How Non-tech founders can use NoCode to build products
I don’t get it why there’s still a stigma on non-tech founders trying to build tech startups. That’s simply not fair in my opinion — the non-tech founders have the ideas on how to solve problems in various domains and industries, whereas tech founders mostly are focused on what they do best — come up with tech solutions. I’m not saying tech founders never have viable and exciting ideas or that non-tech founder always comes up with perfect ideas — that would be a false assumption. But in general, the only thing a non-tech founder has is the idea and passion for bringing it to life, otherwise, why would one call himself a founder at all. The tech founder has just tech expertise most of the time.
Technical skills are nice to have, but not a requirement.
Here’s the thing. You don’t need to know how to build an airplane to start an airline (ask Richard Branson). You don’t need to know how to cook burgers to build fast food empire (Ray Krock didn’t know). Why then you need to code to build a tech company? Bryan Johnson, founder of Braintree, a payment processing company bought by PayPal for $800 million, didn’t know how to code. But he had domain knowledge about credit card processing, and he is an excellent salesman — all this was more important than coding. Coding was handled by developers Bryan hired.
Does it mean you have to hire developers to build the product for you? Not necessary. You can find a co-founder who will build it, but you’ll have to give him equity. Or you can hire a company to do it, or simply outsource development, though it would be quite expensive. You could learn to code too, or even better — use one of the no-code platforms to create your product yourself without writing any code.
There are plenty of options
The problem is that it’s hard to build something when you don’t know how to do it. Sure, it’s 2020, and there’s a lot of information available out there — courses, articles, podcasts, you name it. Unfortunately, all these resources don’t give you a full picture so that you could make an educated choice and work out a plan of action. A blog of an agency specializing in no-code solution tells that it’s the best way to build your product. The consulting agency blog lists the pros and cons of hiring consultants. A co-founder dating site tells you that without a co-founder, you won’t get any investment, so you absolutely need to team up with someone. It goes on and on, and it takes quite some time to figure out what to do. You should know all the options.
At early stages, when you haven’t validated your idea and have a limited budget, using a no-code platform to build the MVP and focusing on finding product-market fit would be a much better choice. But as your product gets traction, the no-code platform might become a limitation. Soon enough, you’ll need to choose between finding a co-founder and giving him or her equity, hiring a CTO, and building your very own development team or hiring a consulting company to help you out. There are situations when you can’t find the right person to be a co-founder and don’t have time or skills to build a team — only then it makes sense to consider hiring a company like ours. But even in that case, there are other options, like getting help with vetoing developers.
No-code
I’d say, if you have just an idea and don’t know how to implement it, you should start with the no-code approach. These platforms are very sophisticated nowadays, and it’s the most straightforward and affordable path you can take — the investment is low, and you will learn a lot along the way. There is a multitude of tools that you can use for free to build a fully functional product, not just a prototype, in a matter of days instead of years.
The silent revolution is going on right now. It is similar to what the Shopify platform did a while ago to eCommerce. It took months to build an online store, and all of a sudden, anyone could set up one without investing any money. With Shopify, you can sell your own goods or dropship goods from a remote location, and a lot of people are taking the opportunity. Sure, as the business outgrows, the platform companies often need to explore other technologies, but it’s a good problem to have. After the emergence of the Shopify platform, the eCommerce industry changed. No longer just being able to build an online store is a competitive advantage. The only advantage that exists now is marketing. The same thing happens in the tech industry right now, with more and more applications being built every day.
No-code is scary for developers
I must admit, as a developer, I’m afraid of these changes in the industry. It means that automation and optimization come after developer jobs just like after anyone else. Yesterday I built a todo-app on one of the platforms, and it took me only ten minutes. It would probably take me a day to get it done right if I was coding the app from scratch. Imagine how many people will lose their jobs because of this 60x optimization.
Setting fear aside, I think this change is good for everyone. We, developers, will focus on more critical things like overall architecture and UX, new technologies like machine learning, voice recognition, and so on. Soon enough, we won’t have to spend time creating and maintain features that are common among apps like logins, user profiles, and password resets, and many others.
Build your no-code app now
What is the primary goal of building the first version of the software product quickly? Getting user feedback and understanding what users want. Building your product using a no-code platform will allow you to get feedback in a matter of days or weeks, not months or even years. Plus, you will be able to quickly iterate and modify your product as you get feedback, which is extremely important for an early-stage startup.
Are you excited already? Are you ready to start actually building what you have in mind and moving forward with the idea? It’s ok if you don’t have any technical skills at all — now you can build fully functional web applications using just your web browser. I can’t promise it will be easy. If it’s the first time you dive into product development and you’re doing everything on your own, it will require some effort. But I promise that it will get much easier once you figure out what exactly you want your app to do and how it should work and look. If you dedicate enough time and follow the best practices, you’ll be able to launch that MVP in no time!
