Later on, I decided to buy a domain ($10/year) and, just for fun, called the site makspilot.com , inspired by my company’s product PondPilot.io . Maybe I wanted to prove that a single person can create something valuable solo. Now the tool is picking up traction, and I realized the name maybe wasn’t the best choice. 😅

Publishing & Community Feedback

Originally, the tool was for myself, to scratch my own itch.

• I posted about it on Medium (I write there from time to time), but traction was weak.
• Then I shared it with the Russian-speaking audience on Habr, and got much more interest.
• After that, a reader from Germany reached out. He liked the project and suggested we collaborate—his project allows opening Excel files online.

We already met up in Krakow (he came for a beer and to check out Polish cuisine), and took our first “business” photo together—albeit in a rather romantic restaurant by accident.

If you’re interested, I can update occasionally about our progress.

Thanks to the exposure from these posts, search ranking improved quickly. Now the site gets about 10–15 visitors a day after just 1-2 months: not bad for a young side project!

Mistakes & Lessons Learned

Of course, there were mistakes:

• In hindsight, I’d brainstorm the architecture with AI first, before starting.
• I wanted the UI to be ultra-simple, but as often happens, it’s now collecting more and more buttons for extra features.
• I aimed for fully automatic key detection for table comparison; didn’t quite work, so now it’s semi-automatic.
• The tool handles small files well, and I’m working on a new approach for big files, which should make comparison 10x faster.

My Outlook on the Project

Initially, I didn’t plan for this to be “serious”, but small wins keep me improving it. I’m convinced you can try to build your ideas even on the smallest budgets, and who knows—maybe it’ll generate some passive income in the future!

A bit about my tool: makspilot.com lets you compare Excel and CSV files entirely in memory, highlighting differences. More details are on the site. I’d love any feedback, ideas, or feature requests!