Behind the Scenes: Humans Built It
As we work on the final edits to the Small Finder Business Member Portal, we’re reminded of something important: while there are plenty of ads claiming AI can build an app for you, Small Finder is not one of those apps.
From the first storyboard to the upcoming go‑live in the app stores, humans built Small Finder.
We’ve never been afraid of the unknowns. We plan what we can, and we figure out the rest as we go. Breanna is especially skilled at managing all things project — including the ambiguous — and she earned her Project Management Professional (PMP) certification earlier this April.
We designed our first screen storyboards in PowerPoint. We researched every app‑building option, from low‑code platforms to fully custom development, and found the right match for our needs. We learned the platform and built the app’s screens ourselves. Eventually, our needs outpaced our learning curve, so we hired an expert (a human one) to ensure functionality and build custom code that improved the user experience. We later partnered with that same expert to build the Business Member Portal.
Some features became unexpectedly heavy lifts — like getting subscription expiration dates to flow correctly. Others were fun puzzles — like mapping the relationships between all the data in the database. And sometimes affordability (we’re a new small business, too!) required creative solutions — such as choosing a filtered list of cities and states instead of the high‑cost Google Places Autocomplete API. Thankfully, some features were easy wins, like enabling a button press to open a user’s phone, maps, or browser app.
All of this took teamwork, iteration, and refining our vision along the way.
It’s been a wonderful, sometimes frustrating, always insightful journey of personal and professional growth. We’ve been hands‑on every step of the way. We take pride in that — especially in a time when it’s increasingly easy to offload work, learning, and problem‑solving to AI. We’ve experienced the value of doing things ourselves, even when AI might have been the easier path.
We’re ready to make Small Finder a reality, and we hope you (humans) enjoy using it to support small businesses — the other humans who make our communities strong.
If you’re a small business owner, we’d love to welcome you into the Small Finder community. The Business Member Portal opens this month – and we can’t wait to help more people discover your business.