πͺ How a No-Code Deal website was built and acquired
The No-Code Exit Story of Andrew and No-Code Black Friday
Hello,
Welcome to 65 new subscribers this week. π―ββοΈ Thanks for joining!
Some updates and finds for this week:
On Sunday, I finished Painkiller, but then realized the word gets flagged on Twitter and tweets are not visible for everyone. So I will change the name. I was impressed with some results of this name generator. Other ideas welcome because I'm not convinced yet.π
If you can't get enough of new business ideas, you should definitely check out Jakob Greenfeld his newsletter: Business Brainstorms. His actionable reports about trends and frameworks, is something I absolutely look forward to every week.
I have been helping with building a new CRM for 100 Days of No Code for Bootcamp Cohort 4. It's been pretty fun to start from 0 and build something completely customized to our needs with Airtable, Zapier, and Slack.
π On to the interview. This week I talked with Andrew Kamphey. I love his inspiring journey from No-Code Prototype to the Profitable (Custom Coded) Business that he is running today. He also shares some valuable advice about getting started with No-Code and the power of like-minded peers. β‘οΈ
Hello Andrew, tell us a little bit about yourself.
My name is Andrew Kamphey, and I am a serial maker.
I have been making web pages, side projects, side hustles, seemingly all my life. I got started in No-Code as a way to get into code. There were certain things I wanted to do online, but I could never learn enough code to do it fast enough.
Eventually, I ended up launching my biggest company yet as a No-Code product in one day. Over the course of 2 years, I turned it into a custom-built site and learned Ruby on Rails myself. To this day, I'm still using No-code tools to create small marketing products.
What No-Code product did you build?
No Code Black Friday was a site I made in 2019 in 1 day. I started to work on it 48 hours before Black Friday. I couldn't easily find Black Friday No Code Deals, so I created a solution. I was inspired by a similar project that I made 2 years earlier with some friends about tech deals.
Carrd (website builder) had a great deal on Black Friday, and I knew there would be more. So I started with creating a collection of all those deals. Then I created a website in Carrd very fast, it was even faster than mocking it up.
How did you launch and grow your product?
I contacted a lot of companies via Twitter and did some posts on Indie Hackers to collect Black Friday deals.
I shared the website with my network and launched it on Product Hunt. It's a one day, or rather, one week, event each year. I knew I had to go fast and keep it cheap to make it work.
Why and how did you sell it?
After not doing anything with it for one year, I decided that it's better if someone else ran it. Someone who wants to learn. It could be a great little sales machine (companies had to pay to be featured) to learn how to do sales, how to do outreach and promotions. No moving parts, not much to do but post some text and links. I learned a lot from running it one year. I listed it for sale on Twitter and Microns, a platform for selling Micro Startups.
I chose to list it on Microns because:
Easy to use
Fast
Buyers are intending to purchase and not wasting energy or time of founders.
Why did the buyer want to acquire your project?
The buyer wanted to do something around Black Friday themselves. And was interested in the no-code space.
What kind of advice would you like to share with someone who wants to get started with No-Code?
Probably most people will say just "do it" or "start somewhere". And I think that's great advice. I am a huge fan of jumping in and trying.
If I want to learn something now, I spend 30 days learning, absorbing knowledge while trying to do something.
And I think then it's always easier to level up with mentors and communities. These don't have to be paid and don't have to be formal. Just reach out to people who did cool stuff, and show them what you're doing. Ask them about a roadblock or a challenge. Most people will be happy to help or guide you on how to overcome a challenge if you show that you've tried. Or they reply that they have the same issue, and it's impossible to do, so you can quit wasting your time googling for answers. :)
What kind of advice would you like to share with someone who wants to sell their No-Code project?
Create a Google doc where you write down every single question you get, and the answer to that question. It saves so much time when potential buyers are asking the same questions. Set that doc to public, and share the link with everyone who is interested.
Where can we go to learn more about you and your projects?
You can check:
my company, where I help people to make better Google Sheets
Thanks for the great advice, Andrew! So anyone that is still on the edge of building a first side project, take Andrew his advice and just do it. π Let me know if you have trouble getting started. π€
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