Should we learn Code or No code to touch Billions of people with that great Idea?

[Charlot Jhon]

Hello Fastlane community members, I have a question for you.

A friend and I have come up with an idea for a totally original application. It already exists, but we're revolutionizing it. And in That way it can reach BILLIONS of people.

The thing is, we plan to launch it initially on IOS and Android. But here's the catch.

The two of us don't know a thing about coding, and although my friend has put forward the idea of making our App on Bubble in no code, I'm still skeptical.

Skeptical because this app, while stylish and bringing a lot of value that could touch billions of people. But it's still complex.

Which is a good thing, because the barriers to entry will be in our favor. But we don't know how much this application will cost us in terms of effort and investment of time and money.
And we don't know where to start either. Should we learn coding? Or do it in no-code on Bubble?

Any coders out there who might be able to point us in the right direction? Or people who have been in this situation long before us? Or who are in the middle of it?

Anyway, thanks for your attention, and see you soon.

 

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[AlfaStream]

Hello Fastlane community members, I have a question for you.

A friend and I have come up with an idea for a totally original application. It already exists, but we're revolutionizing it. And in That way it can reach BILLIONS of people.

The thing is, we plan to launch it initially on IOS and Android. But here's the catch.

The two of us don't know a thing about coding, and although my friend has put forward the idea of making our App on Bubble in no code, I'm still skeptical.

Skeptical because this app, while stylish and bringing a lot of value that could touch billions of people. But it's still complex.

Which is a good thing, because the barriers to entry will be in our favor. But we don't know how much this application will cost us in terms of effort and investment of time and money.
And we don't know where to start either. Should we learn coding? Or do it in no-code on Bubble?

Any coders out there who might be able to point us in the right direction? Or people who have been in this situation long before us? Or who are in the middle of it?

Anyway, thanks for your attention, and see you soon.

Take it from someone from the other side. Learning to code will require vast amounts of proficiency and investment of time to learn these skills. Pay someone to do it. At current moment I can't sell my way out of a wet paper bag, but as a programmer I've learned that the entirety of "technology" is extremely vast. Don't waste your time.

If you need to build websites you can invest the 50 or so hours learning web design using something like elementor, and using wordpress, but realistically I would recommend you NOT learn to code. It will take too much time away from business, and entrepreneurship.

In the off chance you're venture is running a web design firm, employ people, focus on selling. Mainly the last portion was meant as if you neeeded to make a basic website, or ecommerce site, for say landing pages and affiliate marketing. Or to sell retail goods online. Personally if thats the case I'd recommend woocommerce over shopify but thats my preference.

 

[Jaxsss]

Hey Charlot Jhon,

if it were me doing it I'd firstly evaluate that idea before thinking about if I should code it or not. Don't know if you are building some audience (Instagram, Facebook), maybe even Kickstarter or trying Google Ads sending potentional people to the landing page.

Also depends on your budget, if you have enough money / capital to afford some contractors - senior programmers with experience then I'd suggest getting them, since it's always better to have custom solution with people that know what they are doing. Having an app coded from the scratch is pretty expensive though.

Learning coding is a long process and to be able to output the same amount of work as some guy with 5-6 years of experience in that field, will take a lot of time.

Main thing is to have somewhat working version of your MVP, nothing is going to be excellent from the start and if your app is good and people love it you can start thinking about getting it done profesionally by programmers.

 

[Vntonio]

I would hire someone who is doing it every day as a job/career. Your job as an entrepreneur is to sell, bring value, and delegate.

I mean, if you want to be a worker, learn how to build a desk. If you want to be an entrepreneur, invest/have a company that builds desks by employing the right people.

I know a guy who has a SAAS and he knows 0 coding. He never ever coded yet he has a SAAS and makes great money.

Also, my neighbor is one of the best programmers I know, worked for Microsoft, gaming companies, etc., but he never ever had in mind to go as a freelancer or form his own agency/company. Why? he invested his years (15 years) into learning to code/programming/IT/computers and has 0 skills to lead/build something on his own and be free.

My final take on this: if you want to be an entrepreneur, choose the simplest and quickest way to bring value to customers and don't complicate the road by learning complex softwares or frameworks. Those are for workers.
(no code tools if you don't have money)

 

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[Tau Ceti]

A friend and I have come up with an idea for a totally original application. It already exists, but we're revolutionizing it. And in That way it can reach BILLIONS of people.

How do you know your idea is revolutionizing?
An idea in itself is worthless. Execution is what matter.

Until. you have proven that your idea works and you a some money coming in from that idea, i urge you to be cautiously optimistic.

The thing is, we plan to launch it initially on IOS and Android. But here's the catch.

Have a look at this page : How to Adapt Your Bubble App to Mobile
if you are building with Bubble.

Also why not start on web first and then add mobile apps later.

The two of us don't know a thing about coding, and although my friend has put forward the idea of making our App on Bubble in no code, I'm still skeptical.

Its possible, see my link above but I have to ask again, why not start with web first?

Which is a good thing, because the barriers to entry will be in our favor. But we don't know how much this application will cost us in terms of effort and investment of time and money.
And we don't know where to start either. Should we learn coding? Or do it in no-code on Bubble?

Bubble will always be more limited than a web app or a native app. I suggest you start by creating your product on web only with Bubble and if you have customers asking you to create a mobile app, then you can think about the best way to do it later.

edit: 1 word

 

[bc0510]

Hello Fastlane community members, I have a question for you.

A friend and I have come up with an idea for a totally original application. It already exists, but we're revolutionizing it. And in That way it can reach BILLIONS of people.

The thing is, we plan to launch it initially on IOS and Android. But here's the catch.

The two of us don't know a thing about coding, and although my friend has put forward the idea of making our App on Bubble in no code, I'm still skeptical.

Skeptical because this app, while stylish and bringing a lot of value that could touch billions of people. But it's still complex.

Which is a good thing, because the barriers to entry will be in our favor. But we don't know how much this application will cost us in terms of effort and investment of time and money.
And we don't know where to start either. Should we learn coding? Or do it in no-code on Bubble?

Any coders out there who might be able to point us in the right direction? Or people who have been in this situation long before us? Or who are in the middle of it?

Anyway, thanks for your attention, and see you soon.

Great that you and your partner have a brilliant idea that will connect billions of people. However, an idea is nothing without an action. I would suggest starting small, testing your idea by creating an MVP putting it in the market, and checking the response. Working on a big goal of reaching Mars would never work if you don't have experience on how to land on the moon.

Building the product - I am a programmer but I do not invest time into building a product. I hire good developers under me and have them develop the product. This saves my time which I can invest in product growth, sales, and marketing. If you learn, it will take a lot of time, and then just doing basic programming is not something that works with a product. You will need to learn to code clean, standard, and quality coding, learn how to solve complex logic, multiple platforms like iOS, Android, and Web, and then multiple technologies like Node, React, Express, Flutter, and so on, and learn how to implement best security practices, how to deploy and handle servers, and so on. Remember, if you don't follow these practices, you will have 1000x of hackers break your app.

Idea -> Check Market -> Build MVP -> Launch -> Grow

 

[Kung Fu Steve]

Billions you say?

Will it be more popular than the top apps of 2023?

App	Downloads (mm)
Instagram	696
TikTok	654
Facebook	553
WhatsApp	475
CapCut	389
Telegram	355
Snapchat	343
Temu	274
WhatsApp Business	267
Spotify	248

I guess we could go with the Chinese-only apps:

Apps	Users (mm)
WeChat	1012.4
Alipay	901
Taobao	795.2
Pinduoduo	728.2
Douyin	694.9
QQ	583.2
Baidu Map	538.8
Baidu	490.6
Kuaishou	480.3
iQIYI	470.5

Not to rain on your parade here but before you try to help the world, solve a problem for just one person. If you can do that, solve a problem for a group of people. If you can do that, solve a problem for a large group of people.

 

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[StrikingViper69]

“Totally original”

“It already exists”

 

[EmotionEngine]

And we don't know where to start either. Should we learn coding? Or do it in no-code on Bubble?

As a person who spent thousands of hours (not a joke) of learning to code since 2017, I'd say learn. It taught me discipline, problem solving and made me better at logic. The key though is knowing what to do first and then learn the tools necessary. Many people learn programming languages for the sake of learning.

It would also be beneficial to know what your programmers are writing.

 

[Charlot Jhon]

Take it from someone from the other side. Learning to code will require vast amounts of proficiency and investment of time to learn these skills. Pay someone to do it. At current moment I can't sell my way out of a wet paper bag, but as a programmer I've learned that the entirety of "technology" is extremely vast. Don't waste your time.

If you need to build websites you can invest the 50 or so hours learning web design using something like elementor, and using wordpress, but realistically I would recommend you NOT learn to code. It will take too much time away from business, and entrepreneurship.

In the off chance you're venture is running a web design firm, employ people, focus on selling. Mainly the last portion was meant as if you neeeded to make a basic website, or ecommerce site, for say landing pages and affiliate marketing. Or to sell retail goods online. Personally if thats the case I'd recommend woocommerce over shopify but thats my preference.

Hi Alfa Stream! How are you? Thank for the time you take to respond me!

Thank you for your advice to pay someone to do it, I must admit that the world is moving at breakneck speed! And time will be against us.

No, no, the idea is not to create an e-commerce site to sell things. But I'll take your advice!

 

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[Charlot Jhon]

Main thing is to have somewhat working version of your MVP, nothing is going to be excellent from the start and if your app is good and people love it you can start thinking about getting it done profesionally by programmers.

Hey Jaxsss! Thank you for your message! What "MVP" does mean?

Also depends on your budget, if you have enough money / capital to afford some contractors - senior programmers with experience then I'd suggest getting them, since it's always better to have custom solution with people that know what they are doing. Having an app coded from the scratch is pretty expensive though.

Learning coding is a long process and to be able to output the same amount of work as some guy with 5-6 years of experience in that field, will take a lot of time.

I'm with you on that! I must admit that the best thing would be to surround ourselves with experts in the field to see just how tangible this idea is.

I'll have to get involved with my friend, but at the moment I don't know how much financial capital we have to invest in this project. But I'm sure there are other solutions and alternatives.

 

[Charlot Jhon]

I would hire someone who is doing it every day as a job/career. Your job as an entrepreneur is to sell, bring value, and delegate.

I mean, if you want to be a worker, learn how to build a desk. If you want to be an entrepreneur, invest/have a company that builds desks by employing the right people.

I know a guy who has a SAAS and he knows 0 coding. He never ever coded yet he has a SAAS and makes great money.

Yes same Idea with alphastream! I must admit that the best thing for us would be to concentrate on innovation, sales and attracting customers. The technical part and complexity would be a matter for the coders who will be working for us.

My final take on this: if you want to be an entrepreneur, choose the simplest and quickest way to bring value to customers and don't complicate the road by learning complex softwares or frameworks. Those are for workers.
(no code tools if you don't have money)

Understood!

 

[Charlot Jhon]

How do you know your idea is revolutionizing?
An idea in itself is worthless. Execution is what matter.

Until. you have proven that your idea works and you a some money coming in from that idea, i urge you to be cautiously optimistic.

You're correct, it's just an idea on our head for the moment. Execution is what matter, and I should stay cautiously optimistic.

Have a look at this page : How to Adapt Your Bubble App to Mobile
if you are building with Bubble.

Also why not start on web first and then add mobile apps later.

Its possible, see my link above but I have to ask again, why not start with web first?

I haven't thought about it, I confess. The application mainly offers an automation system. So creating a website is an idea I hadn't thought of, but one we can do!

Bubble will always be more limited than a web app or a native app. I suggest you start by creating your product on web only with Bubble and if you have customers asking you to create a mobile app, then you can think about the best way to do it later.

edit: 1 word

Alright! Thank you for your advice!

 

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[Charlot Jhon]

Great that you and your partner have a brilliant idea that will connect billions of people. However, an idea is nothing without an action. I would suggest starting small, testing your idea by creating an MVP putting it in the market, and checking the response. Working on a big goal of reaching Mars would never work if you don't have experience on how to land on the moon.

Hello Bc0510! Thank you for your message! What is an MVP? I don't now what it is.

Building the product - I am a programmer but I do not invest time into building a product. I hire good developers under me and have them develop the product. This saves my time which I can invest in product growth, sales, and marketing. If you learn, it will take a lot of time, and then just doing basic programming is not something that works with a product. You will need to learn to code clean, standard, and quality coding, learn how to solve complex logic, multiple platforms like iOS, Android, and Web, and then multiple technologies like Node, React, Express, Flutter, and so on, and learn how to implement best security practices, how to deploy and handle servers, and so on. Remember, if you don't follow these practices, you will have 1000x of hackers break your app.

Idea -> Check Market -> Build MVP -> Launch -> Grow

It will be great if we can save our time focusing on the growth of the app. Thank you for your message!

 

[Charlot Jhon]

Billions you say?

Will it be more popular than the top apps of 2023?

App	Downloads (mm)
Instagram	696
TikTok	654
Facebook	553
WhatsApp	475
CapCut	389
Telegram	355
Snapchat	343
Temu	274
WhatsApp Business	267
Spotify	248

I guess we could go with the Chinese-only apps:

Apps	Users (mm)
WeChat	1012.4
Alipay	901
Taobao	795.2
Pinduoduo	728.2
Douyin	694.9
QQ	583.2
Baidu Map	538.8
Baidu	490.6
Kuaishou	480.3
iQIYI	470.5

Not to rain on your parade here but before you try to help the world, solve a problem for just one person. If you can do that, solve a problem for a group of people. If you can do that, solve a problem for a large group of people.

Understood!

 

[Charlot Jhon]

Idea -> Check Market -> Build MVP -> Launch -> Grow

How can we check the market?

 

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[bc0510]

Hello Bc0510! Thank you for your message! What is an MVP? I don't now what it is.

It will be great if we can save our time focusing on the growth of the app. Thank you for your message!

Hello Charlot - the full form of MVP is "Minimum Viable Product" which means a product that brings some important basic features to your early adopters/customers and gives you feedback.

 

[bc0510]

How can we check the market?

Hi Charlot - this is a very important question, but you should find the answer to this. As of today, the world population is approximately 7.8 billion. If your market size is 1 billion, that means every 8th person in the world is your customer.

You will have to plan how you grab the 1st customer, then the 2nd, and so on. You will have to make a long-term sales and marketing strategy and then do reverse engineering to start with the short-term.

Life is a process of how you live and want to live, business is a process of how you grow and want to grow. Work on the processes and work on the action things. The more you do more you get.

 

[Charlot Jhon]

Hello Charlot - the full form of MVP is "Minimum Viable Product" which means a product that brings some important basic features to your early adopters/customers and gives you feedback.

Hello Charlot - the full form of MVP is "Minimum Viable Product" which means a product that brings some important basic features to your early adopters/customers and gives you feedback.

All right! Understood! Thank you!

 

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[Charlot Jhon]

Hi Charlot - this is a very important question, but you should find the answer to this. As of today, the world population is approximately 7.8 billion. If your market size is 1 billion, that means every 8th person in the world is your customer.

You will have to plan how you grab the 1st customer, then the 2nd, and so on. You will have to make a long-term sales and marketing strategy and then do reverse engineering to start with the short-term.

Life is a process of how you live and want to live, business is a process of how you grow and want to grow. Work on the processes and work on the action things. The more you do more you get.

Wise words! Thanks for sharing!

 

[Charlot Jhon]

Lil update on the situation of the idea! I saw that it's already taken, of course.
But none of our competitors has the same background as we do.

Cleaner
More stylish
More accessible
More connector
More opportunity.
Better.

 

[MJ DeMarco]

Some no code apps like Bubble have become extremely powerful, but they also have somewhat of a learning curve. You, at a basic level, need to know a lot of programmatic jargon.

 

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[RudyR]

So this is just my opinion but I don’t think you’re quite ready yet. A lot of your questions can be answered by doing a google search. I’m afraid however you build out this app, that the most basic error will throw you for a loop. You need someone more technically proficient on your team.

Does it have to start off as an app? Can it start off as a PDF file, Excel sheet or even a python script? Get people onboard with that, then keep iterating. For example, MJ’s GoalSumo.com started off as a PDF template, and just recently turned it into an app. A popular budging app YNAB started off with as an Excel sheet before being turned into an app. As @Andy Black says, Start at the end as close as possible.

 

[jokul]

up

 

[Yula]

Hi Charlot,

I've been going through the process of launching a mobile application in the past few months.

I'll tell you a bit about my experience and what I'd personally do if I had to do it again.

You have an idea of improving an already existing product. The question is, does that product really need improvements? Have you seen any negative reviews that stated the problem you're solving with your improved idea?

If yes, that's already a great sign!

The first thing you have to do, to not waste any precious time is to validate your idea. This can be as simple as making a Google Forms and dropping it in a subreddit.

Once you've collected the feedback you immediately shift your idea so that it matches with the problem your market is really facing.

Now for building an MVP, I used FlutterFlow and hired someone on Fiverr to build it for $300. If I had to do it again, I would've built it myself in FlutterFlow. I had a lot of problems with the dev on Fiverr (as expected when going cheap).

There's a small learning curve, but there are a lot of tutorials on YouTube that pretty much explain all the details.

The added benefit is that once you've learned your way into FlutterFlow, you pretty much know the basics of coding in Flutter as well.

Once the MVP was built I let some of the people that gave some initial feedback test the product and let me know their thoughts.

If you're on the right track you can do some initial marketing and get some of your first paid users. Try to re-invest everything, and once it's growing fast enough you can either code the whole App yourself or pay someone to build it for you.

 

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[theazizmoh_]

Hello Fastlane community members, I have a question for you.

A friend and I have come up with an idea for a totally original application. It already exists, but we're revolutionizing it. And in That way it can reach BILLIONS of people.

The thing is, we plan to launch it initially on IOS and Android. But here's the catch.

The two of us don't know a thing about coding, and although my friend has put forward the idea of making our App on Bubble in no code, I'm still skeptical.

Skeptical because this app, while stylish and bringing a lot of value that could touch billions of people. But it's still complex.

Which is a good thing, because the barriers to entry will be in our favor. But we don't know how much this application will cost us in terms of effort and investment of time and money.
And we don't know where to start either. Should we learn coding? Or do it in no-code on Bubble?

Any coders out there who might be able to point us in the right direction? Or people who have been in this situation long before us? Or who are in the middle of it?

Anyway, thanks for your attention, and see you soon.

I would use no code tool to build out the MVP and validate the idea as soon as possible with real actual paying customer.

Then consider using custom code for you App.

 

[Consolation]

Felix Dennis said, "Did you ever hear of a billionaire cameraman? No. Did you ever hear of a billionaire movie producer? Yes."

Do you think Mark Zuckerberg is a coder who made billions? No. He's an owner of an Internet company.
Do you think Bill Gates is a coder who made billions? No. He's an owner of a software company.
Although Elon Musk did a lot of coding for his first company (where he got his first millions), he did said that he can only either be a CEO or a CTO. Not both.

You're an entrepreneur first, and a coder, second. Remember: The labels that we put on ourselves can make a lot of impact on how we think and make decisions.

 

[Charlot Jhon]

The first thing you have to do, to not waste any precious time is to validate your idea. This can be as simple as making a Google Forms and dropping it in a subreddit.

Once you've collected the feedback you immediately shift your idea so that it matches with the problem your market is really facing.

Hi Yula ! I have a question. I'm making a google form and I want to share it to some poeple. And I'm asking me if I can send it to the Fastlane community. I don't know if it's forbidden to do these type of things.

 

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[Kung Fu Steve]

Hi Yula ! I have a question. I'm making a google form and I want to share it to some poeple. And I'm asking me if I can send it to the Fastlane community. I don't know if it's forbidden to do these type of things.

Don't ask the Fastlane community for feedback on your product. Nobody here will buy it.

Go to your customers and get REAL feedback.

 

[Charlot Jhon]

Don't ask the Fastlane community for feedback on your product. Nobody here will buy it.

Go to your customers and get REAL feedback.

Wise advice! Thank you Steve. But right now I'm on reddit and I'm trying to share a post, but I do not know how this website works. But right now I'm collecting feedback on discord and other social media.