How I Started a Profitable Company Using No-Code

And you can too

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

Last year, I founded the Teaching Startup project using only no-code tools, just to prove it could be done. Within a month, it was profitable, growing, and yesterday, the app was named Bubble’s App of the Day.

No-code is no joke.

No-code tools have quickly become powerful building blocks for both technical and non-technical creators alike. They’re especially helpful for quickly and inexpensively standing up web-based or mobile applications.

But can a non-technical founder use no-code tools to create an entire tech-based startup? It seems the answer is unequivocally yes.

Earlier this month, I wrote an article calling for teaching no-code over preaching “Learn to code.” I got a lot of feedback asking for a broader overview of no-code options.

But rather than just write up a list of vendors and links, I’ll provide some insight into how I created a product and a startup without writing a single line of code.

Why build a company using no-code?

You might not have the coding skills, and those skills are expensive to hire. However, that’s not the only reason or even the best reason. I’m a software developer from way back, and I’ve built everything from prototypes to acquired companies.

Speed is the primary reason to use no-code — to get new ideas into the market with a viable product that serves real customers. As it turns out, no-code can actually get you way past viability and all the way to profitability.

Teaching Startup is my project to innovate how entrepreneurs are educated and advised. So to show our members that it can be done, I decided to build the company’s product — a web-based application — and all of the company infrastructure, without writing any code.

Here’s how I got started.

Your platform is your HQ

Whether you go no-code or low-code or even mix in some real code, you’ll need a base platform to tie it all together in a public website or a mobile app.

If your technology is complicated and requires a lot of processing power, there’s probably…