“Dammit Jim, I’m a designer, not a developer!”
How to create a working MVP without coding skills.
This series focuses follows the spnsrmnstr startup journey. Be sure to sign up for early access when we’re ready at spnsrmnstr.com.
I’ve dabbled. I can edit front end code. But back end? Fuhgettaboutit. No clue. So we have this great idea, but how to build it without any seed money and without knowing how to code the backend?
The first step towards validating an idea is building an MVP the quickest, shortest (and cheapest) way possible. I can design all the screens and user experience in my sleep but until it is made real, they are simply designs.
From here we have two options:
- Build in interactive, clickable yet static prototype
- Build an interactive, clickable - yet scaled back - live MVP app
- Do both
We know how to do #1, but would it / will it be enough to sell an idea to progress to seed funding? Pros are we could show a fully thought out and fully featured application, with none of it actually working.
We don’t know how to do #2, but it would be something that people could start to use, sign up for, and begin building an audience for. Pros are it is useable and real; cons are that it would be scaled back functionality-wise.
For investors, the best path then is to create an MVP and present the full dream as a clickable prototype, along with a road map (and the usual other financial stuffs).
Enter the NoCode Movement
We arrived at learning bubble.io’s no code platform which had much of the functionality we are looking for:
- Social integration
- Account creation
- Database integration
You may be asking yourself, “What about Boundless?” which is a totally valid question. The extent of what we’d like to do is outside the capabilities of Boundless and falls under the capabilities of Bubble. The capabilities are connecting to external APIs and creating a backend db.
Unlike Bubble, Boundless does not provide full back-end database functionality built-in. Bubble, on the other hand, makes it possible to connect to any API or backend. Building features such as a comments system or an upvoting system is easier in Bubble, but more difficult in Boundless.
https://bubble.io/blog/boundless-review-bubble/
Kicking the tires
We’ve now spent a couple of days with it going through the tutorials and researching other integrations. There’s quite a robust marketplace of plugins for prebuilt access to various third party services, input elements, CRM integration and more. Many are built by the bubble.io team themselves. There’s even a prebuilt theme marketplace.
We’re building ours from scratch as we don’t want to be learning the bubble.io platform and also have to deconstruct someone else’s work. We’ll know our own platform inside and out as we build it iteratively ourselves.
Product Hunt has been an invaluable directory for resources. Who knew there were so many around the no code movement? We also recommend checking out:
- Bilder.com (alternative to bubble.io)
- BoundlessLabs (yet another alternative)
- Nocodery.com for no code tutorials (like Skillshare for no code)
- NCF or NoCodeFounders (advice, forums, tools and jobs)
- Makerpad for no code tutorials on a variety of no code platforms
Learning Bubble.io Resources
- Coaching No Code Apps Youtube Channel
- Build Camp Youtube Channel
- Bubble.io Youtube Channel
Parallel Paths
There’s a lot of activities running in parallel at spnsrmnstr:
- Wireframing the UX & then comping the final UI
- Running incremental feature experiments in bubble.io while gradually building out the application
- Building the brand
Learning which online tools are best, and cheapest, for building a startup. We’re devoting an entire post to that so stay tuned!
We’re excited and enthused over the progress we’ve made in just a couple of days on the MVP using bubble.io. Stay tuned for more progress updates!
– head mnstr 😈
