The Rise of No Code MVPs.
By the time I finished writing Testing Business Ideas in 2019, I think I lost count of how many No Code platforms were launched while writing the book. The teams I worked with in between chapters were constantly finding new ways of quickly creating Mash-Up MVPs (Minimum Viable Products) to address their risk.
Here is how I define a Mash-Up MVP.
(source Testing Business Ideas, pg 244 Wiley - 2019)
A Mash-Up MVP is a type of Validation Experiment, where you create a functioning minimum viable product that consists of combining multiple existing services to deliver value.
This is where No Code comes in.
No Code is a rapidly growing movement in the software industry where people create software through drag and drop user interface. Essentially you don’t have to know how to code, to create things with code.
Some of the more popular No Code apps and platforms are:
Adalo: https://www.adalo.com/
Airtable: https://airtable.com/
Bubble: https://bubble.io/
Webflow: https://webflow.com/
Voiceflow: https://www.voiceflow.com/
Zapier: https://zapier.com/
So let’s dig into the details of how I see No Code helping teams reduce the time and cost of building Mash-Up MVPs.
Cost: Unless you are a software programmer, a Mash-Up MVP in software in the past could cost you anywhere between $1,000 to $10,000 to build. Depending on the complexity of your business, it could be even more. When you use a No Code solution instead of building from scratch, you can drive that price down to $100 to $500 a month. Since the target audience will most likely be small, this is much more cost effective early on.
Setup Time: Another reason I tell teams to defer building as long as possible is due to the time it takes to build. Setup time can take 1-3 weeks before it is ready to test with customers. No Code can reduce that time significantly. I’ve seen teams build solutions in a day or a few hours, depending on their comfort level with the No Code platform. If you are no familiar with the drag and drop platforms, you can hire outside experts to help build the No Code solution, rather than learning it all themselves. I’m fine with this as long as they are working very closely with you and deeply understand the context.
Run Time: When I worked with teams 5+ years ago, we would need software programmers to cobble together something that wouldn’t scale, and we’d ultimately have to quickly throw away. This can be viewed as wasteful by outside stakeholders and investors. With some of the newer No Code solutions, they buy you 1-2 years of life before throwing it all away to scale. This is huge, because you can build evidence over a longer period of time for a desirable, viable and feasible business.
Evidence Strength: The evidence strength remains very strong! You are addressing desirability (market risk), viability (financial risk) and feasibility (technical risk). It can be tested in the real world with people paying for it. Don’t forget to also check with regulatory and policy issues if you are testing your No Code solution with customers in heavily regulated environments such as healthcare.
Capabilities: In every experiment, I listed out all the capabilities you’ll need to pull it off. This often becomes overwhelming to teams new to experimentation, especially when they don’t feel they have the skills needed. While I’d point them to tools with templates in the past for things like Landing Pages, No Code is completely changing the game. You can now literally recreate entire products like Uber and AirBnB with No Code in hours.
Here are a few interesting examples of building profitable businesses with No Code:
Profitable Job Board: https://entrepreneurshandbook.co/how-i-launched-a-profitable-job-board-for-marketers-with-no-code-tools-in-3-weeks-bac437cf7920
The Very Best Cookie: https://www.theverybestcookieinthewholewideworld.com/
Automating Business Processes: https://www.luhhu.com/
I still advise teams that they should defer building as long as possible, and while this hasn’t changed, the sheer cost, time and capabilities needed to do a software Mash-Up MVP are rapidly plummeting.
If you don’t have the programming skills to build a software Mash-Up yourself, then I highly recommend checking out some of the No Code solutions.
