Dennis H. LewisAuthor, Cryptopreneur and Bubble Nocode Wizard

"I Built 90% of My App Alone — Here's Why I Still Hired a Bubble Expert"

Name: "I Built 90% of My App Alone — Here's Why I Still Hired a Bubble Expert"
Uploaded: 2026-05-13T10:30:01+00:00
Duration: 2 min 18 s
Channel: Dennis H. Lewis
Description: In this interview, a maker (Speaker A) explains how they built roughly 90% of a crop‑planning web app using Bubble on their own, but encountered…

13 May 2026 · 2 min

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2:18

In this interview, a maker (Speaker A) explains how they built roughly 90% of a crop‑planning web app using Bubble on their own, but encountered intermittent glitches and uncertainty about hidden issues before launch. Recognizing their own limits, they sought a specialist audit and final polish, choosing Dennis H. Lewis from Ratio rather than a larger agency. They valued the direct Slack communication, low overhead, and focused expertise. Dennis reflects on a similar case where a client worked with a big agency that had many collaborators, leading to fragmented communication and inefficiencies. He contrasts that with the maker’s streamlined approach, praising the ability to deliver a functional product on a reasonable budget, solve real problems, and bring it to market quickly. The conversation highlights the trade‑offs between DIY low‑code development, expert audit, and agency involvement.

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No, I think it's been great. So I was able to get everything working probably 90% of the way just on my own, but I have enough experience to know what I don't know. And I figured before launching, it would be good to have an expert, number one, audit what I'd done. And then also we needed just some help pushing crop planning across the finish line because it, what I built worked, but it was very glitchy. Sometimes it would work, sometimes it wouldn't work, and I did not know why. So I just went through the Bubble search for an expert tool. And then there were a few that popped up, but I really liked that working with Ratio, it was just Dennis H. Lewis, especially since I have project and product management background. I didn't really want to hire a bigger agency where fees for that were kind of built in. And it's just been really great to have the Slack channel. And if I have a question, I just like, I can ask. There's, there's no big process. It's just Hey Dennis, I was trying to do this and I don't think it's working. Can you look at it?
Yeah. I, you know, you make me laugh. The other day I was auditing an application for somebody who was kind of in a similar situation, reached out to me and they had been working with a big agency. The agency had done a decent job with what I saw. I mean, there were, there were some things that I would have done differently, but I looked in and they had 10 different collaborators in the application from that agency, all supposedly working on the same, you know, and it wasn't a humongous this app, it was, it was smaller than, than your app really in the functionality side. And that was one of their frustrations that, hey, you know, I, I'm getting the runaround here. Every, every day it's somebody new. It's explaining it over and over again. It's, oh, well, that's not included in the scope. And we don't like to work that way. We're not trying to build the biggest agency either. So, so I appreciate that, that, that was something that worked with you guys. I like that we are opening the door to lots of possibilities for people. They're, they're doing something completely different, but they're in their market, they're in their niche, and you guys are such a great example that it can be done well and it can be done on a reasonable budget. You can bring this to market and actually solve real problems for real people.