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

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.

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 depends.

If you have customers already, you can start to code what they want.
In this way, the early stage of your start-up will be a Dev agency.

If you want to explore market unmet market demand by iterating MVPs, maybe it helps to use no-code tools.

But why not both? You can earn money by providing a Dev agency service. Also, hire part-time co-node developers to get you what you want to test.

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.

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?

Yes. Use no code tools 100%. I’m using FlutterFlow to build our app MVP. After completing the first 5 main pages, I noticed we need 25 more pages. After finishing that set of 25 pages, I’m sure we’ll need to add 10 more. And trust me, all these pages are necessary to our apps core features.

I rather use no-code and push our MVP out to start getting testers/users than to sit there and code everything for months. Also FlutterFlow has tons of templates so you could cut your dev time in half.