One Year Into a No-Code Startup: 7 Critical Lessons I Learned the Hard Way

No-code can take you pretty far, but getting to revenue is still on you

Joe Procopio
5 min readMar 17, 2022

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Exactly one year ago, I set out to build a new startup from scratch using only no-code and low-code tools. I did this for all the reasons any entrepreneur founds a new company, but I added one extra goal:

Show how anyone can create a working, profitable business using only no-code.

Over the last 20+ years, I’ve been hands-on at the “from scratch” stage of 14 startups, and every single one of them generated a ton of lessons that I took with me to the next.

These are the most important learnings I can share after 12 months spent wrestling a real business into profitable reality without writing a single line of code.

Lesson 1: No-code isn’t for everything

Even with all the advancements in no-code and low-code technology over the last few years, experience tells me that these tools and platforms shouldn’t be the engine or the unique differentiator that your product is built on.

Instead, no-code and low-code tools are more appropriate for core-adjacent tasks — functions like user management, billing, and the delivery of static…

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Joe Procopio
Joe Procopio

Written by Joe Procopio

I'm a multi-exit, multi-failure entrepreneur. AI pioneer. Technologist. Innovator. I write at Inc.com and BuiltIn.com. More about me at joeprocopio.com

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