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Ask HN: Anyone built a business with no-code tools?

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Re: Ask HN: Anyone built a business with no-code tools?

#21

Post by rock_hard »

codingdave wrote: post #5

Sure, look at any low-code platform that has an ISV partner program. You'll find plenty of success stories. My company even started that way, and ended up growing over 15 years and getting bought out before we even looked at going full-stack for our products. We're just shy of 20 years since our initial launch, and just now finally coding at our first full-stack version. To be fair, we did start adding custom code af…

Friend of mine has been thinking to start a no-code engineering school to teach people the skills required to build no-code products for exactly that reason

Re: Ask HN: Anyone built a business with no-code tools?

#22

Post by Closi »

I’m working with a startup at the moment that has put all their investment into their customer facing app, but almost everything behind the scenes is built in spreadsheets and low code tools. Can’t spill too much about the company, but think something like “get flowers delivered within 30 minutes via a fancy app”, but not flowers.

Without building in this way there is no way they would be growing at the rate they are - they would still be writing their MVP (they are now valued at >$100m in year 3, and are still supported entirely by spreadsheets as the investment in terms of focus is towards anything customer facing - they know they need to sort everything else out, it’s just everything has to be prioritised). Also their ops are still evolving so quickly that any investment in writing code to support ops is likely to slow down ops change (who need to be able to respond to issues nobody has seen before).

Re: Ask HN: Anyone built a business with no-code tools?

#24

Post by headmelted »

cuddlecake wrote: post #10
rokhayakebe wrote: post #7

I guess any tech content business would count. For example this guy below has both online classes where he teaches others how to ace a FANG interview and he also earns from his YT channel. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4xKdmAXFh4ACyhpiQ_3qBw

Good thing I knew you're talking about TechLead, so I could avoid clicking the link and poisoning my YouTube recommendations pages

Would love to hear someone’s take on TechLead, especially someone informed from working inside a FANG.

I’m trying to be less judgey generally, but there were a few things in the one video I started to watch that had me giving some wild side-eye so I stopped watching and never went back.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone built a business with no-code tools?

#25

Post by imperistan »

tiku wrote: post #9

Not really low/no-code but the Views module in Drupal lets you build very nice simple tools for customers with just a few clicks. I've built webshops with it.

yeah Views is awesome. I've been using Wordpress for years now because that's a requirement for the agency that hired me. But I still haven't found a good replacement for Views.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone built a business with no-code tools?

#26

Post by wwweston »

jacquesm wrote: post #23

Beware the lock-in and make sure your roadmap is compatible with low/no code. But definitely doable, I know of several really good examples.

Which low-code tools make it easy to get your data out if you decide to migrate? Which make it impossible/expensive?

Any domain examples you can share where it's been successful?

Re: Ask HN: Anyone built a business with no-code tools?

#27

Post by bserge »

headmelted wrote: post #24
cuddlecake wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good thing I knew you're talking about TechLead, so I could avoid clicking the link and poisoning my YouTube recommendations pages

Would love to hear someone’s take on TechLead, especially someone informed from working inside a FANG. I’m trying to be less judgey generally, but there were a few things in the one video I started to watch that had me giving some wild side-eye so I stopped watching and never went back.

His content is just entertainment, isn't it?

Re: Ask HN: Anyone built a business with no-code tools?

#28

Post by sbacic »

I think that the whole discussion around low-code is missing a pretty fundamental issue: most programming libraries suck.

If I need, say, authentication, why do I need to install a library and then read a bunch of documentation on how to use it? Why can't I simply plug it in (just like low-code!) and have it automatically work?

I think there is a lot of room to improve developer tooling and that the effort spent there would produce much greater rewards than developing a higher level abstraction, such as a pluggable authentication widget aimed at non-programmers.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone built a business with no-code tools?

#29

Post by akudha »

wwweston wrote: post #26
jacquesm wrote: post #23

Beware the lock-in and make sure your roadmap is compatible with low/no code. But definitely doable, I know of several really good examples.

Which low-code tools make it easy to get your data out if you decide to migrate? Which make it impossible/expensive? Any domain examples you can share where it's been successful?

With tools like Airtable, you could simply export your data to CSV, though you'd lose the relationships. There are tools like bildr, appgyver etc that let you export at least the HMTL/CSS (depending on the pricing tier).

Re: Ask HN: Anyone built a business with no-code tools?

#30

Post by anmolparashar »

I did (& it’s been brining in good money for the past 2+ years)

I built the Castup[1] website using Webflow, use Outgrow for onboarding, Stripe for payments, Slack for communication. It’s a productized service startup in the podcasting space but I have enough knowledge of no-code tools to build a SaaS as well.

[1] https://useCastup.com

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