Modern Software for Small Businesses and Nonprofits
A series on how AI agents, inexpensive hosted services, and practical custom workflows make modern software more accessible to small businesses and nonprofits.
Start Here
Start with the website becoming software, then follow how small organizations can move from static presence to useful custom workflows without inheriting enterprise software budgets.
Questions This Series Answers
- What can small businesses and nonprofits build now that software is less scarce?
- Why is the old static-versus-dynamic website distinction becoming less useful?
- When does a website become the first version of custom operating software?
- How should small organizations balance affordability, usefulness, validation, and support?
Key Themes
- Small business software
- Nonprofit technology
- AI-assisted development
- Custom workflows
- Affordable web applications
Articles in This Series
- Modern Software for Small Businesses and Nonprofits, Part 1: The Website Is Becoming the Software
AI agents and inexpensive hosted services are making the old static-versus-dynamic website distinction less important for small businesses and nonprofits. A website can now become the first useful custom workflow.
- MS-SBN, Part 2: Amy Turned a High-School Dream Into a Website
Amy Givens owned the MyAmy Designs domain since high school, but the website stayed a dream for years. With ChatGPT and Codex, she finally turned that domain into a real business website for MyAmy Designs & Remodeling.
- MS-SBN, Part 3: My Ten-Year-Old Built a Video Game From Four-Word Prompts
I typed two sentences into a coding agent, asked it to write a plan, and handed the laptop to my ten-year-old son. Over four weeks Mathai built a real, playable 2D game without writing a line of code. It was a deliberate experiment: proof that when every step has to verify it works, the software keeps working — whoever is driving. That is the core of Mission-Driven Engineering.
- Part 4: Providing Affordable SEO for Small Business Using Jev (Part 1)
The SEO tools that manage several sites at once price out a small business before it starts. So I’m building a semi-automated tool, with Jev narrowing ambiguous choices, that fills out business listings across ten sites without pretending every site allows a bot at the keyboard.
- Part 5: Scope Creep During the AI Age
AI agents made it cheap to start things, so the list of things in flight grows faster than one person can follow. Two projects of my own, 22 then 13 then around 100 open items, and what I’m taking from it: name the problem, do fewer projects, stay in the details.
- Part 6: The Artist and the Algorithm: An Unlikely Friendship
How a 64-year-old Georgia entrepreneur found an unexpected creative partner in artificial intelligence