I dropped $220k and 2 years for a nocode startup

I am Peter, CEO of Unstatic. I have built 7 startups in the past 9 years, and the most successful startup is Habitify (https://www.habitify.me/) - a habit tracker started in 2015 (now 2.6M users, $100k MRR).

After the success of Habitify, we believed that we had a strength in mobile app, so we want to dig deeper into this area.

This led us to the decision of building Starion - A nocode app builder (https://starion.io/). Starion allows non-tech people to build apps easily and intuitively.

How Starion went

We finished feature by feature, fixed bug by bug.
The product was improved significantly after a relatively short period of time.
We released some versions, got some milestones.
However, little did we know, all those milestones were leading us to a dead end.

What we did wrong

In order to make a project work, we need to consider:

1. Target customers
2. Their pains
3. Our painkillers

But we solely started from our ideas and assumptions without planning thoroughly.

We thought we built for non-tech people, but we ended up bringing Typescript into the product.

We thought our product was simple enough, but some people (including developers) did not know how to start building an app with Starion.

We thought our product was the solution to build apps with nocode, but we could not articulate the problem clearly to begin with.

Our team spent almost 2 years building into the void, without having any source of revenue.

The way out

After a period no success, I decided to rethink the strategy with my team.

My philosophy “Just build a good product, it will sell itself.” might need a re-consideration.

It’s not wrong, it just needs some changes.

Big time.

AppAlloy came to life (appalloy.net)

A good product is not determined by the builder, but by the user.

With this mindset, we distributed the idea to the market before even building it.

We dived into communities, utilized personal networks, asked non-biased questions.

And we realized:

1. Users really care about convenience
2. Small wins are important, make it happen fast
3. The product experience should be much more simple

So we shorten the flow down to only two steps, based on the core principle of an app:

DATA

Now, customers just need to insert the data, we do the rest.

• Apps are created without any initial customization.

• Users have their fully functional app as a small win, then they can further customize later on.

• The UI is clear and direct, guiding people to certain steps.

Big lessons learned

• One, do not assume.
  The market is more diverse than what you know.
  Build a product, bring it to the market. Gather real feedback.

• Two, you succeeded once, doesn’t mean you will the next time.
  We tried so hard and was successful with Habitify.
  Hard work is crucial, but luck is vital as well.
  Succeeding with one startup cannot guarantee your next success at all.

• Three, you failed once, keep trying, cuz your success might be right in the corner.
  What we can control is our action. What we can’t (fully) control is the outcome.
  You are just one action away from your success.

Keep going!

To all entrepreneurs out there, we’re all in this together.

Don’t lose sight of your dreams.

Thanks for reading. What do you think we could do differently?