“We need money to hire developers”- ancient saying from pre-2025

August 2024 we made an extremely radical decision at my tech startup to completely abandon a 6 month project to re-platform our entire Gen 1 tech site from wordpress into a fully custom platform. Instead we decided to replace it with a no-code solution. In less then 48 hours I, the founder with no coding skills, had replicated our entire site. No loss of functionality or no major design differences- but it did come with some major changes.

• We increased our site speed by 10x

• We decreased our development costs by over 200%

• We natively integrated the system into our existing CRM allowing our sales funnel to flow directly into our live site

• We had no created a system that both myself, my other cofounders, and our product team could all use

Welcome to the future of startups and it starts with taking a hard look at the rise of no-code tools.

Now don’t get me wrong, developers are never going away but what I’m referring to is the previous road block that the majority of non-technical founders (like myself) had faced when trying to build a software enabled startup prior to being in market.

In my previous startup we had to rely on a 5 person development team to survive. Nearly 40% of our burn was directly correlated to software development. Whereas in my current startup less then 4% of our burn will be directly correlated to software development meaning that 36% difference in cost can now be put directly behind activities that drive growth; Sales & Marketing.

Why is no-code the future of startups:

Everyday I talk to founders who have amazing ideas but the biggest issue they face is “I don’t know how to develop it. I can’t afford to pay a full time developer and I don’t know how to code myself so I need to raise money to hire a developer.” But on the flip side investors want to see traction; so how do you show traction without a product……? (that’s the gap to be solved- which I also have some tricks for in an upcoming article as well)

That’s where no-code tools are perfectly positioned to thrive. When it comes to no-code tools though there are a broad range of tools to consider

• Tier 1- Legacy: These are the ones we all know (wix, shopify, squarespace, etc) they are great for landing pages but when it comes to developing more complicated systems, like those required for tech startups, they just don’t offer the functionality to do so.

• Tier 2- no-code/low-code: These are the tools that I love. Applications like Softr, leadpages, and other systems that are designed to have simple pre-built structures that automate the site format & functionality but also allow you to easily inject custom code into any block, page, etc and change the entire experience of your site. I especially love these tools because as a non-coding founder myself you can use these in conjunction with AI tools to write the code for you that you wish to inject into the site in order to fully utilize the low-code/no-code structure with out having to know how to code.

• Tier 3- AI prompt coding: This is where my own mind starts to get blown. These are new tools like Replit that you just speak to an AI assistant and it does all of the coding for you!

Now which tier you choose is going to depend on the job to be done.

• Tier 1: perfect for landing pages, wait lists, pre-launches, etc

• Tier 2: perfect for building out more advanced systems in a fast, scalable, and easy to maintain manner.

• Tier 3: Building fully custom, scalable, and extremely advanced products with no coding skills needed but certainly requires an advanced understanding of how websites work.

How am I using these new tools?

The tool I am digging in the most to right now is Replit. My tech startup is currently in a crucial discovery phase were we are rapidly testing dozens of different advanced landing pages and site changes to enhance both our B2B and B2C acquisition funnel. To do this we have chosen Replit as our key tool to power this discovery process.

What is Replit? Replit is a tool that very much looks and feels like chatGPT but rather then giving a response it is coding a fully functioning website. Simply start with a prompt, design a basic flow, request changes, test live, and then deploy.

As an example, we spun up a new page for B2B sales funnel testing that is a fully functional self-service client sign up page through Replit in just 2.5 hours: View Page

But it did not stop there. We have continued to use replit for new design versions of our site, interactive B2B sites, webinar landing pages, and so much more. The best part is I was able to do it by myself with no coding necessary- just a vision, an understanding of website development, and an AI assistant doing all the coding for me.

“Senior AI Prompting Officer” - 20% of job titles in 5 years

So how does this change the game for startups? As an early mentor once told me: “For a startup to succeed they need a space, resources, and support. In many cases, especially with tech startups, the space is already covered. The support can be through advisors, community groups, events, etc. But the resources- that’s where most startups struggle. That’s where no-code/low-code & AI coding are completely changing the future of startups.

Now for the first time ever you can be a non technical founder and rather then having to rely on funding or the right hiring decisions to make your dreams a reality, you can use systems like chatGPT to identify the right tools for the job to fill your resource gap and with a short learning curve you will be able to build your vision yourself.

As a non-technical founder who went to a school without many other individuals who knew how to code I experience this issue first hand. I had to result to odd side jobs like doordashing just to hire developers on freelancer & upwork in order to develop my vision. But now non-technical co-founders around the world can take an idea and with the right prompting, right tools, and right delivery they can start to cross the first barrier to entry; pushing it live!

We all know there is a lot more to building a startup then pushing it live but as mentioned in the intro, one of the biggest gaps that exists today is the gap between idea and fundability solely due to not being able to demonstrate early signs of PMF due to having no product to test.

The struggles of the non-technical founder are starting to fade and the rise of the “professional AI prompting” founder are here to stay.

All good things come with bad things

As a tale as old as time, with all good things come bad things. I used to joke in the early days of my previous tech startup that when things were really hard to develop and our team built it that “it’s just another barrier to stop someone from competing with us”.

That used to be true. One of the largest moats that tech startups had was their technology but now, for legacy startups, it is actually becoming one of their largest threats.

With the rise of no-code/low-code & AI coding it is extremely easy for smaller, nimble, tech-debt free brands to develop faster, more advanced, and better products that more resemble the needs of the market today.

This results in a world where the cost to develop software continues to trend exponentially to zero….

So while it enables new startups to enter the market & provide better solutions both easier and faster it also causes an overall shift in the market where it no longer matters how advanced your software is- what matters is how strong you are at GTM.

Interested in some of the tools I talked about in this article?

• Softr: https://www.softr.io/

• Replit: https://replit.com/

• LeadPages: https://www.leadpages.com/