Week #1 ODNC - It's a Buffet!
Hi, I’m Kavir! Welcome to Week #1 of ODNC1. In this week, folks were deciding which tools to use, how to overcome Bubble's learning curve, and how to go about with the capstone projects.
We had a bunch of amazing events this week: fireside chats with Emmanuel Straschnov from Bubble, Ben Tossell from Makerpad, workshops on no-code stacks by Michael Novotny, building lean MVPs by Bram Kanstein and co-building sessions where fellows worked together virtually in small break out rooms.
Sometimes it’s tough to balance attending all the sessions, being part of Slack conversations, the 1:1s, and workshops. But it’s your buffet to select from. Find your dessert counter and go straight for it! (just kidding, of course)
The common advice is to front-load the program in the first two weeks with 1:1s when everyone is available and willing. After that, get your hands dirty in building the product.
Let's dive into the key takeaways for the sessions this week:
Emmanuel Straschnov, CEO of Bubble
Emmanuel spoke about the history of Bubble and how they’ve scaled the platform from a 2 member team to something that powers sophisticated no-code apps. These were the key takeaways:
Future of no-code
Anyone who is interested in computing, make them able to create things. Default way to build things, irrespective of your background. 80% of the things that can be built, can be built with no-code within 4-5 years.
Find early customers who have the willingness to pay
Find people who are willing to pay for a buggy, ugly version of a product.
What Bubble is working on right now
Things that Bubble is working on currently:
Making the product easier to use
Responsiveness and data structures
Performance and reliability for scale
For me personally, I built a Bubble app in 2018. I managed to hack my way there, but if you asked me now to recreate it or teach how I did it, I’d be lost.
But I'm sure it's gotten better over the last few years.
Ben Tossell, Makerpad
Ben Tossell is the Founder of Makerpad. He started off his no-code journey by creating directory sites like Marketing Stack that went viral on Product Hunt. Here is what Ben had to say:
Avoid sunk cost fallacy
If I tried to build an Airbnb clone with code, it would have taken 9 months to learn how to code, and I'd tried to build something like Airbnb for dog homes. I would have put so much time and money into it, I am going to try and make it work even though it wouldn’t work.
Builder mindset
It's like reading 20 blog posts about startup growth, you can always distract yourself with another article that comes up. I don’t know which of my things may work. It only took a few hours for me to create them and the biggest shift was to not have an emotional attachment to these products. Even if it didn’t take off, I would have learned another tool.
Small bets
Don't think of your no-code builds as businesses until they are. Just think of it as experiments and learning.
Michael Novotny, Side Project Stack
Michael has spent a lot of time looking at no-code stacks and curating a bunch of handy resources for everyone in the community to benefit from. Here’s the takeaways:
Start with the problem
Many folks ask what no-code tools should I use? Wrong question.
Instead, start with asking yourself, what problem do I or my audience have? Then from there, work to create a solution on what thing or awesome experience can I create to solve it.
Find the right no-code stack
Try: Getstackd.io, a free no-code tool recommendation app (automated web app and built with no-codes tools). It sources hundreds of possibilities based on the data from actual 150+ shipped products made with no-code
A second way to figure out how to do this is to use another free resource and filter for the type of product you have and see what other Makers have used to build it: sideprojectstack.com/no-code-tech-stacks (there are 100+ inspirational products there for makers
A third way to get even more insights is the 150+ no-code project database with 2000 data points provided in TheLeanSideProject.com
Iteration and validation are key
You can build a v1 set of no-code tools and after validating your product, build v2 with the same tools or grow into other tools that provide more flexibility.
Bram Kanstein, No Code MVP
Bram is well known for creating the most upvoted product on Product Hunt ever - Startup Stash. Here are takeaways from his session:
Desirability > Viability > Feasibility
If nobody has a problem or need, why bother wasting time thinking about anything else?
MVP is not a shitty first product
It's a process, disposable, repeatable. Anything that helps you validate your riskiest assumptions in the fastest way possible.
Follow the MVP Canvas
Before you start building, start by listing down assumptions on the customer segment, value proposition, channels, customer engagement and more on a canvas.
The MVP Experiment Canvas is a take on the Business Model Canvas and made more suited for tech startups. Learn more about here.
My Build in Public Journey
I started this week with some experimentation. Sharath compiled an excellent list of YC resources for founders to look at before they apply to YC.
I took that and built a directory of YC applications resources using Airtable, Pory, and Zapier.
It took me around 4 hours to complete. I spent some time trying to automate a few things that weren't necessary - like the header image. But I decided to reduce scope and ship a basic version first. The new YC Application videos are automated through Zapier.
As for my capstone project, I finally narrowed down the problem space to — remote work culture.
My call with Dan Parry was helpful in overcoming the hesitation of reaching out to founders to understand the problem space better.
My next week is focussed on:
Preparing the questions to ask Founders according to the Mom Test
Shortlisting founders to reach out to and start the outreach
Building a landing page to provide some credibility to my user research
Learning to build a simple app in Bubble. This will give me some confidence in conversations with founders
Follow me on Twitter @KavirKaycee and follow the list of all ODNC1 folks here
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