74
42 Comments

My no-code project got acquired by a VC firm from SF

👋Back in November I launched a fun project called "Road to Scale" (roadtoscale.com) that I built without code. Using Carrd, Zapier, Airtable, Google Sheets & Gmail.

It’s a curated knowledge library with 300+ content items for every stage of your startup journey. It did well on Product Hunt (1000+ upvotes) and some other channels I used to launch it.

After 6 months 20K people had used it. That's when I was approached by someone who was thinking about building something similar and asked me if they could buy it from me!

Little did I know this person worked for a $500M+ VC fund in SF. And yesterday we did the transfer!

For me, this is more proof that it doesn’t matter HOW you deliver value, just deliver the value, and people will notice! EVEN WHEN YOU BUILD SOMETHING WITHOUT CODE!

Why would someone buy this?
✅ name+domain
✅ have a starting point for their content strategy (instead of building themselves)
✅ potential to launch a V2.0 fast

The price is obviously not life-changing (a nice watch, depending on what you think is nice ;) ) - but it's cool to show that you can build valuable things w/o code, that can even get acquired.

  1. 1

    Saving this for later

  2. 4

    A decent Rolex is about 20k.
    I hope you are not beneath that !

    1. 2

      haha I have a decent Rolex and it was not 20K 😂

      1. 2

        so, was it in 4 or 5 digits?

        1. 3

          haha, it's not about the money man!

          1. 1

            oh yeah, totally! just curiosity... respect your preference to keep it undisclosed :)

  3. 3

    hey, did you discuss alternatives to selling? like working with them on a new version or them funding you to take it to the next level?

    congrats anyway :)

    1. 1

      thanks! good question. We actually did in the beginning! I told them I have to many other things going on (my course nocodemvp.com and my upcoming podcast Early Ones) that I can not commit enough time to actually work together.

  4. 2

    Congratulations! 🙌

    You obviously hit a market need with 20K people using it in 6 months.

    That's highly attractive to someone looking to buy rather than build.

    I'm curious as to your next project.

    Will you take what you learned here and try to replicate in another vertical or just move onto something new?

    1. 4

      already did! moderndayjobs.com --> used by 24k people to date :D, launched last month!

      1. 1

        Incredible, there is a lot to learn from you :)

  5. 2

    Cool! Congrats, Bram! 💥

  6. 2

    Wow congratulations , people can do amazing projects, is just execution not matter if you are a pro developer or a no code person. I am so happy for you and this website looks amazing for me.

  7. 2

    Congrats!
    Do you mind sharing your numbers? How much did you sell it for? That gives a lot of insight for other founders in my opinion. I completely understand if you chose not to share.

    1. 1

      see last sentence of the post :p

      1. 2

        lol I did read it.
        A nice watch can be millions of dollars ;)
        But I get it.
        Congrats again man! what matters is that you were able to execute this in such a short time and sold a business during COVID. You have a great story to tell.

  8. 2

    Congrats dude this is amazing! 🥳

  9. 2

    This is a great success story @bramk, great to see someone show that you don't need to be able to code to build a product, get user and get acquired. Major congrats!

    1. 2

      thanks Gordon :)

  10. 2

    First, congrats! Second: How expensive is the watch?

    1. 1

      thanks! haha - "expensive" is subjective 😛

  11. 2

    What did you sell it for? What was the price?

    1. 1

      can't share haha, but like I said, nothing life changing - a nice amount :)

  12. 2

    Congrats Bram, you're my second favorite Dutch maker on the web!

    1. 1

      thanks! Who's #1? Probably Pieter haha

        1. 1

          can't beat Pieter haha

  13. 2

    Nice one dude, that must be a massive affirmation to have. I'd love to have something like that. Any ideas for some more no-code apps?

    1. 1

      thanks! Too many ideas! just start somewhere :)

  14. 1

    And they killed it? ☠️

  15. 1

    Road to Scale and your website nocodemvp was my inspiration to build https://privacyfirstapps.com/. Thank you so much! @bramk :)

  16. 1

    Congrats @bramk - Did you automate the building of the list? Or was it mainly a manual effort?

  17. 2

    This comment was deleted 3 years ago.

  18. 21

    This comment was deleted a year ago.

    1. 2

      Its a trend, therefore people utilising nocode handles to drive controversy and popularity :) otherwise you are right, doesn't matter => just build valuable things, regardless of hammers & chisels.

      1. 1

        I think it would more fair to say that it is "trending" as nocode is definitely more than just a "trend" or even a movement for that matter.

    2. 1

      thanks man, that means a lot! I also don't really care HOW people build products.

      The code or no-code discussion is something I don't participate in because frankly, I don't care how YOU build YOUR product ;) Do whatever works (fastest) for you.

      "A good product is a good product. Users couldn't give a shit how it was built." --> will tweet that

      1. 2

        This comment was deleted a year ago.

Trending on Indie Hackers
How I grew a side project to 100k Unique Visitors in 7 days with 0 audience 49 comments Competing with Product Hunt: a month later 33 comments Why do you hate marketing? 29 comments My Top 20 Free Tools That I Use Everyday as an Indie Hacker 16 comments $15k revenues in <4 months as a solopreneur 14 comments Use Your Product 13 comments