How to use Bubble to create and validate your idea before seeking VC funding

What is it:

Qoins - Innovative way to pay off debt

What did I learn:

1. Product Strategy: Why Bubble?

The Makers of Qoins: "Why Bubble? "I wasn’t interested in taking the time to re-learn how to code, just to validate my business idea. That’s when I discovered Bubble, and since then I’ve built several businesses and apps with the no-code platform."

Bubble is a great tool to learn because once you learn the application you can leverage those skills and reuse them for more application ideas in the future.

However, that being said I don't entirely agree with this approach to start off with Bubble right out of the gate. It depends on what are you goals, skill level and budget to be able to bring something to market? My recommendation is to understand what is the value you are trying to create. What is the easiest way to validate that value? It may not even be with a product with no-code. But it has to be something tangible that you can create so that you can evaluate and measure a real response, see a user take a real action and/or pay money for a product.

Typically I have seen that does not mean starting off with Bubble. Because the learning curve with Bubble is higher than other no-code tools, I would recommend you evaluate how might you create your app in a simpler stack of no-code tools to product some amount of value for the problem that you are trying to solve.

Further, you will need to segementize your product. The main reason why I have made this mistake and seen other beginner Makers too is try to build an entire fully featured application in their V1. When you do this you lose ALL leverage and advantage as a Maker. You severely dampen your chances at easily getting your first 1000 customers. I didn't say it's impossible you just made it much harder. The harder you make it the less likely chance of success.

Instead focus on validation not building. Eventually after you validate some part of your value prop you can then make the determination and investment to build with Bubble or other tools because you have now validated a concept, not an idea and you have mitigated the risk in investing in a tool like Bubble.

2. No-code tool feature: Can you scale with Bubble?
"Bubble has allowed us to test our initial concept and iterate quickly, and it’s scaled with us even better than we originally imagined. As Qoins has grown, we’ve continued to use Bubble throughout major parts of our business, as it has helped us accomplish things that we’d typically need a larger team of developers to maintain. Even as some parts of our business have transitioned to being built on code, Bubble has continued to serve as the backbone of our business." https://bubble.io/blog/bubble-app-qoins/

I see a lot of pushback from the haters of no-code community on scaleability of no-code.

The arguement I would make is that the same problems you have with scaling no-code exist when you build applications with code.

If you have every built an application with code you know about tech debt, refactoring and completely trashing old applications and legacy code and starting over because the previous code base is unworkable going forward. Those issues still appear in no-code but they just look slightly different. Instead of scaling with smaller no-code tools that aren't as reliable, you'll have to invest in higher performance tools that you can scale with.

3. Product Strategy: Should I build a web app or mobile app first?
Qoins started off in Bubble. But today Qoins main experience is in a mobile app. So if you have an app idea, what should you do?

How fast can you validate? Qoins team used Bubble and created a web app version first before they created a mobile app. I love this strategy because it allows you to validate faster instead of the slowness of launching and the cost of developing a mobile application.

When you are creating a new concept, or if you are just a solo Maker on a budget always ask yourself what is the easiest way to validate the concept?