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Quick, actionable episodes for aspiring SaaS founders who want to build on their own terms. No fluff, no theory, just real strategies from a serial bootstrapper who's done it multiple times.
What I wanna do is help you decide whether or not to use no code solutions for building your app or simply just going the custom route. So let's dive into this topic. Now where this comes from was I had an idea to build an application, and I had sourced a little bit of that information in the problem context. And it looked like there was some demand for something like this if I could build it. But the idea was it would be a warm outreach tool via email.
Speaker 1:What I mean by warm is it wouldn't just be the typical spammy, you know, hey, you buy this generic nonsense that wasn't personalized anyway. It would actually personalize to you. So sure, would be by email. Yes. It would be trying to engage with you to talk about a sales conversation, but it would be personalized to you.
Speaker 1:So none of no two messages would be alike, right? That in the marketing world, I think what they mostly refer to this is account based marketing, right? Which has a tendency to be more effective, obviously, because it's more personalized. Right? It it clearly looks like, and it is written for you.
Speaker 1:So long story short, that was the idea. Now, when I was workshopping the solution design phase, I actually found something online for someone who had built this into an n eight n automation. If you're not familiar with n eight n, it's basically like a workflow development slash automation tool. You can connect pretty much anything to anything, and you can automate it, and you can have triggers, and they can do all kinds of cool stuff. Right?
Speaker 1:So it can connect theoretically anything to anything. And they had put that up there online for anyone to kind of gain access to and then play with themselves. And I was like, wow, cool. That's exactly what I'm looking for. And supposedly it's already built.
Speaker 1:So all I gotta do is create my own account, set it up, and then I've got it running. Fantastic. Well, in the end, long story short, I wasn't able to ever actually get it running. Sure. It may have been technical skills on my part, but I'm fairly technical and it just it's not that I couldn't probably get it running.
Speaker 1:It's was spending so much time trying to figure out how to make this thing work. I just like, you know what? It's probably not just worth it. Probably just not worth it because it's taking so much time. So instead I kept thinking like, maybe I just use AI to build this in a custom way because you know, the no code solution is probably not going to scale all that way well anyway.
Speaker 1:So instead, what if I just built this custom with AI? Long story short, that's what I did and ended up being faster in the end from start to finish going custom versus using the no code solution. So some of my lessons here are essentially coming from that. But there's three key points I'll mention to help you decide kind of which path to go because I have value for each. And I think these points should help you figure out what probably would work best in your case.
Speaker 1:So the first one is that it really depends on what you're building. And when I say that, what I mean is how complex whatever it is you're trying to build. As in the more complex it is, more likely you're gonna get a better return and have a better experience just simply going the custom route from the jump. But if it's simpler, if it's a prototype, if you're just trying to put an MVP together, you may very well be able to do that faster and easier with a no code solution. So that's the first point.
Speaker 1:The second one is that it's counter to it. You would think that leveraging a no code solution would be faster in the end than going the custom route. Like my experience, oftentimes, it's not. And I think one of the biggest reasons for that is that if you know how to put applications together in a custom way, if you have that experience, which, you know, that's a big caveat. But if you have that experience, you kind of already know what the bigger pieces are and maybe even how to put them together.
Speaker 1:But if you haven't used one of these no code solutions before and sometimes even if you have, you have to learn the system. You've got to figure out like how to wire everything up. You got to learn their language. Right? And that's a new just set of skills that you have to add.
Speaker 1:And that's ever changing as well also. Custom is to a certain extent as well as also, but, you know, a lot of that is still similar to how it was, you know, forever ago. Now it's just a little bit easier and faster because you can use AI for it. So that's point number two, and it's a bit counterintuitive. So I wanna spend a little more time on that one.
Speaker 1:The third one is that you're probably gonna have to go custom eventually anyway. So I'm not saying that because that gets that puts the car before the horse a little bit. You know, when a premature scale, that's always a challenge, I always wary of that one. So I call that one out a lot. But if you are gonna if you're gonna scale this thing, you're probably not gonna scale it with a no code solution.
Speaker 1:So just keep that in mind. So if you've got some initial traction or you've got pretty strong problem solution fit, you know, as opposed to sinking that time and no code solution, maybe go custom out the gate anyway because you got some folks that are ready to use it already. And if that's the case, you were probably gonna go custom eventually anyway. So you won't necessarily need to sync that time into the no code solution. So anyway, what should you do with this information?
Speaker 1:Well, what I'd recommend is experiment with it. Right? Try to build whatever it is you wanna build in the form of maybe an MVP or a quick v one with both. Try to do it with something like n eight n. There's other options out there too.
Speaker 1:Zapier is kinda doing their thing and whatnot. But try to build it with a no code solution. At the same time, consider doing the same thing, but do so custom. Right? And, you know, keep in mind the other things I mentioned as well too in terms of your background and experience.
Speaker 1:Right? Start with whatever is gonna be easier and faster. Don't necessarily think about scale and all those kind of things right out of the gate. Just, like, about what's gonna be the easiest, most effective way for you to make progress. So I would recommend kind of doing it that way.
Speaker 1:And then I'm also obviously curious to hear your feedback. So please engage with me and let me know because I always love to hear that and your recommendations as well. So to recap, right, I think the most important criteria when deciding whether or not to go no code or just go custom these days because AI just helps the process move so much faster is the biggest variable is the complexity. You're building something that's gonna be more complex, you're probably better off going custom and leveraging AI just right out of the gate. But if it's gonna be something quick, if it's an MVP, if you're just trying to wire up a prototype to make sure that it works and do like a technical viability test, I think no code still has value for that and that's really kind of the space it should probably live.
Speaker 1:So anyway, that's it for today. Thanks for listening.