Why Businesses Are Building Their Own Tools
We used to think building something custom was a huge decision. Should we build it ourselves or just buy something off the shelf? That’s changed.
With tools like KnowCode (for setting up workflows) and App Idea Engine (to map out what we need), it became clear: building our own stuff makes more sense.
We’ve seen teams who aren’t technical build working tools in just a few days. Things like: campaign approval checklists; partner onboarding flows; dashboards that update themselves
The secret? It’s not about knowing how to code. It’s about knowing what problem you’re trying to solve.
Once that’s clear, tools like KnowCode let you drag, drop, and connect things together without writing any code. You can always scale or rebuild later if needed. But you don’t need to wait weeks or chase developers just to launch something that works.
We’re doing this more across different teams now and it’s really helping us test and ship ideas faster. Are you also dreaming of building a better system for your business?
I find that while such tools are easier to build than ever, most of the projects go nowhere. The reason being, once something becomes universally trivial to build, it loses most/all of its value. So, do these kinds of toy apps make sense to just solve internal problems? In some cases. Do they have value as products? Almost never, unless there is some sales/marketing magic sauce that is difficult to replicate.
That’s a fair point and we totally agree that not every internal tool needs to become a product. For us, it’s less about market value and more about solving internal problems without long dev cycles. Being able to build and test something in a few days (even if it’s rough) has been a big help for our teams. These aren’t meant to be shiny or public-facing, just practical tools that save time and reduce the back and forth.
Appreciate the insight, it’s a good callout.