I have experience as a full stack developer, and as a machine learning engineer. I know C#, Java, Javascript, and Python. I have my own private AWS account. But I am a first time Saas founder. I’ll be doing the development myself. Should I use my existing skills to come up with my first product or should I learn no-coide tools? The reason I ask is no-code tools seem like they might be worth learning to spin up really quick MVPs. Thanks
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Since you are developer - build using the skills you have. Depending on the product - no-code has limitations. Also no-code can dilute your IP and make it impossible to patent anything. If you need validation. Do some no tech solutions or code something really simple.
As a data engineer/web developer I would say no
Totally agree with the idea of embracing No-Code, especially for entrepreneurs. I’m a developer myself and dove into entrepreneurship not too long ago. Looking back, I wish I’d explored No-Code options earlier. It could have saved me so much time, allowing me to focus more on the business side of things rather than getting bogged down in complex development tasks.
I learned the hard way that as a solo founder with limited funds, splitting my time between building the product and growing the business was tough. Now, I’ve gotten pretty deep into No-Code and even do some consulting. It’s fascinating to see different problems and help others create their own products.
Recently, I launched a small project on Product Hunt. It was a breeze to set up - just a few hours on a No-Code platform, and voila, over 100 users on day one! And now, I’m scaling it up, all with just a subscription to a No-Code service.
By the way, have you heard of BetterLegal? They’re a stunning example of No-Code success, scaling up to $10 million on Bubble. It’s inspiring and a bit of an eye-opener for someone like me who’s into software building and AI automation. Makes you think about the possibilities of the future with AI and allowing it to build amazing softwares.
What is your idea btw?
I will say for MVP. stuck with what you know. And focus on marketing, operations and customer rather than tech.
You can do that, but you can also choose a RAD framework like Django or Laravel, these allow you to develop features quickly while retaining absolute control
Imho, stop on the technical side and focus on the business side. Validate your assumptions. If you find an important and urgent problem to solve, then decide whether to code that from scratch or to use no code. If there’s some pull from the market, and coding it from scratch will take awhile, then you yourself might opt to go nocode just to satisfy the pull
Without that validation, you might just end up playing with tech instead of building a business
Well, you can. However, you (might?) get scaling problems for the future.
Do you have any mentorships/internship spots in your startup? I want to learn C# I know a little bit of python. I just want to work on something people will actually use.
I have 15 years of software development experience (same stack) and launched a B2B SaaS startup about 10 months ago. I do not recommend nocode/low code. I spent about 2 days playing with bubble before abandoning it for VS Code. I’ve built an entire platform in Azure consisting of Cosmos DB, a couple C# API’s and a couple C# Azure Functions. Hired a couple Upwork consultants to handle cloud infrastructure (Terraform) and front-end work. Development skills + AI will get you where you need to be quickly.
Avoid low-code. AI makes it irrelevant IMO.
If you’re 10 months in to building a B2B SaaS and you’re getting outside help for infra then you’re almost certainly overengineering for the scale you’re at.
Monolith on Heroku/Encore etc is your friend.
You still need to set up back ups, high availability and fault tolerance even if you plan to run it all on one server.
You still need to set up back ups, high availability and fault tolerance even if you plan to run it all on one server.
Considering nobody said anything about scale…you literally don’t know what you’re talking about.
In our case, this is a FinTech B2B SaaS (our customers are mostly banks), i.e. highly regulated and ALL of our customers expect a high degree of security. We have to fill out extensive questionnaire’s asking about IT security before they’ll even consider us. So, I hired a professional to design and implement a secure, private network (i.e. nothing exposed to the internet, configure a firewall, set up VPN, etc). So, no not over-engineered if it’s a requirement for the industry. Not all startups are simple B2C apps that you can throw up on lowcode and crank out a working MVP in 10 days…
Yes you should. Start with bubble.io
You have one goal right now. You need to get enough of a SaaS product going that you can figure out whether it can find users (“product-market fit”, it’s called).
DO NOT add other goals that don’t advance your one goal. Not til you have some surplus revenue coming in to spend on research.
Plus, low-code and no-code tools have a history of producing not-quite-good-enough results needing tweaks and workarounds that serve the tool vendor, not your customers. Clunky form handling, rigid database designs, and the other assumptions that go into lo/no code tech may, or may not, serve customers well. Stuff you make yourself that’s perfect will.
The low code advantage becomes much more marginal in your case. I’ve used these tools in the past and they have lots of dead-ends where you expect to be able to do something, and you just can’t.
If low-code means you learn bubble in a week and can have a prototype in 2, versus just spinning up a simple JS prototype in a month, I’d go with the JS every time.
Thats what I was thinking. I still have to learn some no code things for stuff like landing pages and email anyway though so I was thinking I may want to look at how people are building entire Saas with no code.
I would say it depends on what type of platform you are building. If it is a marketplace, an online retail store, a CRM/CMS (which it is probably is not), or something that no-code has developed direct solutions for, then it may be worth it. Otherwise you’re going to have to deep dive into some of these no/low code options to see if it’s feasible from both a UX and cost perspective. Some options are ridiculously overpriced as they customize your cost based on how you plan to scale. The good part is that there are many no-code solutions that can scale way beyond what it would take for you to get funding interest both at the seed and early series funding stages.
It’s probably best to learn some no code tools sooner or later. So it’s probably best to learn sooner.
I also was in this same position last month and learned a new workflow and tools/understanding. Now I have the confidence to build faster and more flexibly, or provide help if anyone needs it down the road
As a data engineer/web developer I would say no