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No-code founders are on the rise. Are they making money?

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Re: No-code founders are on the rise. Are they making money?

#41

Post by renewiltord »

gumby wrote: post #5

I don’t really understand what “no code” is. You can put up a storefront and conduct business without writing a line of code, simply by adding plug ins to Wordpress, calling out to stripe etc. The result is somewhat templatized and slightly generic looking but that’s great: your value comes from the content, as the author correctly describes, and the visitor will presumably understand navigation etc. This kind of pro…

No, it's just that, but below some threshold of friction because of comprehensive integrations and simple UI. Think Zapier, in which you can build something that has real value in under 5 mins.

It's a useful category for the people who use these (like me).

Re: No-code founders are on the rise. Are they making money?

#42

Post by Animats »

gumby wrote: post #5

I don’t really understand what “no code” is. You can put up a storefront and conduct business without writing a line of code, simply by adding plug ins to Wordpress, calling out to stripe etc. The result is somewhat templatized and slightly generic looking but that’s great: your value comes from the content, as the author correctly describes, and the visitor will presumably understand navigation etc. This kind of pro…

I don’t really understand what “no code” is.

Drag and drop plus lots of options in dialog boxes, looks like.

It's been done before. Viamall, (later Yahoo Store) the first online shopping cart system, was very much like that. Totally hosted, updated through the web, pay by the month. When Yahoo bought them, they demanded a cut of revenue, too. Those seem to be the key components of this concept.

Other ancestors include Visual Basic, Dreamweaver, and Hypercard, but those were not hosted by the company behind the system, so they didn't have the lock-in and profit potential of hosted systems.

It's a reaction to the mess the HTML/CSS/Javascript crowd has made of web design. The web was supposed to be WYSIWYG, and that got broken.

Re: No-code founders are on the rise. Are they making money?

#43

Post by decentralised »

zerkten wrote: post #15
gumby wrote: post #5

I don’t really understand what “no code” is. You can put up a storefront and conduct business without writing a line of code, simply by adding plug ins to Wordpress, calling out to stripe etc. The result is somewhat templatized and slightly generic looking but that’s great: your value comes from the content, as the author correctly describes, and the visitor will presumably understand navigation etc. This kind of pro…

>> Is "no code" meant to somehow imply something more? In a way it's less. The products you list are much more capable developer products. These are more in the direction of the FileMaker or Access level of constraint, but implemented in a more modern way which means they can be fairly effective. Using "no code" is just branding that hasn't been used broadly until now. Maybe it has, but it probably isn't well known e…

FWIW, 4GL is from the 70s

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth-generation_programming_...

(my favourite: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Informix-4GL)

Re: No-code founders are on the rise. Are they making money?

#44

Post by lucasverra »

nunez wrote: post #6

No-code platforms have always been a great way to put a MVP together. MVPs help you vet the idea before pouring real dollars into it. They are not meant to be the foundation for the product itself; those thinking otherwise have a very expensive refactor ahead of them! I hear MVP thrown around like candy in the consulting I do. I _wish_ they started with no code! Didn't some now-unicorn start its life as an email dist…

This.

YC's 19 cohort https://www.glideapps.com/ allowed me to have a meaningfull conversation with prospect (lets call a Proof Of Concpt) after minimal work.

POC accepted, deal signed; left glide for regular webdev.

The value no/low code brings is having buttons screens and transitions really quick in order to generate engagement with prospect.

Re: No-code founders are on the rise. Are they making money?

#45

Post by renewiltord »

GlennS wrote: post #36

Would you consider something like Collibra https://www.collibra.com/ to be no-code? They seem to be exploding at the moment. How about SAP or Salesforce?

I can't tell from the front page but this appears to be a Business Intelligence tool?

Re: No-code founders are on the rise. Are they making money?

#46

Post by eru »

Animats wrote: post #42
gumby wrote: post #5

I don’t really understand what “no code” is. You can put up a storefront and conduct business without writing a line of code, simply by adding plug ins to Wordpress, calling out to stripe etc. The result is somewhat templatized and slightly generic looking but that’s great: your value comes from the content, as the author correctly describes, and the visitor will presumably understand navigation etc. This kind of pro…

I don’t really understand what “no code” is. Drag and drop plus lots of options in dialog boxes, looks like. It's been done before. Viamall, (later Yahoo Store) the first online shopping cart system, was very much like that. Totally hosted, updated through the web, pay by the month. When Yahoo bought them, they demanded a cut of revenue, too. Those seem to be the key components of this concept. Other ancestors includ…

Historical note: Viaweb was the baby of our host Paul Graham and his cofounders.

Re: No-code founders are on the rise. Are they making money?

#47

Post by shrimpx »

gumby wrote: post #5

I don’t really understand what “no code” is. You can put up a storefront and conduct business without writing a line of code, simply by adding plug ins to Wordpress, calling out to stripe etc. The result is somewhat templatized and slightly generic looking but that’s great: your value comes from the content, as the author correctly describes, and the visitor will presumably understand navigation etc. This kind of pro…

No code/low code is reinvented over and over as trends/paradigms enter their late stages of consolidation. Yes it implies “something more” in that these new tools function in the modern world.

Re: No-code founders are on the rise. Are they making money?

#48

Post by redis_mlc »

seibelj wrote: post #14

The no-code solutions are enabling a digital sort of business that is distinct from their analog counterparts. Their examples - teaching, online job-board, courses for sale - are digital upgrades to teaching, newspaper classifieds, and books. You can stitch together a useful business with these tools. But you won’t build a pure software business. They are just entirely different things. Building the so-called “no-cod…

> As an aside, “Plenty of Fish” 1.0 was built with an off-the-shelf website builder.

From what I read about PoF, it was written in VB. For performance reasons, anything external was gradually rewritten inline.

> You don’t need to be a pro-coder to provide value.

That definitely doesn't match the story of him spending months in his condo writing PoF.

Re: No-code founders are on the rise. Are they making money?

#49

Post by redis_mlc »

eru wrote: post #46
Animats wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t really understand what “no code” is. Drag and drop plus lots of options in dialog boxes, looks like. It's been done before. Viamall, (later Yahoo Store) the first online shopping cart system, was very much like that. Totally hosted, updated through the web, pay by the month. When Yahoo bought them, they demanded a cut of revenue, too. Those seem to be the key components of this concept. Other ancestors includ…

Historical note: Viaweb was the baby of our host Paul Graham and his cofounders.

Historical note: Viaweb was written in lisp, so most of the users had a hard time customizing it (I heard of one book on modifying Viaweb, but have never actually seen it.)

Yahoo eventually re-wrote it in another language.

Re: No-code founders are on the rise. Are they making money?

#50

Post by GlennS »

renewiltord wrote: post #45
GlennS wrote: post #36

Would you consider something like Collibra https://www.collibra.com/ to be no-code? They seem to be exploding at the moment. How about SAP or Salesforce?

I can't tell from the front page but this appears to be a Business Intelligence tool?

A sort of "build your own metadata database with configurable workflows" tool focusing on data management, provenance, security, privacy etc.

Maybe I've gone too far there. Jira has configurable workflows too, and I guess no-one would argue that's a no-code tool.

SAP is probably a better example?

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