Nico Vargas | Custom software for small businesses

Built and shipped

Three things I built. All three are live.

Not mockups. Not case studies about somebody else's work. Three systems I designed, built, launched, and still run. Every link below opens the real thing.

The DrivRE dashboard showing the day's priority contact and active deals

DrivRE · daily dashboard

DrivRE · transaction checklist

DrivRE

drivre.ai 29 cloud functions 5,277 contacts

The system that runs my own business. It watches four thousand client relationships and tells me each morning who is slipping and why, in plain language rather than a dashboard I have to interpret.

It drafts the email or text in my own voice, with a different tone for a close friend than for a lender. It reads a transaction timeline PDF and turns it into a dated checklist. It knows when a past client's home anniversary is coming and reminds me before the date instead of after.

Two hundred and twenty four build sessions. In production every day, against real client data, with real compliance exposure.

Love Tank · lovetankapp.com

Love Tank

lovetankapp.com Web app Beta cohort

The same idea with nothing to do with real estate, which is the point. Everyone you care about has a gauge. It fills when you do the things that specific person actually values, and drains when you go quiet, at a different rate for a spouse than for a sister.

It also learns. When your own check-ins say the app is guessing wrong about someone, it recalibrates instead of nagging you on a fixed schedule.

Notifications, scheduled jobs, and an AI layer that costs almost nothing to run because of how it caches and where the spending caps sit.

Big Birdie Golf Co. · bigbirdiegolfco.com

Big Birdie Golf Co.

bigbirdiegolfco.com 8 versioned releases Live in 3 days

A whole business taken live in three days. Logo, brand, site, domain, SSL, inquiry form, phone line, email routing. Eight versioned releases, each one verified before it shipped and archived so any of them could be rolled back.

I built it deliberately as a demand test, with the go or no-go number decided in advance so the answer would come from evidence instead of hope.

The part most people skip

How I decide what not to build.

Anyone will build whatever you ask for. That is the easy part, and it is how people end up paying for software nobody uses. Two things I said no to on my own projects, with my own money.

I cut my own best feature.

Love Tank was supposed to write the message for you. It was the headline feature and I killed it before launch. Not because it was hard.

"I don't want to build something where your partner ends up dating the app instead of you."

The tool should make you better at the relationship, not stand in the middle of it. The same logic applies to your business. Software that replaces your judgment is worth less than software that protects your attention.

I tested demand before buying equipment.

Big Birdie needed roughly twenty seven thousand dollars of simulator gear. So I built the site and the booking form first, with nothing behind it, and set the number that would tell me to go or stop before I started.

If your idea can be tested for a few hundred dollars instead of proven for thirty thousand, that is the first thing I am going to tell you, and I would rather tell you before you write me a check.

If I think you shouldn't build something, I'll say so on the first call. That is usually the most valuable thing I can hand you.

Where this usually starts

What I could build for you.

There is a version of this for almost every business. The pattern is always the same: find the thing a person does by hand every week, and give it to the software.

Nothing falls through

Every lead, every quote, every past customer in one place, with the system telling you who needs a call today instead of you trying to remember. The most common request, and the one that pays for itself fastest.

Stop retyping

If somebody in your office reads a number off a PDF and types it into another screen, that job is finished. Invoices, contracts, inspection reports, intake forms, compliance paperwork. I have built this three separate ways.

Write it once

A drafting assistant trained on how you actually write, so your team stops starting from a blank page. Quotes, follow-ups, service reminders, customer updates. It sounds like you because it learned from you.

One screen for today

Jobs, money, and who is waiting on you, pulled from the tools you already pay for. No new logins for anybody, no migration, nothing for your team to learn.

Don't see yours? The list isn't the point. Tell me what eats your Tuesday.

How this goes

Four steps, and you own it at the end.

01

We find the real problem

A call, then a couple of hours with you and whoever actually does the work. Owners are often wrong about where the time goes, which is normal, and finding out is most of the job.

02

I build it and put it live

Not a prototype you look at in a meeting. Something in production that you use early, so we are correcting against real work instead of guessing at it.

03

I prove it works

This is where most of my time goes and it is the part nobody talks about. On systems handling real client data I write automated tests, then deliberately break my own code to make sure those tests actually catch it. Every release gets verified before it ships and archived so we can roll back. Software that runs your business should be boring and dependable, and boring takes work.

04

You own it

It is yours, documented, running on your accounts and your billing. Keep me on monthly for changes and monitoring, or take it and go. Both are fine, and I'll tell you which one I think you need.

Who you'd be working with

An owner who learned to build.

I'm Nico Vargas. I live and work in Watsonville, I've been a licensed real estate agent since 2015, and I was the top agent in Watsonville by closed sides for 449 straight days, from January 2025 through April 2026. I still sell houses. That's the point.

I'm not an agency and there's no team behind me. You get me, which means fewer meetings, a straight answer on the phone, and someone who has actually run a business rather than someone who has read about it.

I've never been a designer by trade, but I've done graphic design for myself, for friends, and for a few small clients for years. That's why the things I build look finished instead of looking like a spreadsheet with buttons. Most people who can ship working software can't make it feel good to use. That gap is where I live.

I'm based here and I prefer to work with people I can meet for coffee, but I take remote projects when the fit is right.

One straight answer up front

I'm new to doing this for other people. Three systems live, all of them mine, and you'd be among the first outside clients.

That's exactly why the first few projects are priced the way they are. I'm buying proof and you're getting a rate that won't exist in a year.

If you'd rather hire a firm with fifty case studies, that's a completely reasonable choice and I won't try to talk you out of it.

Stop bending your business around someone else's software.