Using Webflow and Zapier versus developing

In my experience I can honestly say that these tools are really more suited towards internal operations in a business rather building a product or an MVP. Im not just talking about Zapier and such but also tools like Retool, Air Table, Notion, Bubble etc.

1. Rare are the products you can build with pure no code tools, some programming will be necessary at some point.

2. Writing code can a lot of times be significantly easier than learning or integrating with no code tools.

3. Your actual MVP is probably more complicated than you think.

4. You can build things Unscalable and fast with code too.

That being said, "no-code" tools that are more geared towards programmers such as Supabase/Firebase, Auth0, Stripe, Mixpanel,Logrocket, AWS etc'. Are generally what you should probably truely consider. I've built an full MVP with Supabase for example because the backend was simple and It saved me a bunch of time.

Your audience won't give a damn how your portfolio was built. Unless you are a programmer and potential employers may evaluate your programming skills based on how your site was built with what tech.

Just stick to what you can build faster with and launch. You can always pivot later if needed.

Nobody cares how you put together your portfolio. Unless you're a coder, drift boss you probably don't want potential employers to know what tools you used to build your website.

In my opinion, the most important thing when building an MVP is to be able to quickly and efficiently test your product's viability and user feedback. So, use the technology that you are most comfortable with and that allows you to build faster. Whether you use MERN, Webflow, or Zapier, the audience (potential employers, co-founders, etc) will ultimately be more interested in the outcome and whether your product is able to solve a need, rather than the specific tools or technologies you used to build it.

Additionally, building a portfolio is a great idea, it will show your ability to develop an MVP and showcase your skills and experience. You can also consider building your MVP and then use webflow or zapier to improve the UI and UX to showcase your design skills or automation skills.

Ultimately, the key is to find a balance between speed, efficiency, and showcasing your skills and abilities.

Nothing wrong with that with respect to MVP. After validation you might hit coding it up, if and only if the products is somewhat hit.

If your core intention is to show that you can code, then business value of the idea doesn’t matter much - you should build it in the MERN stack.