🚪How Ben sold his No-Code side project to Zapier
The NoCode Exit Story of Ben Tossel & Makerpad
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The issue this week is slightly different. In stead of an interview with the maker, I spent hours digging in articles, podcast interviews, tweets and IndieHackers content to bring you this story.
It’s the biggest no-code acquisition story that we featured on NoCode Exits so far (in our super long existence of 5 months😅). Learn the story of Makerpad and Ben Tossel and how:
💩 His first attempt failed because he lost focus
🌝 He started Makerpad and grew it as a side project to $240K ARR
🪄 He inspired thousands of non technical makers
💥 Makerpad got acquired by billion dollar company Zapier because of a tweet
Enjoy it.
📣 Cool Classifieds
Pricewell is a No-Code solution to easily implement Stripe subscriptions on your website built with Bubble.
NoCode MBA Unlimited video tutorials learn you how to build an AirBnB clone with Bubble, a Tinder clone with Glide, a Product Hunt clone with Webflow and much much more.
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💡 Acquisition Inspiration
Get inspired by NoCode projects for sale on Microns 🚀.
What Micro-SaaS Projects Directory
NoCode Tools Bubble
Revenue: No
Price $3,000
🔥 Maker Story
The Patchy Path of a Generalist
Ben Tossell is a Business graduate from the UK who after his graduation had a patchy path. His first job was in Social Media. In his free time he was active in some online startup and maker communities. Like on the Slack channel of Product Hunt. This eventually led to him getting offered a Community role at Product Hunt.
Everyone around him was building their own thing and shipping their own projects. He wanted to be able to do that too. He saw Bubble, Webflow and Zapier launching on Product Hunt. So he thought “ I reckon I could use one or many of these tools, put them together and make it look like a real product.”
So that’s what he started doing in his spare time. He began by putting together landing pages — sort of like lightweight directory sites. One of the first ones was a directory site for Alexa skills. Then he moved onto more heavyweight projects like an AirBnB clone.
When Product Hunt got acquired he was growing tired of community management. He had been launching side projects all the time but just couldn’t figure out what he wanted to do next. “I’m not hugely qualified for anything specific except being a community manager, which I didn’t want to do. I’m more of a generalist.”
He started to do some freelancing, but client work is very difficult and not very consistent. He describes it as a tough 9 months. He started diving more and more into IndieHackers. Ben knew he needed to productise something but what ….
False Start
On IndieHackers he came across interviews from people with a screen-casting/tutorial businesses. The business model and revenue numbers intrigued him and he thought he could do something similar for building projects without code.
So he launched a website (newCo) where he published tutorials which showed how to build without code. To validate the idea, he emailed the subscribers from a newsletter he had put out ages ago. He described his idea in a Typeform with a payment button. 12 people paid straight away. Lesson: payment is the best form of validation.
But he quickly started to lose focus. He shifted the idea and meant to build this into a platform where other people can use this to do other things like host their own hack-a-thons. He was trying to do too much for too many different types of customers. It was becoming a mess. Eventually, Ben decided to shut that website down and go back to the drawing board.
Keep it Simple and Focus
Ben had just finished reading A Company of One by Paul Jarvis. This time he decided that he was going to keep things really simple, focus on a single idea and do less.
He relaunched as Makerpad in February 2019, and this time focused only on teaching how to use NoCode tools. It took a couple of days to get a landing page up, curate and create content.
The NoCode Stack
Webflow: For the website
MemberStack: For the membership part
Jetboost: For the filters
Airtable: Database to manage all the content
Zapier: To connect everything and automate it
Convert Kit: for the welcome emails.
Attracting Users and Growing
In the beginning Makerpad was Ben his side project. So attracting users and growing was not really his focus. He launched on Product Hunt, shared updates on Twitter and in his newsletter to 6500 subscribers. Result: 152 paying pro members and 22K/month by April 2019 (in 2 months).
Ultimately, he went full-time on Makerpad in September of 2019. The counterintuitive thing about going full-time was that he prioritised hiring others. Initially some people from the Makerpad community part-time but by June of 2020 he had 3 full-time team members.
By going full-time, he had more time but also committed to build a larger project. He needed help building out the operations, content and community side of Makerpad as he figured out what the future of Makerpad looked like.
In the next months they did a website refresh, released a job board, shipped 100+ tutorials, launched a podcast, created a referral program and launched a forum for the community.
All the effort paid off, by November they crossed $200k in revenue.
Lesson: Full-time commitments frees up high-leverage projects, allowing you to move major boulders and accelerate your growth.
Business Model
In the beginning he charged members a lifetime membership of $169. With his previous idea, the pressure of having to produce new value (while still working a fulltime job) for users each month was huge so this lifetime membership felt like a better fit with his current situation.
Over the next year they experimented with monetisation and prices:
Partnerships: charged companies to have a company page on the website and collaborate on educational content (which became a huge part of their revenue)
Basic membership to have a Makerpad profile, access all tutorials and save progress, access the community (197$ per year)
Pro membership with extra features to people that wanted to get hired for building projects with NoCode. (492 $ per year)
Team membership with extra features for teams that wanted to automate processes for their startup. (2,388$ per year)
Started hosting NoCode courses and Bootcamps (350-800$)
NoCode Job Board where companies had to pay to post a job
…
The Acquisition
The acquisition was driven by this tweet from Ben. Someone replied “one of them should acquire Makerpad”. After reading the tweet, the CEO of Zapier reached out to Ben. The CEO had followed Ben his work and they had met previously at dinners during NoCode conferences. From there it was a pretty quick ramp to a deal.
Although Ben wasn’t looking for a buyer, he recognized the value in the opportunity. “It allowed us to do bigger things without keeping tabs on whether we were going to survive the next month,” he said.
Makerpad’s community is made up of people eager to build no-code projects and businesses, which makes it fertile ground for Zapier to find new customers. “Zapier is the glue binding no-code tools together. Makerpad is the education and learning community that brings people together.”
Six months later, in March 2021, Zapier acquired Makerpad for an undisclosed amount. At that time Makerpad had more than 10,000 members and was making about $400,000 in annual recurring revenue. Ben continues to run Makerpad within Zapier.
Well deserved Ben 👇
Advice for NoCode Makers
Paying customers serve as the best validation. Don't focus on the UX or the domain name first, focus on obtaining that first Stripe notification.
Get customers before worrying about scalibility
Get personally invested in the problem you are solving, not the product you are building. When times get tough, knowing you are creating a valuable solution for people that need it will help you persevere.
Figure out the type of business you actually want to run. What does it look like day to day, or week to week? How do you want to spend most of your time? How do you want the business to look with 50/100/150/… customers? 100? What do you really want to get out of it?
Advice for Selling your Business
Alignment in mission and vision plays a crucial role in an exit. “If Zapier didn’t share the same vision as Makerpad and we had to sacrifice our operating principles to join, I wouldn’t have made the deal.”
Keep communication lines open with the buyer, particularly when lawyers are involved. “Lawyers are thinking of what happens in the worst-case scenario in this deal.”
Find Out More
If you want to learn more you can:
Follow Ben on Twitter.
Subscribe to his latest (again crazy successful) AI newsletter
Check out some of the sources I used
Indiehackers updates + interviews + podcasts, Makerpad blog and Twitter, Ben his Twitter, Saasclub, Theygotacquired, Hackernoon, Codecademy.
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