Build Your MVP as a Non-Technical Founder (at Founders Institute @Founding)

Hi, I'm Ray. I introduced myself at the beginning as I started my career in data science and I thought that's what I was going to do. Then I got sucked into software startups being the person who wasn't trained as a computer science in the room, but having this little bit of off-center experience. Founded a couple of companies, had some success with that. Of course, the last couple of years, Have folks have asked, like, what's the new news? And it's been, as, um, as Manal and Michael have been discussing, the, the rise of no-code and being at that intersect between, uh, business and, uh, technology. And what I found is that, like, about maybe 10 years ago, it was like anybody who could build a SaaS, right? You would have a software— if you had software programming experience, you could go enter just about any domain and make a SaaS out of it and be very likely to make money. And that's not the case anymore. Now it's much more if you are the domain expert, much like the people who are in this room today, if you understand how your business works, how your market works, how your cause works, you have the most important experience and you're able to apply that experience through technology using these kinds of no-code, low-code tools that I've been sort of getting myself into and that I hope you'll be availing yourself of after this meeting if you haven't already before. My focus has been on, you know, what's still hard as a result of working on that, because I found about 80% of working in no-code is relatively easy. It meets that promise of, oh wait, this is so much easier. And then about 15% is hard. It's still work, feels like a bit of a grind. And then 5% can sometimes feel impossible. My focus as a practice and with my state change work has been on that 5%. And also, you know, both trying to offer that as a bit of a service, but also trying to build a bit of a mental model to help people break out of that. Because I find the key is not to have all the answers.. But to have a frame of mind that allows you to ask better questions. And many of those questions have already been asked by Manal and Michael in the course of this. So you're gonna be hearing those echoes as we talk about this over the course of the next few minutes. And I find that when you put these together, that forms a wheel, right? And, and like no-code or technology in general is a vehicle for us. And you measure the success of the vehicle by how far it takes you, and that's the number of turns of that wheel. So how quickly can you turn that wheel and go from insight to insight and level of knowledge to level of knowledge? And all that really starts with having a beginner's mind, the idea that you don't know it all today. Many of the people in this room, many people who are looking to start companies have deep experience in whatever your domain is. You're experts and you're expected in many cases to have answers. But then you start looking at the technology stuff and you're like, wait, I don't have all the answers here. And you know what? The tech people don't either. But you have the, you've got the building blocks, you've got the intelligence, you've got the discipline to be able to learn new things because you've learned what you've already learned.. And the, and we need to just reapply that discipline and apply that intelligence to go, you know, learn some new things you haven't done before. And the no-code tools allow us to do many things that we haven't been able to do before. For my money, no-code is partially about the tooling making things easier and partially about the mindset of, wait, there's an app for that? Well, there should be an app for this. And your ability to start to see in your head based on your domain expertise, wait, this is where the world should B makes you think, well, what, what, where's the gap between those two things? And you can start making progress on that gap when you're using these no-code tools. It allows you to make that forward progress, but you don't make it all in one step. And so one of the key principles, something we talk about in StateChange all the time, is that you will build this again. The purpose of what you're doing today is to be able to learn so you know how to be serving the market tomorrow, to be getting technical knowledge, to be getting market knowledge. You are— and if you in the course of that are shipping that knowledge about both those domains, about both the market and about how to be doing things, technical knowledge, you will be in a position to be able to make a lot of progress faster. Once again, you're not trying to do it in one turn of the wheel. You're trying to figure out how many you— how to get more turns of the wheel in a shorter period of time. And that comes from having a position of confidence in your own ability to learn and forgiveness that you don't have the answers today. And if you're able to do that and you're in a position where you're able to receive that new information into your brain,, you will be able to, you know, create really great things. And I found that the key first step to that is curiosity. You know, there's this, there's this wonderful TV show called Ted Lasso about an American football coach who goes and becomes an English football coach with, you know, hilarious consequences. But there's this one scene where he's playing darts against a bully and he's hustling at darts and he, and just as he's about to win, he gives this little speech where he talks about being underestimated and how the people people who he has defeated in the course of his career always underestimate him, and he never really understood why until he saw this quote that said, be curious, not judgmental. Most of the founders I've seen that kind of run into the ground, they are very judgmental. They are angry that things are not working the way they wanted to. They're angry that the customer isn't buying. They were angry that the technology didn't work. They're angry that the developer who gave this work to wasn't producing a thing that they want, that they that they were hoping it would. Where I found greatest success are the ones who are curious. Why didn't that happen? Why are the customers not buying? What do the customers want? What— how does this actual technology work? Where was the, you know, gap in the, in the communication? What's going on inside? And the more we look inside and say, and say we don't have the answer, and it's not about the way the world should be, but we're trying to discover how the world is and how we can bend it to our will. That I found is how we get the greatest progress quickly. And that means we go from a position of being angry or really sort of not looking at it, saying this is somebody else's problem, to looking inside both the technology and their colleagues and the market. And when we do those things together, we make much more progress. You know, I heard something Mikael said about the way one handles a contractor., right? And, and I, I, in, in a meetup recently, I talked about the distinction between, having a, you know, when you hire a contractor, are you outsourcing responsibility or are you importing knowledge and expertise? And I find that second approach is really powerful and something that no-code tools allow us to do better. Because unlike, you know, say 10 years ago where you would've hired a developer and they produce a bunch of code and there's no chance you're gonna have any understanding of it. By using the no-code tools, you can look at the code and maybe you would've had a hard time creating writing it, but you have an easier time reading it. And that means you have the opportunity to be curious, to have input, like Michael was talking about, the ability to tweak it even after the fact. And that means you own it more. And the more you are owning it and the more you are inside it, the more progress you're able to make much more quickly. And you actually start morphing from being a non-technical founder to actually being a bit of a technical one yourself. Now there's one more idea that, that, that's in there that I, I just wanna put in because the, when, when I heard Manal talking about the, you know, the 200 tools and also Michael's discussion of his journey going from Adalo to Bubble to FlutterFlow is the idea of a shopping mindset. And the, and, and what you're gonna find as you continue your journey is that different tools are gonna be useful for you at different times. So it's not how do I do X with Bubble? Is how do I do X? And then what tools make it easy for me to do X? You as a domain expert have the advantage of knowing what X you want to do, right? Because that's, you know where you're going. And then you have the freedom to be asking, well, what tool can get me there more easily? And you're gonna find sometimes this is about completely new tools that are, that have just arrived on the market. Sometimes this is a tool that you looked at before, but is now more appropriate for you than it was before because maybe the tool got better. These tools are really changing very rapidly. Like Michael was talking about, like Adalo over the last couple of years, night and day. Um, this is going to be about the job changing as you have gained better understanding of what it is you need to do for the market. And most importantly, it's going to be about you changing because your understanding of how the technology works and how the market works is going to make you more appropriate for different pieces. Remember how he was talking about how, like, you know, Bubble was kind of hard for him at the beginning, and, but, you know, Adalo was a way he was able to ease in, and then he sort of climbed this curve of finding things were more complicated. But complicated isn't an absolute, it's relative to you. What is the right tool for you? What is the right tool for you today to be able to ship that knowledge that lets you turn that wheel one more time? And finally, I would encourage you to ask for help. There are free ways to ask for help. There are communities, and that's something Manal was talking about. Obviously, there are contractors out there. Obviously, that's what I do with the StateChange community. But there are both, you know, free and paid ways that you can be getting more help and more of that knowledge to be coming into your brain for relatively short money and where you can be creating a lot of leverage out of that to be creating great value for, your customers and in case of impact and sustainability, you know, for your cause. So the, if there's the idea of trying to learn, the one way we learn from the market is being able to deliver to the market. And in the, and this is sort of a more of a no-code specific idea that I found that no-code often makes it easy for you to start to tinker with things. But where things often get harder is going to be where the rubber of that wheel, to continue the metaphor, hits the road. And that's going to be where we ship. And so what I have found to be very helpful to be able to get more information from the market quicker is when you're sort of considering, all right, what's that first thing I'm going to do? Ask how are you— ask and then try to work on how are you going to put it in front of the customer early in that process. So if you're making a mobile app, how do you get that through the App Store using that particular tool you're looking at? If you're going to be deploying a website, how do you put a domain on it? If you're going to be using a pen and paper, how are you going to be sharing that over Zoom or whatever? Because the more you're focused on the question how you're going to deliver that to the market early, you're going to find it is absolutely amazing how that frees you up. Because instead of saying I have this long list of requirements that all need to go into the first version, once you have something in hand, you're going to have like a little bit in hand and it's going to be totally cool, right? And you want to be able to go bring that to the customer. That puts you in a wonderful position to be able to learn a lot faster. I sometimes see people who have like a 90-day development plan and their plan is like on day 1 through 7, they're going to sketch things out, do requirements, and day 7 through 87, they're going to be doing the development, and then they're going to do 2 days of testing, and then they have a launch party. For my money, you would want on day 7 to be the first thing you launch. That could be paper, that could be a small feature or whatever, but you want to put it in somebody's hands that gives you that kind of market insight. The earlier you do that and the more you shift the, the question of deployment left on the timeline, because the timelines usually go from today on the left to the future on the right, more you shift that to the left, the faster you learn and the more turns of the wheel you get for shorter time and perhaps very importantly, shorter money. It makes it a less capital-intensive effort to be able to do learning that you need to do. And then the, the, the 4th principle is, you know, one we've all been encouraging to do, which is just to get started, right? And, you know, I've sort of talked about, okay, you should be shipping knowledge and you should be curious and learning new things. You should be going shopping and you should be, you know, shipping, you know, shipping these small things. Like, like, what do you do first can often be one of the hard parts. And I find there what you want to do is ask, what is it that you can put in front of a customer sooner, right? Because that's going to be the— it's often where the sharp end of the wedge is, where, where are they going to see the greatest value, right? Not to create the whole base. You know, there, there, there are YouTube videos of where you can take a wedge and you can stick it into a giant boulder and then whack it with a hammer and this giant boulder will crack in half. But if you take that same wedge and you put the, the wide part towards the boulder, the boulder is perfectly safe. The— what is that sharp end of the wedge that has big impact? Because that comes from your domain expertise. There is no coder who's going to tell you what that right answer is. That comes from your proximity to the customer, proximity to the market, proximity to the cause. And if you're able to, you know, combine that with the idea of, okay, well, I've also learned technically that which seems to be easier to do, what's sort of most in that confluence that you can start with. That's what I have found to be my North Star. But even then, you might say, well, there are a few different choices that could all point me in that direction. And that's where I— then that's sort of the last tool I'd like to give you, which is the 1-2-time discipline. This is something I encourage state changers to do all the time. I encourage— and this is something I'm giving you for free. Um, the, the idea is You have a short or moderate list of things you could do. Pick one, don't worry about which one it is, and work on it for an hour. And if you're making— and if it's not productive, you put it down, you do the next thing on your list. If it's productive, you keep with it and you put it in for another hour. Either way, at the end of 2 hours, then you're going on something else on your list. By taking this approach, you keep your learning turning in a matter of hours and not days. And the, the really cool thing about the no-code tools is they allow you to make that kind of pro— of progress in that short period of time, right? It's not like you gotta spend half a day setting up a development environment or something. This is all set up for you in the tools. And by doing that, you can be getting momentum and you'll get to a point where like you have a better understanding about your broader needs that maybe turns into more of a plan and a bigger thing you're going to do that doesn't really fit in that 1-2 timeframe anymore. But whenever I'm not sure about what to do, I have a list of things that I could do. I pick one, I apply the one to— it keeps me moving. It's something I do with my staff, and they work with that, and the people I recommend to my clients as well. And when they've taken that approach, and when they combine that with the idea that the speedy thing they're trying to do is trying to learn more, and the way they learn more is by bringing more information into their lives, by being curious and not being frustrated by things not working, but trying to ask what's going on, how does the world work, and then trying to turn that into artifacts that we can put back into the market. That's how that wheel turns, allows us to move with maximum speed and realize the promise of these no-code tools. Put a different way, to be entrepreneurs. Down here is a link to where you can get a copy of these slides if you find them interesting. I really appreciate the privilege of getting to share this with you today. And yeah, I'll look forward to the Q&A session too.

Amazing. Thank you so much, Ray. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I see now why, um, you're definitely a guru at this. 20 years, um, definitely shine through. I like your one-two timing thing. I think it's a great way to overcome overwhelm, um, breaking it down into chunks and being able to see where you have the biggest leverage and pick that one thing. That was really useful. Also, my big takeaway was the point about iterating and not chasing perfection, but like always constantly shipping and getting that customer feedback, um, as a way to make sure you're making progress. So thank you so Thank you so much. That was super, super, super insightful. Thank you to all of our other panelists as well, guys. You guys were fabulous. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you.

So guys on the call, can I just ask you to please use the raise hand features if you have any questions? I've got some questions for the panelists I'm going to start off with. But whilst I ask those questions, if you have questions, please use the raise hand feature on the chat. And as I see your hand come up, I'll unmute you so you can come up to the stage and ask your question. Or post it in the chat as well. Either way works for us. So whilst they do that, guys, I have a few questions here I wanted to kick us off with. The first one, I don't know, to any of you can feel free to answer this question is, I know you said, Mikael, like you start by yourself and tinker with the tools and try and clarify your own ideas yourself, but you did admit that it will get to a point potentially where you need to reach out and look for experts to support your work. Question is this, how do you find and qualify and interview the right technical partner for you? Like, how do you make sure they're a good fit for what you wanna build. Should we start with you, Mikhail? Yeah.

And then we can pass it on. So, I, I would just make two notes, maybe complementary to, to the ones we've heard so far, which is the first is, you are not the non-technical founder. The opportunity of these tools is that everybody can be a technical founder. You have technical knowledge. The fact that you know how to work, a smartphone means you have a lot of technical knowledge. The fact that you're able to use, say, Excel or these other tools that you're using in your world today You know, you, you're, you're using a lot of technology, certainly compared to people in the previous generation would've considered, they would consider that specialized knowledge and you now have it every day of the week. So I would, I would encourage you to not say this is something you're looking to, to move off of your plate. And the second is that the, the, the, the biggest virtue of the no-code tools isn't so much making things cheaper, it's making things more ownable. So that if, you know, what you're looking for is someone with whom you can collaborate so that you can be owning that result, the artifact, the software, the whatever it is you're creating as much as the other person does. I mean, 10 years ago, you hire someone, they produce a bunch of source code. It was like a, a lump of fused metal, right? It would work as long as it worked in the marketplace, then you're done. But the opportunity you have is for it to be there that, that you can be running that or tweaking that kind of like what Michael was talking about before. So the, so what you're looking for, even if you're looking to hire a contractor, you're looking for someone who you can communicate with, right? So that, that end result is something that's being handed off, that knowledge is being handed off to you in addition to the artifact. And you want to have that trust relationship with that individual when you are making that hire, whether that be in the form of a contractor, an employee, or a business partner.

Love it, Ray. Thank you so much. I like the mindset shift that you started off with, like we're all technical. We're all having to embrace technology and stop thinking as a non-technical person. That was super helpful. Thank you. The other question I had, and I think people are just being shy and not asking questions. I'm not sure why, or you guys have been super, super clear and they all get it. But the last question I have on my side or here is, If there was one tool that you could recommend in terms of learning all this stuff, like a great starting point, and it could be your own materials or your own resources, by the way, so feel free to shout yourself out. If there's one tool you can recommend to say, hey, if you want to start out with no-code, low-code, do this. What would be the one tool? Each of you, please tell us. Because there's so much. I know you, you mentioned go on YouTube, go on all these different courses. There's so many. So many resources and we only have so much time.

So go on, go on, Ray. I'll go next. I, I really like your answer, Mikhail, and, and I'm going to propose the exact opposite because I think that's the way I can do a hot take. The, the thing is like most of us have an idea of, of, we, we perceive apps to be the things that we directly interact with, but most business value is created by things that are done for us. So one of the great opportunities you have when you're using these no-code, low-code tools is to create automation to be able to take work off of people's plates, which creates a combination of, you know, decreasing costs for the customer, increasing consistency for the customer, and often unlocking new types of economic opportunities. The tool that I would recommend you use with which you could become— go from zero to hero in a matter of minutes is Zapier. Zapier is an automation tool that lets you connect, you know, various inputs or events. For example, if you just received an email, be able to automatically send a reply, or hey, you received an email specifically from Yemi, you want to make sure you get a text because you wanna make sure that you reply quickly to Yemi's email. The, those kinds of things can have an immediate impact on the quality of your life from productivity point of view and start to open you up to the kinds of things that can happen when you're not looking. And one of the most extraordinary things about that is it means that you don't need to worry about nearly so many of the UI/UX concerns you get when you have to work with like something that's like a front-end application. You'll be getting into those things most likely eventually. But I find by starting with the question of automation, you're able to make very fast progress. You're able to do things that immediately improve your life, and your eyes will be open to a wider world.

It's amazing, amazing advice. Thank you so much, Ray.

Thank you.