No-Code Platforms Having Their Breakthrough Moment

Web developers used to be the bastard children of software engineering. Any "real" business had to be built on "real" code. But in 2022, you can raise 7-figures with an MVP from a no-code platform.

From 2010 to 2015, it was typical to reject any website project that didn’t have a 30K budget. Sure, you could use a WordPress site to setup a basic blog. But you want to add ecommece? Membership only access control? Video?

Then things got interesting. Platforms liek Squarespace, Wix, Big Commerce, etc hit their stride in the 2015 to 2020 range. All of a sudden, any mom and pop shop or solo entrepreneur could get a basic website with a professional theme for less than $200/year. It was a game changer for many.

Still, there were complications. The minute you crossed over what was allowed out of the box, you were back into custom code. And the $200/year budget could balloon into $10K or more. Many (many) projects failed. Agencies (including my own) would try to shrink wrap 50K of features into a 5K budget and inevitably blow up. There was still a chasm between off the shelf templates and businesses looking to push the envelope.

I think this is now well behind us.

From No Devs to No Code to Seed Round

Two months ago, a company that I helped mentor during a startup accelerator had a challenge. Only one of the co-founders was a programmer, but they needed to get an MVP out the door during the 12-week window and raise a new round of capital. Even recruiting good developers might take 4 weeks at a high expense.

So I asked them to challenge their assumptions and consider a no-code solution like Bubble. I had seen multiple 1st time founders rig up a fully functional business and sell for 10K to 100K on MicroAquire.com.

One team took up the challenge. Their reward was a fully functional MVP that raised $2M (and counting) for a new round of investment.

Through the Looking Glass

Just like Wix and Squarespace were “good enough” to open the floodgates for a previously underserved market and price point, no-code platforms are now powerful enough to meet the needs of some startups without developers.

I’ve been a no-code fan for a few years now. I’ve used Zapier to act as glue between multiple SaaS and PaaS products. I’ve used Airtable as a backend to a Webflow front-end. However, what is different now if you can find solutions that cover the entire stack in one place AND can scale to meet the demand of a growing company. That’s neat.

Now add the recent breakthroughs of ChatGPT + Replit, and we should see even more entrepreneurs that don’t code breakthrough into building tech anyway.

It’s an exciting time to be in this industry!