How Andrew Built and Sold a Pre-Revenue App using AI and No-Code
Combining the power of AI and No-Code Tools
Hello 👋
I’m so excited to bring you this inspiring story this week. I talked with Andrew from Hungary, who has built and sold a No-Code tool for Airtable.
Read about:
💪 How non-coders can use AI to build functional apps with code
🤷♂️ How solving your own problem can lead to creating tools that attract users
🗣️ Telling your story behind a project can be as impactful as the tool itself
💰 Selling a free, pre-revenue app is possible with the right strategy
🙌 Enjoy and happy building.
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Hello! What's your background?
I'm Andrew. I'm originally from the UK, but I've been living in Hungary for the last 11 years where I settled after traveling in Asia and Europe.
My professional background is dropping out of a CS degree back in 2010, drifting into a tech sales job, quitting, traveling, starting a platform for language teachers, learning to use Zapier to automate that business, then becoming an automation consultant when it failed.
I dropped out of my CS degree because I could never get the hang of actually coding - building stuff on computers really interested me, but I could never actually manage to do it. Too many setup steps, too much complexity.
Zapier was the perfect No-Code tool, as it gave me a chance to build stuff without knowing any code, but when ChatGPT came along I thought maybe I had the opportunity to build full apps, and have AI write the code for me.
What product did you make?
So I found a problem I wanted to solve, downloading CSV copies of all my Airtables, and set about making it an app. That app became ExportMyBase.
Which No-Code tools did you use to build and run it?
I used Replit - which is technically a coding tool - however I used both ChatGPT and Replit's own AI copilot to write the code for me. I didn't understand what 95% of the code did, but with AI's help I was able to piece it together in Replit until I had a working app.
Essentially, I told ChatGPT what I wanted to build and it started to give me blocks of code and told me how to import it into Replit. I'd do that, test the app, get some errors, paste those into ChatGPT, get new code, rinse, repeat.
As the app developed I was able to use Replit's code copilot to make more tweaks and changes. For example it guided me through enabling people to connect their Airtable account in the app to access their Airtable bases.
Part of the reason I chose Replit is they have app hosting built-in, which you enable with a click of a button - no complex setup needed.
What went into building the initial product?
One of the hardest parts was handing the Airtable login part. I first build a version of the app where people could use an Airtable API key, but after finishing that I found our Airtable was depreciating that method in favour of OAuth.
That was a lot harder to setup and probably took 3 hours of back and further with ChatGPT to get it working. I almost gave up twice!
After that, making it look good was another problem. I asked for a professional layout that looked good on mobile and it got most of the way there - but it was a lot of tweaking and asking for changes to solve lots of minor visual issues.
Overall build time was probably about 15 hours.
What was your business model?
It was always meant to be a free tool. My goal was to build something that worked rather than made money. I never really expected to even finish the project.
How have you attracted users and grown your product?
I posted on Twitter about my build journey. Because I'd built it as a non-coder using AI, there was quite a bit of traffic on my tweet because of the uniqueness of the situation.
I posted about the tool on Airtable's forum and their Reddit channel and got users and feedback from both.
I also prepared for a ProductHunt launch.
What's your advice for No-Code Makers who are just starting out or want to sell their business?
I figured that now I'd built an app, that I should see things through and try and sell it.
Being that it was a free tool - albeit with a potential route to revenue - I wasn't confident it would sell, but nevertheless decided to try.
Borderline was the only app-selling marketplace I could find that allowed non-revenue apps to be listed, so that's where I went.
I was upfront in my listing - no revenue, and just a handful of users. I explained the backstory of the app to make my listing more compelling.
A buyer approached me saying he liked the backstory. He explained that he wanted to build a stable of utility tools and try and grow them through cross-marketing. He thought my app would be a great start to that.
Once you have your problem, build the tool, and if it solves your problem there's a good chance it would solve it for other people too. After that it's just about marketing to get users.
What a story, thanks for sharing Andrew!
Follow Andrew on Twitter where he shares his journey.
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