Are no-code founders often non-technical?
I've been reading the posts in the No-Code group and realized that I had a baked-in assumption that no-code founders are non-technical, and all the people building the tools for them are technical. I was hoping to test this hypothesis with a poll.
I just joined the Indie Hacker community this week so I apologize if this is a naive question. I'm wondering if developers use these tools as well or if they prefer to do everything themselves. It seems like no-code workflows could now be considered something that developers "buy" instead of "build" but may not consider that an option.
I can’t code, but know a lot about how software is built. Knowledge of the ins and outs of software has done two things to me:
I want a platform that abstracts all the nonsense away so I can focus on building value, not infra or setting up dev environments or source control.
That's a really helpful perspective. It does still require some amount of experience to use these tools more effectively, but it's a great trend to see that we're increasingly able to abstract away more and more of development that isn't your core business logic.
For sure. Learning curve isn't a problem, but helping me avoid the toil that doesn't add value anywhere is where I'd love tools to focus.
My feeling is that knowing how to code can level up no code tools. For example, knowing javascript can allow you to build more advanced features on Webflow.
I see, that makes sense!
I think this answers my question which is that there are multiple lanes here: (1) Using no-code tools will allow for basic implementations by themselves, but (2) they can also be used as a starting point and people with some developing experience can build further.
Perhaps we'll see a shift towards #1 (and open up the option to more non-technical founders) if we see no-code tools becoming more and more powerful and therefore requiring less technical experience to build complex flows.
Yes! I think that shift is already in process and happening quickly
I'm a technical founder, working on a nocode builder. I actually wanted to try and test ideas quick, so having a nocode tool would save tons of time for the development.
This situation grinds my gears a little LOL. I've been a technologist for over 20 years, but just started learning to code last year. I'm a Mechanical Engineering Technologist and in my first career I designed and supported automated mass assembly lines in the auto industry. I dabbled a little bit with programming PLC's and industrial robotics. Had I learned to code then it would have been C++. Then I moved on to Project Management and multi-million dollar fabrication projects of mining equipment. So am I a technical or non-technical founder now that I'm designing software products, but not a yet dev?? :-P
I think the term 'non-technical' is a bit of a misnomer here... as there are many ways to be technologically inclined outside of software. Depending on how you frame it, one could say that ALL the founders who go the no-code route are 'technical' given the fact they are capable enough to string together such an amount of different services. Which involves not only understanding how each service works to achieve its goals but also how to orchestrate each of these unique tools together to achieve the goals of your application, just not all are code-literate
Sorry, did not mean to offend with the terminology. The point I was trying to get across was basically: are you someone who could build the underlying features that the no-code tools build for you? Or are you someone that is specialized elsewhere and is using no-code tools to handle the part of setting up an app that you don't have interest in learning/doing yourself.
Do you have a suggestion for a better term than "technical" here? I will happily edit the post/poll to reflect that if I can.
I'm not offended at all, I was being facetious because I've run across this many times when talking to investors, applying for incubators, etc. I'm the wrong-technical founder for what I'm doing haha.
I have found that it really helps to have a technical background, regardless of how current or not it may be. Just having the practice of systems thinking, database structures, etc. can help build a better nocode app.
I´m in the No-Code category, but somehow related to technology, so knowing a little bit will make you build things faster because somehow you understand things in the construction process. Let’s say you will work at a different speed.
Consider the place where you are doing the poll - The type of people that discovered and joined Indiehacker have some technical knowledge and hands-on experience with coding. In my case I have some technical knowledge but I never have worked as a developer, and there are some tools that I do know how to use (like git) and other tools that I don't (Docker containers).
In my mind being a good developer is knowing how to utilise the tools you have available to get the job done in an efficient way.
Working in the startup space being efficient usually means offloading a lot of the work that you could build, to a third party 'no-code' platform because its quicker and cheaper.
I don't have experience with a complete no-code project but I think you'll find there are many projects out there relying on no-code services (most of my projects integrate with Zapier). So I'd say there exists a ven diagram of code and no-code for technical and non-technical founders