Newsletter 55: on starting a startup #2
11 minutes reading time. Thoughts on startups, growth, and technology 🚀
Welcome to another edition of the Struggle.
The Struggle is a bi-weekly newsletter where I share my thoughts and learnings from running a startup in Southeast Asia.
In continuation of the last article, I am writing a series of essays to describe what steps I would take to build a startup in 2021. The series is designed to help a few friends who are currently starting new businesses and want to leverage technology to build scalable solutions.
Building products
As a startup founder, two skills truly matter: building products and selling.
Each of those skills covers a wide array of responsibilities, so do not take them literally.
When I speak of building a product, I mean that you need to have a sufficient understanding of UI, UX, programming, no-code tools, and whatever else is relevant to your particular industry/concept.
On the other side is sales. When referring to selling, I have a broad definition in mind, pretty much everything from selling to clients, marketing, recruiting, articulating a compelling vision internally, and raising money. Basically, under selling, I am parking a broad umbrella category that captures the most important people skills.
The combination of building great products and being good at selling is what results in great companies.
In today’s essay, I will focus on building a product, especially as a non-technical founder, since the process can be intimidating.
Contrary to popular belief, it’s not mandatory to be technologists to build great tech products.
It sure does help, though, but for all non-technical founders out there, I will share a few insights and how to build a product through no-code tools.
No-Code Tools
What is no-code?
In a nutshell, No Code refers to digital tools designed for non-technical makers to build software applications without using any code, only simple drag and drop tools.
“As creating things on the internet becomes more accessible, more people will become makers. It’s no longer limited to the <1% of engineers that can code resulting in an explosion of ideas from all kinds of people.”
Ryan Hoover, Founder of Product Hunt
No-Code Tools
In a medium post from early 2019, Ryan Hoover shared the following list of popular no-code tools:
Beautifully responsive CMS-driven site using Webflow
Ecommerce shop with Shopify
Facebook Messenger bot for your shop powered by Octane AI
Web app using Bubble
Mobile app with Thunkable
Voice app using Voiceflow[1] (I created a joke bot in 10 minutes)
Simple single page website with Carrd
Paid newsletter with Substack
AR/VR/3D experience in your browser with Scapic
Online magazine hosted by Readymag
Turn a Google Sheet into a website with Sheet2Site
Internal dashboards and tools with Retool
Internal / external Wiki pages by Notion
To explore more no-tech tools, check out NocodeList.
No-code stack
First, you need to figure out what is your no-code stack. Meaning, you need to play with different tools, pick the ones you like, and learn how to use them fairly well. Here you go mine:
Notion - as it allows me to create basic webpages and internal/external wiki pages.
Webflow- when a project starts maturing, I would typically convert the Notion pages to a better-looking, more responsive, and optimized website via webflow.
Zapier - to connect different tools and automate simple processes.
Typeform - to build lead generation forms, collect feedback, or even develop basic engineering as marketing tools.
Slack - to communicate information internally.
Canva - for all design-related work.
*Source: All GIFs can be found at the Best no-code sales and marketing stack for 2020
Here you go a few examples of no-code tools that I have developed to test new ideas or to create efficiencies for Greenhouse:
Our first careers page
Communicates who we are, why join us, and our interview process
All open jobs are listed at the bottom.
Later on, as we got more resources and time, the page got moved to webflow, and it looks like this:
While the second page looks much better, starting on Notion, we got the following benefits:
Figured out what exactly we want to communicate
Iterated on the copy a few times
Building the Notion page took 2 to 4 hours altogether, and started collecting job applications immediately.
Webflow, while still a no-code tool, it’s a few degrees more complex, so we gradually transitioned towards a better webpage without losing momentum.
Before: Notion Page
After: Webflow Page
Zapier automation
We use Zapier to automate a bunch of things; here you go a few examples:
Every morning at 09:00 am, a Good Morning GIF is pushed to our Slack to greet the team and trigger employee engagement.
We automate GIFs to welcome new employees.
Sometimes the memes are a bit creepy, but it’s fun for the entire team. 👇
We send automated birthday messages to our clients.
Step by step guide on launching a no-code tool
Now that we have discussed different no-code tools and ways you can leverage them, here you go, my framework of building no-code prototypes:
Start testing different no-code tools to find out which ones you understand and like working with.
Identify what’s the objective of releasing your minimum viable product. What do you want to achieve?
Remember that your number one priority is to learn from interactions with real users/clients and iterate where necessary.
Here you go a few examples of what kind of prototypes you may decide to build via no-code tools:
A landing page that creates excitement and builds a waitlist - applicable when you are building a product that’s exciting but complex works well with B2C FinTech apps, e.g., https://doriot.com/
Basic website to generate leads early on - applicable when the time to value is long. If you are building a product, that would require you to sit down and discuss the client's scope of work. Many B2B companies can leverage such an approach, e.g., https://lemon.io/.
To imitate a mature product on the surface - rumor has it that in the early days of FoodPanda, they had a great customer-facing website but a hoard of employees making calls and coordinating orders behind the curtains.
To curate valuable content and drive awareness about your product, e.g., https://www.founderlibrary.com/.
Build the first version on Notion to gather your thoughts and collect early feedback on the value proposition. Go out, meet people and show them what you have built on Notion, asking them to interact with the prototype and voice out what comes to their minds.
After all, if people do not understand what you do, they won’t engage. Your priority is to figure out how to communicate your value proposition clearly.
As the value proposition gets clearer, transition to a more stable platform like webflow/Shopify that will enable you to build a better-looking, responsive, SEO-optimized product and customer journey.
Use templates where possible to speed up the work, unless you have a webflow/Shopify expert on your team; here you go a few great ones:
E-commerce (here I recommend Shopify)
Once you have an improved minimum viable product, focus on understanding better how people interact with your value proposition, what the bottlenecks are in the customer journey, what people are missing, and then start working towards creating further efficiencies through platforms like Zapier and Slack. A few examples of things you can do:
Send notifications to Slack regarding each new sign-up so that the team can discuss the inquiry and act on it fast.
Automate where possible the manual work between your CRM and webpage.
Embed Typeform to create a beautiful, contextualized, and personalized experience for users.
Until you have a strong pull from the market, you will need to do most back-end work manually. Meaning, while your front-end product will look more mature, your back-end operations will be manual, with a few exceptions of processes you automate via zapier, retool, Typeform, and a few other solutions like that. Once you reach product-market-fit, you can start investing more in technology and tech talent. In the meantime, do your best to leverage no-code, low-code, and open-source platforms.
Key takeaways
Walking away, I hope you remember to:
Familiarize yourself with the no-code movement.
Develop your no-code stack.
Start with a Notion page to get early feedback and clarity.
Transition to a template via Webflow / Shopify.
Automate where possible with tools like Zapier, Slack, Typeform, Retool.
Do things that do not scale until you feel a strong market pull. In the meantime, leverage no-code, low-code, open-source platforms.
Once you reach product-market fit, start investing in tech talent and more scalable solutions.
Over to You
I’d love to hear about your perspectives on building a tech product as a non-technical founder?
What is your no-code stack?
What no-code products have you built yourself?