🚪How Kieran built a SaaS without code with $600 MRR
The NoCode Success Story of Kieran and Yep.so
Welcome 260 new subscribers to NoCode Exits 👯.
My goal in 2023 is to resist shiny objects. We are 26 days in and there is this 1 idea that keeps popping back up. So I’m doing the most sensible thing ever and let you decide:
The interview this week is with one of my favorite makers: Kieran aka nocodelife. He is an amazing builder, the best Bubble teacher, the host of one of my favorite nocode podcasts and I learn so much from him by following his journey on Twitter.
Learn how he:
📣 went from accountant to starting a startup with a tech cofounder to becoming a NoCode dev and indie maker
🪄 built a solution to make launching an idea less scary
🚀 made it with NoCode and gives some golden advice
💥 grew it to 1300+ users and $600 MRR
Enjoy it.
🐹 Tool Spotlight
I try out a tool and summarize my findings.
Name Taplio
What All-in-one LinkedIn tool
Use it for Creating better content, scheduling posts, analyzing results
I liked Scheduler, auto-plug feature for first comment, content inspiration, Zapier integration, one window to easily engage with posts and the analytics for each post.
🔥 Maker Interview
Hello Kieran, tell us a little bit about yourself.
I'm Kieran, also known as nocodelife. I'm from the UK.
I started my career in the corporate world as an accountant, working in large investment banks. I hated it! It was so dull and there was no room for creativity.
So I quit and spent the next decade working in tech startups, holding various roles. I loved the variety of the work and the feeling of autonomy.
Being in the world of startups fired up my ideas brain, so I spent my spare time trying to learn to code to build side projects.
Eventually, I started a tech startup with a technical cofounder. It was an amazing experience, but over time it became more like a corporate job and my craving for independence kicked back in. I still couldn't code though!
So I was checking out Product Hunt and saw Glide Apps as one of the products that day, it promised to turn any spreadsheet into an app. As a former accountant, this spoke to my heart! I started playing around with it and somehow stumbled on NoCode Twitter, and was instantly hooked on this magnificent community and ecosystem of tools. I remember one night shortly after I didn't sleep a wink because I was so excited about its potential. I ended up buying about 10 domains and making loads of plans while lying in bed. My wife thought I'd lost the plot!
Tell us about your product that you made?
I built an app called Yep.so using Bubble. It's a superfast landing page builder for testing and launching ideas quickly.
The idea emerged from my own experiences. As a lifelong “wantrepreneur” and "ideas person", I can count years of my time I'd wasted sitting on ideas that I should have just launched and moved on from.
But sitting on an idea, nurturing it, perhaps whispering it to a friend every few months, is comforting. There's no risk of it being shot down by a target customer saying "this is crap". Launching an idea is scary, which is why so many aspiring founders never launch.
Yep.so was my answer to this. I tried to remove all the barriers and excuses that prevent me from launching things. No need to design a logo, come up with brand colors, think of a landing page structure. It's all there for you, simple and effective. You can launch a page in 5 minutes and start getting waitlist signups.
I've used it to test dozens of ideas now and can quickly compare to see which ones have a good response. Then I pursue the good ones and dump the bad ones.
Which NoCode tools did you use ?
The app is built in Bubble.io. There are a few integrations, but that's the main stack.
The main reason I chose for Bubble is that I can't code. And I've tried having tech co-founders and hiring freelance devs before. But I prefer to be in control.
What went into building the initial product?
Ironically, I didn't do much validation on this idea. I remember I tweeted a short video of the user experience for v1 and the tweet got a good response. By that time I was so excited about the idea I just kept building and launched the MVP after about a month. I'd never built an app like that before, but to be honest it's one of the simpler apps you can build with Bubble, although over time its complexity has grown as I add more features.
What's your business model and how have you grown your revenue?
It's a freemium SaaS, so most users are on the free plan where they can launch one page. If they upgrade to a $10 a month plan they get access to premium features like custom domains, more pages, Airtable integrations, surveys etc.
My biggest customers are a few founder communities and bootcamps, who are on more expensive plans which allow them to offer Yep to all their community members.
I've had fantastic feedback from them. It gives them a way to mobilize their members and encourage them to launch their ideas and start getting waitlist signups before they build anything.
How have you attracted users and grown your product?
I'm a work-in-progress when it comes to marketing. My main acquisition channel has been Twitter. I've noticed other makers doing well by building in public and tweeting nice screenshots or videos of new features, so I've done the same.
But now I'm finding a lot of people are signing up without me doing anything. I think the product has some virality baked-in, because users share their pages and other people see the "Powered by Yep" badge and end up creating their page.
What are the biggest challenges you've faced and how did you overcome them?
The biggest challenge is figuring out how to get more conversions from free to paid, and I still haven't overcome this. I know people like it because they keep signing up and using it, but conversions are still really low.
Can you share some numbers/stats?
MRR is $632 currently
There are 1,388 signed-up users
There are 1,409 published pages
What's your advice for NoCode Makers who are just starting out?
Personally, no matter how many books, podcasts, or tweets I consumed with excellent advice, I was terrible at listening to it and had to learn everything the hard way.
In hindsight, the mistakes I made were:
I never tried to validate my ideas before building, I just assumed a good product would get customers. They don't.
I totally underestimated the importance of marketing. Marketing is an actual task you have to set aside time for. It's abstract and scary, but it needs proper effort or your product won't stand a chance.
I was too scared to try pre-selling anything. Now I pre-sell everything. Having pre-sales gives me motivation and validation, all at the same time. And if no-one buys, then I need to ask myself important questions.
That said, if you're enjoying building, then don't worry about that stuff. It's never time wasted if you're learning and having fun.
Where can we go to learn more about you and your project?
Check out my course: Become a NoCode SaaS founder. It takes viewers through an entire SaaS build in real-time and I explain every thought and decision along the way. My goal is to kick-start a new generation of NoCode SaaS founders!
Try out superfast landing page builder Yep.so
Try out Notion course builder Daily.so
Follow me on Twitter
Thanks Kieran and good luck with your NoCode Entrepreneur journey.
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Another great issue Katt!
I voted against the shiny new object because I think you should double down on this killer newsletter of yours, as much as I'd love to see the shiny new thing you want to build!