I wouldn't say every developer not using bubble is 'old school' but I'd certainly not call someone who builds things in Bubble a 'dev' as far as what both are capable of. Maybe that's an extremely spicy take and I'm sure I'll attract some hate from it. There's no doubt that Bubble is an extremely useful tool and its certainly planted itself in the startup community nicely (we're actually using it for a POC/MVP before committing dev resource), but I'm not sure I'd rest the fate of an entire business on it years into the future but thats just my opinion of course.
As someone who has worked witha lot of Saas. Their technical leadership was definitely at fault. Also, their startup doesn't sound very technically challenging maybe that's why No Code worked for them. The end comparison between no code and salesforce is super weird. IMO
if it took 5 years to build that thing with custom code, there is something seriously wrong with whoever was in charge of writing that custom code / project. Kudos to Chad for achieving success and glad No Code worked well for him.
Also for people interested in getting an LLC and EIN, I just got an LLC in Wyoming and an EIN for 349$ through Northwest Registered Agents. I'm sure you can go lower than that. If you're in the US, you can get the EIN on your own and get the LLC for as low as 120$ I think. So make sure to compare the pricing and save some bucks.
We provide the state filing, EIN, and legal docs in Wyoming for $399. So $50 more which includes next day delivery and legal documents. Definitely do your research, but I think most people will find we're the more affordable and better service if they compare apples to apples.
Great to see this use case for bubble. Iv use it for an MVP and it worked our great. Im unsure if Id stick with it forever though. If I remember correctly bubbles pricing structure changed last year and caused a lot of issues for their community.
That's because Bubblers never had to worry about optimization, BetterLegal's pricing is going up $200/month which is basically nothing for what we get from it. The change is forcing Bubblers to think about resources.
The pricing change was overblown. Our price change will add $200/month to our Bubble account with zero optimizations. Will likely be no additional fee once we clean some things up. Fact is that Bubblers got really comfortable with wasting resources and somebody was having to pay that bill. The change allows for more scale, but also forces the devs to be mindful of wasted workload units. This change will make NoCoders think more about usage.
@@chadsakonchick thanks for the clear explanation. It makes sense! Like imposing a charge on all uneaten food at the buffet. Don't load your plate wastefully and there wouldn't be a problem! 🤣
They are certainly comparable; they simply sit at different levels of the low code spectrum. Salesforce portal dev is easier than standard web dev, but is more restrictive. Bubble is even easier than Salesforce, and even more restrictive. A good architect can help decide which makes more sense given your requirements and roadmap. All have their place, and it can be very painful to pick the wrong one (either because of costs being too high or the platform not meeting your needs).
Bubble is not restrictive, it a visual programming language so it's meant to be a programming language at the core. You can build anything from APIs to entire apps if any kind. Salesforce is no where near this capable and designed for a specific market. You can build saledorcenin Bubble basically. Bubble can be as simple or complex as you want it to be
@@chadsakonchickwould you suggest using bubble first when you’re just starting out and then going to a different platform if you need more power/capabilities?
Like everyone else here, I immediately sensed that he had a problem with his technical cofounder or some of his engineering staff. Suspicion confirmed. Honestly for what he's doing, the no code stack is probably good enough.
I am the technical cofounder, so maybe that's the issue. But we're killing it with our current team and developing some really intense custom code that we connect to Bubble to have the best of both.
Like most professions, 80% of people are not that good at their job, and do not have good listening or communication skills. Maybe it's because I've been through this myself, but i sympathize. Yes, it's easy to say oh you don't have a good team, doesn't really give a path forward. And honestly, you can say that is the cause of 100% of difficulties in business, oh you don't have a good team.
I was sceptical about using Bubble because of vendor lock-in but looking at the sprints we do at work, so much time is wasted just bumping spring boot and other libraries due to security scans finding some obscure vulnerabilities in them. Not a bad idea to leave that to some platform to solve and focus on the actual product more.
This is some of the best and pragmatic advice I’ve heard and I’ve been in IT for 20+ years. I love all the brogrammer comments about how code is still better. Code is fine when you can focus your team and avoid shiny object syndrome. That might happen on 1 out of 100 teams. Everyone always wants to resume build, not product build.
At 4:50 he mentioned butting heads with the frontend development team. This feels like a business/management problem - developers should be working on the things the business requires. Developers will always want to try out the new shiny, but the business paying their wages dictates what they work on. Glad it's worked for these guys so far.
I don't have a product manager, that's me. Maybe I spread myself too thin, but I like to keep a flat org and let good people run autonomously. I wouldn't want anyone micromanaging me, so I don't do that. But sadly, it just didn't work out with those I was exposed to.
@@chadsakonchick Yeah that makes sense. I think there's a difference between micromanaging, and setting the requirements and timescales to deliver those requirements. That could be just a weekly meeting with the goals for the week and making sure those goals are hit (to avoid micromanaging and constant refactoring.) My fears with any no-code platform would be platform risk and exposure to decisions being made by the platform(s) I was using. Bubble rocked the boat last year - when I speak to people who use no-code I find many don't have disaster recovery plans. As long as you have DR (and I'd imagine you do at your scale) you've done all you can. What I would say is definitely don't let your previous experience put you off custom builds in the future, but learn from the lessons you've endured this time. Love your story though, and the way you approached the problem and got into the market. Got me thinking about some of my plans/ideas.
This works because there are still man made operations. A full fledged SaaS with only code being the deliverable (say a fitness app) would have way more problems using no code due to customizations and deep specifications. Nocode is on the right direction though and is great
Nice interview but the guy is talking some crazy stuff. Using github libs etc is not anything like no code. While I believe no code has its place, it doesn't give much of a moat to competitors and also is impossible to leave bubble etc while taking your code with you.
If you're using someone else's libraries to build your product, you are as reliant on them as I am on Bubble, the difference is I'm paying my labor and I can contact them. What a lot of people are missing is that we still use a lot of code, but we use NoCode for the bulk. I mention that we inject our own code plus other APIs to make our product unique. I believe NoCode and LowCode provide the best bang for buck.
Devs dont wanna hear this but - The buyer at a business doesnt give a fuck if ur backend is in golang, he/she just wants software that works. If its bubble or the newest version of react, it doesnt matter as long as it solves his/her problem.
This is the way. Having it built on something common or easy to pickup like NoCode means the transition is easier and everyone someone technical can understand what's going on under the hood.
Sure... but what happens in Bubble goes bust or implements breaking changes that disables various features? It would start a chain reaction of tons of other businesses failing as a direct result. That's not a gamble I'd like to play with. You can't do much about that risk. Startups (even ones with millions in the bank) go pop all the time; Scale or die.
Maybe if your app has thousands of user or hundreds of paying customers, sure. But 99% of apps never get to that point. Bubble is perfect for MVPs, and as Chad said in the video, worrying about scaling/performance is a FUTURE problem, not a NOW problem.@@CaptainBearddd Also the "what if bubble goes bust" i could say the same thing about all other coding languages or hosting platforms. What if AWS goes bust? What if react's new version breaks my app? Remember when Cloudflare went down and broke the internet? These things happen. Chad also mentioned that. I will say tho, Bubble does have "lock in" because you cant export your code and host it elsewhere if you wanted.
Code does not have platform risk. No-code is all platform risk. Your entire company is platform risk. Sounds like a terrible business decision unless you have a very short exit timetable.
U should read "do things that dont scale" by PG. Platform Risk is a future future problem that does not concern entrepreneurs searching for PMF. Launching fast which no code allows you to do is best.@@chronotriggerfan
Well, their business is primarily non-tech and for most non-tech businesses I think we can make the case that No code is now the better approach. Coding only makes sense when you have incredibly complex product with a lot of use cases and tech-intensive features. I see a lot more No code businesses becoming hugely successful in the future. But let's say if there's a social media built on code and a social media built on no-code I'd always bet on the code one because it'll be more optimized and the developers will have the freedom to not be limited by a no code platform.
Furthermore, if your developers are taking years to develop login and basic features like that - you have a huge problem. And you built a custom project management system? Good lord.
@zleheadedwave Where's the hate? I'm allowed to have an opinion. I'm sure using Jira Cloud or Trello is much easier than spending tons of time custom building a PM system, but of course I don't have the full context.
This was a really short interview, what wasn't stated was that early on we could only afford our frontend dev for 10 hours a week. Then we had a couple others, much longer story. Fact is the team loves our internal task management system. We used Asana side by side with our app for custom filings and CX issues. Now those tasks get to link directly to the business and contact within our system and we're able to include much more contextual information that makes the team more productive.
His experience with front end developers is spot on. I've learned front end just because of this. More people who code for business should have past business experience.
As a SWE I actually embrace no code as a tool. Let’s face it most apps devs are working on out there are simple crud apps at the technical level with some business logic and edge cases. It’s also not at MAANG scale either. So from a business perspective I think most apps can be done with no code. Most people just need a process automated and not a technical revolution that customer code would allow. I definitely see it as a killer for internal tools in small businesses like. One comment I have about the FE devs you had trouble with. That was definitely a technical leadership problem. The app also doesn’t seem to be complex enough to need five years of development. But I’m sure no code was much cheaper.
Well said. To add to that, adding LowCode to the mix via a third party API or custom code through a private API gives us the best of both worlds. NoCode for the main UX, custom code via API for the bespoke stuff. I was technical leadership, but what this extremely short interview didn't allow time for is that we had a single frontend dev working 5-10 hours per week because we couldn't afford more. When we asked for more hours he promised it to us then simply didn't deliver. When he finally provided hours, he refactored his code instead of working on the necessary tasks. At this time we had some more money and began looking elsewhere, but he threw wrenches at every juncture. I hired a few others over that time and ran into various other issues, but it was simply that we didn't need a full-time frontend dev and thus they always put us on the back burner. With Bubble, we still have about 10 hours per week from a Bubbler, but now we have a screaming pace with those same hours.
@@chadsakonchick one thing I want to ask about bubble or (no code apps in general). How do you detect bugs and fix them? I’m not aware of any way to do automated testing with these tools. So is everything tested by hand in QA?
Lots of wild statements, some misconceptions, but some good points and clearly it can work! Clearly burned by some misaligned or perfectionist Frontend developers. This is likely the difference between having a technical leader as a founder vs not.
Misalignment from perfectionist frontend devs is probably the best way to put our initial issues. Later it was moving between devs and everyone blaming the last guy for the issues. I'm the technical cofounder and can code, but i'm not in the code and don't have the time to dedicate to it. As a founder, i'm spending a little bit of time spread out over every aspect of the business. I've never had any issue with my backend devs and have zero issues with my Bubble devs, possibly a string of bad luck with frontend but am happy with the path we've taken.
To me it just sounds like an inability to manage the development team. If your development team is not developing features, and apparently switching to loads of different frameworks, then your problem is the technical leadership, not the developers themselves (although you'd expect the developers to have some common sense). However, after a bit of research, it appears that the only FE dev I could find that worked there was only 6 months worth of experience when they joined. As an example, Just loading the 'reviews' page takes upwards of 14 seconds to load and uses jQuery? What year is it? I think the issue was the junior devs, not devs in general. Furthermore, I can't see any actual CTO in the business, so I'd assume a tech co-founder would've solved these issues.
Sadly, I'm CTO so I guess it falls on me. I don't follow any structured management style or "sprints." I just want to provide a series of tasks and a vision and let the IC run. Likely need to only work with similar individuals. The team I've got now are killing it.
As an experienced software architect myself - your problem was not code vs no code. I heard a hint around 4:50 of the management issues. This was 100% an issue with talent, management and motivation of talent and technical vision/leadership. I’d be curious to know how much platform risk you have or leverage bubble has to increase your pricing one day because you can’t possibly move to another provider without incurring another full re-write.
This was too short of an interview to go into detail, but i've talked at length about these issues in other interviews. Not really fair for you to make a snap judgement about our entire development history based on the couple sentences I had to discuss it.
@@chadsakonchick Remember when reading internet comments that you are still the winner here if you have a $1m business!! But that doesn't necessarily mean you didn't make any mistakes along the way whether known or unknown to you (everyone does both). 5 years of dev time by a team of presumably >1 dev is a HUGE amount of time for which I'd argue almost any product featured on microConf could be written to a marketable offering. Today, that assessment doesn't matter to you one bit - you "made it through the storm" and have won. But for those just starting out, who aren't where you are now and may soon face their own storms... no code is not the solution to leadership challenges of technical talent. If devs are building the wrong things, re-factoring working code, aren't contributing to business value, have low motivation, or have an undefined scope of work, or don't know what to do - those are all leadership issues not tech stack issues. Likewise if you had poor performing team members, that is not a tech stack issue. That is an important and valid perspective this community is trying to share in these comments. Now go rest in the comfort of your $1m business and smile at the internet comments of people who don't yet have a successful SaaS. 😎
I'd argue that I had both great and terrible front end devs at the same price. It's difficult to tell when running the entire business and not having a dedicated product manager. In hindsight, I prefer to work with people who like to be autonomous and don't need to be micromanaged. Comes down to preference and work styles.
The difference with using Sales force as an Erp is not the core product you selling. If you were building and selling an Erp or salesforce your investor will want you to own it. Your guest is very wrong as to the lock in. No.code means just that your app has no code and neither do you.. you have habe no asset
How is this different than Salesforce doing the same thing? Additionally how is it different than some opensource project on github deciding no longer to be opensource and providing no maintenance?
@@chadsakonchick If these questions from you are serious, i'm not really sure if your company should trust you as a CTO. If you build a company with the goal to gain traction and make some million $ and build up staff, that you are responsible for, you should build a technical infrastructure that is reliable as a backbone of all that. That means you build the software in such a way, that it is ideally not dependent on any 3rd party software in such a way, that the 3rd party dependency could break your whole company. Like when your no-code provider closes down, your whole company is gone. This is insane. I can't really believe your questions are serious. If you rely on a 3rd party project from Github and that project closes down, you have the source code to develop it further in house. Yes this is bad, it will cost you money and resources, but it doesn't put you out of business. Same with Salesforce. It's just a CRM. It closes down, you migrate to another CRM software. It doesn't put you out of business. But if your no code provider closes down, your company will too. So this is highly irresponisble from you as a CTO.
![I Built a $1M AI App [No Code]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/IZsQqarWXtY/mqdefault.jpg)
![Yailin La Mas Viral, @kreizyk.official - Dale 2 (Remix) [Video Oficial]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/JaYHBzgqz94/mqdefault.jpg)
No Code SaaS - Is It Real or All Hype?: ruclips.net/video/0pDiboyl26w/видео.html
Finally someone on here who knows the power of bubble
Reading the other comments makes me feel like i'm taking crazy pills.
Old school devs DO NOT LIKE NOCODE
I wouldn't say every developer not using bubble is 'old school' but I'd certainly not call someone who builds things in Bubble a 'dev' as far as what both are capable of. Maybe that's an extremely spicy take and I'm sure I'll attract some hate from it.
There's no doubt that Bubble is an extremely useful tool and its certainly planted itself in the startup community nicely (we're actually using it for a POC/MVP before committing dev resource), but I'm not sure I'd rest the fate of an entire business on it years into the future but thats just my opinion of course.
As someone who has worked witha lot of Saas. Their technical leadership was definitely at fault. Also, their startup doesn't sound very technically challenging maybe that's why No Code worked for them. The end comparison between no code and salesforce is super weird. IMO
Just because Salesforce is more expensive doesn't make it better.
Have you used both? I have.
everyone who remembers Dreamweaver wysiwyg deserves 6-number ARR SaaS
Solid interview. Concise answers, organized questions. Glad this become a 1 hour podcast.
Glad you enjoyed it!
if it took 5 years to build that thing with custom code, there is something seriously wrong with whoever was in charge of writing that custom code / project. Kudos to Chad for achieving success and glad No Code worked well for him.
Also for people interested in getting an LLC and EIN, I just got an LLC in Wyoming and an EIN for 349$ through Northwest Registered Agents. I'm sure you can go lower than that. If you're in the US, you can get the EIN on your own and get the LLC for as low as 120$ I think. So make sure to compare the pricing and save some bucks.
We provide the state filing, EIN, and legal docs in Wyoming for $399. So $50 more which includes next day delivery and legal documents.
Definitely do your research, but I think most people will find we're the more affordable and better service if they compare apples to apples.
Great to see this use case for bubble. Iv use it for an MVP and it worked our great.
Im unsure if Id stick with it forever though. If I remember correctly bubbles pricing structure changed last year and caused a lot of issues for their community.
That's because Bubblers never had to worry about optimization, BetterLegal's pricing is going up $200/month which is basically nothing for what we get from it.
The change is forcing Bubblers to think about resources.
The pricing change was overblown. Our price change will add $200/month to our Bubble account with zero optimizations. Will likely be no additional fee once we clean some things up.
Fact is that Bubblers got really comfortable with wasting resources and somebody was having to pay that bill. The change allows for more scale, but also forces the devs to be mindful of wasted workload units. This change will make NoCoders think more about usage.
@@chadsakonchick thanks for the clear explanation. It makes sense!
Like imposing a charge on all uneaten food at the buffet.
Don't load your plate wastefully and there wouldn't be a problem! 🤣
This video is awesome, may I ask what's the app used for recording this remote video? thanks!
We recorded this episode using Riverside.fm
Loom?? lmao
I will automatically dislike your video anytime I see you posting after saying B2C SaaS is impossible. Lol joke
If he looks and talks like a Chad - he's a Chad!
It's the name I was given.
Saying that using Bubble is comparable to large companies using Salesforce is a wild statement
I've used both, I stand firmly by that statement.
They are certainly comparable; they simply sit at different levels of the low code spectrum. Salesforce portal dev is easier than standard web dev, but is more restrictive. Bubble is even easier than Salesforce, and even more restrictive. A good architect can help decide which makes more sense given your requirements and roadmap. All have their place, and it can be very painful to pick the wrong one (either because of costs being too high or the platform not meeting your needs).
Bubble is not restrictive, it a visual programming language so it's meant to be a programming language at the core. You can build anything from APIs to entire apps if any kind. Salesforce is no where near this capable and designed for a specific market. You can build saledorcenin Bubble basically. Bubble can be as simple or complex as you want it to be
Build Salesforce*
@@chadsakonchickwould you suggest using bubble first when you’re just starting out and then going to a different platform if you need more power/capabilities?
Like everyone else here, I immediately sensed that he had a problem with his technical cofounder or some of his engineering staff. Suspicion confirmed. Honestly for what he's doing, the no code stack is probably good enough.
I am the technical cofounder, so maybe that's the issue.
But we're killing it with our current team and developing some really intense custom code that we connect to Bubble to have the best of both.
How "no code" is Bubble? Like can someone create a brand new app or product using Bubble?
Like most professions, 80% of people are not that good at their job, and do not have good listening or communication skills. Maybe it's because I've been through this myself, but i sympathize.
Yes, it's easy to say oh you don't have a good team, doesn't really give a path forward.
And honestly, you can say that is the cause of 100% of difficulties in business, oh you don't have a good team.
I was sceptical about using Bubble because of vendor lock-in but looking at the sprints we do at work, so much time is wasted just bumping spring boot and other libraries due to security scans finding some obscure vulnerabilities in them. Not a bad idea to leave that to some platform to solve and focus on the actual product more.
This is some of the best and pragmatic advice I’ve heard and I’ve been in IT for 20+ years. I love all the brogrammer comments about how code is still better. Code is fine when you can focus your team and avoid shiny object syndrome. That might happen on 1 out of 100 teams. Everyone always wants to resume build, not product build.
Vendor lockin with nocode is bit uncomfortable …. Also not a “one size fits all, but can work in certain scenarios I guess 👍
At 4:50 he mentioned butting heads with the frontend development team. This feels like a business/management problem - developers should be working on the things the business requires. Developers will always want to try out the new shiny, but the business paying their wages dictates what they work on. Glad it's worked for these guys so far.
Yes! Also, it speaks a bit about front/back dev 😁
I don't have a product manager, that's me. Maybe I spread myself too thin, but I like to keep a flat org and let good people run autonomously.
I wouldn't want anyone micromanaging me, so I don't do that. But sadly, it just didn't work out with those I was exposed to.
@@chadsakonchick Yeah that makes sense. I think there's a difference between micromanaging, and setting the requirements and timescales to deliver those requirements. That could be just a weekly meeting with the goals for the week and making sure those goals are hit (to avoid micromanaging and constant refactoring.)
My fears with any no-code platform would be platform risk and exposure to decisions being made by the platform(s) I was using. Bubble rocked the boat last year - when I speak to people who use no-code I find many don't have disaster recovery plans. As long as you have DR (and I'd imagine you do at your scale) you've done all you can.
What I would say is definitely don't let your previous experience put you off custom builds in the future, but learn from the lessons you've endured this time.
Love your story though, and the way you approached the problem and got into the market. Got me thinking about some of my plans/ideas.
I love the content of this channel, no long intro what so ever and straight to the point. LOVE IT and THANK YOU FOR YOUR HARD WORK.
Thanks, I appreciate it!
This works because there are still man made operations. A full fledged SaaS with only code being the deliverable (say a fitness app) would have way more problems using no code due to customizations and deep specifications. Nocode is on the right direction though and is great
Nice interview but the guy is talking some crazy stuff. Using github libs etc is not anything like no code. While I believe no code has its place, it doesn't give much of a moat to competitors and also is impossible to leave bubble etc while taking your code with you.
If you're using someone else's libraries to build your product, you are as reliant on them as I am on Bubble, the difference is I'm paying my labor and I can contact them.
What a lot of people are missing is that we still use a lot of code, but we use NoCode for the bulk. I mention that we inject our own code plus other APIs to make our product unique.
I believe NoCode and LowCode provide the best bang for buck.
Devs dont wanna hear this but - The buyer at a business doesnt give a fuck if ur backend is in golang, he/she just wants software that works. If its bubble or the newest version of react, it doesnt matter as long as it solves his/her problem.
This is the way.
Having it built on something common or easy to pickup like NoCode means the transition is easier and everyone someone technical can understand what's going on under the hood.
Sure... but what happens in Bubble goes bust or implements breaking changes that disables various features?
It would start a chain reaction of tons of other businesses failing as a direct result. That's not a gamble I'd like to play with.
You can't do much about that risk. Startups (even ones with millions in the bank) go pop all the time; Scale or die.
Maybe if your app has thousands of user or hundreds of paying customers, sure. But 99% of apps never get to that point. Bubble is perfect for MVPs, and as Chad said in the video, worrying about scaling/performance is a FUTURE problem, not a NOW problem.@@CaptainBearddd
Also the "what if bubble goes bust" i could say the same thing about all other coding languages or hosting platforms. What if AWS goes bust? What if react's new version breaks my app? Remember when Cloudflare went down and broke the internet? These things happen. Chad also mentioned that.
I will say tho, Bubble does have "lock in" because you cant export your code and host it elsewhere if you wanted.
Code does not have platform risk. No-code is all platform risk. Your entire company is platform risk.
Sounds like a terrible business decision unless you have a very short exit timetable.
U should read "do things that dont scale" by PG. Platform Risk is a future future problem that does not concern entrepreneurs searching for PMF. Launching fast which no code allows you to do is best.@@chronotriggerfan
Well, their business is primarily non-tech and for most non-tech businesses I think we can make the case that No code is now the better approach. Coding only makes sense when you have incredibly complex product with a lot of use cases and tech-intensive features. I see a lot more No code businesses becoming hugely successful in the future. But let's say if there's a social media built on code and a social media built on no-code I'd always bet on the code one because it'll be more optimized and the developers will have the freedom to not be limited by a no code platform.
We use both.
NoCode for the app interface, custom code hooked to NoCode via an API for bespoke features.
code templates are the ideal middle ground
Furthermore, if your developers are taking years to develop login and basic features like that - you have a huge problem.
And you built a custom project management system? Good lord.
Why the hate/criticism Jamie Bohanna?
@zleheadedwave Where's the hate? I'm allowed to have an opinion.
I'm sure using Jira Cloud or Trello is much easier than spending tons of time custom building a PM system, but of course I don't have the full context.
This was a really short interview, what wasn't stated was that early on we could only afford our frontend dev for 10 hours a week. Then we had a couple others, much longer story.
Fact is the team loves our internal task management system. We used Asana side by side with our app for custom filings and CX issues. Now those tasks get to link directly to the business and contact within our system and we're able to include much more contextual information that makes the team more productive.
His experience with front end developers is spot on. I've learned front end just because of this. More people who code for business should have past business experience.
As a SWE I actually embrace no code as a tool. Let’s face it most apps devs are working on out there are simple crud apps at the technical level with some business logic and edge cases. It’s also not at MAANG scale either. So from a business perspective I think most apps can be done with no code. Most people just need a process automated and not a technical revolution that customer code would allow. I definitely see it as a killer for internal tools in small businesses like.
One comment I have about the FE devs you had trouble with. That was definitely a technical leadership problem. The app also doesn’t seem to be complex enough to need five years of development. But I’m sure no code was much cheaper.
Well said. To add to that, adding LowCode to the mix via a third party API or custom code through a private API gives us the best of both worlds.
NoCode for the main UX, custom code via API for the bespoke stuff.
I was technical leadership, but what this extremely short interview didn't allow time for is that we had a single frontend dev working 5-10 hours per week because we couldn't afford more.
When we asked for more hours he promised it to us then simply didn't deliver. When he finally provided hours, he refactored his code instead of working on the necessary tasks.
At this time we had some more money and began looking elsewhere, but he threw wrenches at every juncture.
I hired a few others over that time and ran into various other issues, but it was simply that we didn't need a full-time frontend dev and thus they always put us on the back burner.
With Bubble, we still have about 10 hours per week from a Bubbler, but now we have a screaming pace with those same hours.
@@chadsakonchick one thing I want to ask about bubble or (no code apps in general). How do you detect bugs and fix them? I’m not aware of any way to do automated testing with these tools. So is everything tested by hand in QA?
great info!
Glad you think so!
Lots of wild statements, some misconceptions, but some good points and clearly it can work! Clearly burned by some misaligned or perfectionist Frontend developers. This is likely the difference between having a technical leader as a founder vs not.
Misalignment from perfectionist frontend devs is probably the best way to put our initial issues.
Later it was moving between devs and everyone blaming the last guy for the issues.
I'm the technical cofounder and can code, but i'm not in the code and don't have the time to dedicate to it. As a founder, i'm spending a little bit of time spread out over every aspect of the business.
I've never had any issue with my backend devs and have zero issues with my Bubble devs, possibly a string of bad luck with frontend but am happy with the path we've taken.
You encourage saas founders to look at no code platforms, yet discourage founders from lower ACV saas products
Excellent Interview!
Thank you!
To me it just sounds like an inability to manage the development team.
If your development team is not developing features, and apparently switching to loads of different frameworks, then your problem is the technical leadership, not the developers themselves (although you'd expect the developers to have some common sense).
However, after a bit of research, it appears that the only FE dev I could find that worked there was only 6 months worth of experience when they joined.
As an example, Just loading the 'reviews' page takes upwards of 14 seconds to load and uses jQuery? What year is it? I think the issue was the junior devs, not devs in general.
Furthermore, I can't see any actual CTO in the business, so I'd assume a tech co-founder would've solved these issues.
There is nothing wrong with using JQuery in 2024 if done right.
Sadly, I'm CTO so I guess it falls on me.
I don't follow any structured management style or "sprints." I just want to provide a series of tasks and a vision and let the IC run. Likely need to only work with similar individuals.
The team I've got now are killing it.
Memorable interview. Everything about this discussion feels rock solid.
As an experienced software architect myself - your problem was not code vs no code. I heard a hint around 4:50 of the management issues. This was 100% an issue with talent, management and motivation of talent and technical vision/leadership. I’d be curious to know how much platform risk you have or leverage bubble has to increase your pricing one day because you can’t possibly move to another provider without incurring another full re-write.
This was too short of an interview to go into detail, but i've talked at length about these issues in other interviews.
Not really fair for you to make a snap judgement about our entire development history based on the couple sentences I had to discuss it.
@@chadsakonchick Remember when reading internet comments that you are still the winner here if you have a $1m business!! But that doesn't necessarily mean you didn't make any mistakes along the way whether known or unknown to you (everyone does both). 5 years of dev time by a team of presumably >1 dev is a HUGE amount of time for which I'd argue almost any product featured on microConf could be written to a marketable offering. Today, that assessment doesn't matter to you one bit - you "made it through the storm" and have won. But for those just starting out, who aren't where you are now and may soon face their own storms... no code is not the solution to leadership challenges of technical talent. If devs are building the wrong things, re-factoring working code, aren't contributing to business value, have low motivation, or have an undefined scope of work, or don't know what to do - those are all leadership issues not tech stack issues. Likewise if you had poor performing team members, that is not a tech stack issue. That is an important and valid perspective this community is trying to share in these comments. Now go rest in the comfort of your $1m business and smile at the internet comments of people who don't yet have a successful SaaS. 😎
4:50 It sounds like he moved to no-code due to a lack of technical leadership
Hired mediocre developers for a good price. They did a crappy job as most devs do. Blames it on the code.
I'd argue that I had both great and terrible front end devs at the same price.
It's difficult to tell when running the entire business and not having a dedicated product manager. In hindsight, I prefer to work with people who like to be autonomous and don't need to be micromanaged.
Comes down to preference and work styles.
The difference with using Sales force as an Erp is not the core product you selling. If you were building and selling an Erp or salesforce your investor will want you to own it.
Your guest is very wrong as to the lock in. No.code means just that your app has no code and neither do you.. you have habe no asset
Exactly. They own nothing and can be locked out of their own software at any time, when the no code platform owner says so.
How is this different than Salesforce doing the same thing?
Additionally how is it different than some opensource project on github deciding no longer to be opensource and providing no maintenance?
@@chadsakonchick If these questions from you are serious, i'm not really sure if your company should trust you as a CTO. If you build a company with the goal to gain traction and make some million $ and build up staff, that you are responsible for, you should build a technical infrastructure that is reliable as a backbone of all that. That means you build the software in such a way, that it is ideally not dependent on any 3rd party software in such a way, that the 3rd party dependency could break your whole company. Like when your no-code provider closes down, your whole company is gone. This is insane.
I can't really believe your questions are serious. If you rely on a 3rd party project from Github and that project closes down, you have the source code to develop it further in house. Yes this is bad, it will cost you money and resources, but it doesn't put you out of business. Same with Salesforce. It's just a CRM. It closes down, you migrate to another CRM software. It doesn't put you out of business. But if your no code provider closes down, your company will too. So this is highly irresponisble from you as a CTO.
The arrogance (and balls) to charge for a ticket to this conference man lol. Damn.
how is he supposed to pay for the venue, speakers, organization? and it's not wrong to turn a profit from creating a conference