DreamLabs
No-code fractional product team
We built a fully native mobile app MVP in just 6 days using no-code.
Why it matters
This is important to share because the founder we built it for had been getting quotes from off-shore dev teams with a timeframe of 6 months and tens of thousands of dollars. When she told us the specs of her app, though, we knew it could be built entirely in no-code at a fraction of the time and money to get her to market ASAP.
How we built it
We followed this process to get her from idea to launch in record time. Hopefully this can be helpful to any founders at the stage between concept validation and MVP build. The concept is a community and events-first take on the outdoors.
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Scope the roadmap → The first step is to get crystal clear on what, exactly, to include in the MVP build or not. We used a Notion template I designed for 0→1 product roadmaps that helped us clarify the high-level user flows and spec features across the first 4 releases.
Pro tip: For an MVP build, stay laser-focused on ONLY the user flows / features that are core to your unique offering. Add everything else to future releases you can map out in a logical sequence. The goal is to ship ASAP to get talking with users.
Resource: The Product Management OS is a free template for non-technical founders to track their product vision, regardless of who’s building it. https://www.dreamlabs.pro/blog/product-management-fundamentals-for-your-mobile-app
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Identify the right tool → The no-code ecosystem is maturing fast so there’s no shortage of tools to help you build what you want. Our founder wanted to launch on the iOS store this summer so we looked for tools with this feature. We tried out Glide & Thunkable before landing on Adalo, which was the best balance between usability and customization.
Pro tip: Most no-code tools have similar drag-and-drop interfaces to build the UX/UI easily. The trick to powerful functionality is in the backend. Knowledge on how to create robust relational databases with tools like Airtable are key to setting up the product engine quickly and effectively.
Resource: The No Code MBA is a great starting point for finding the right tool https://www.nocode.mba/tools
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Bust it out → With the roadmap and tool in hand, the building is effortless as warm butter. This part took us 6 days, end-to-end, putting the initial estimates of 6 months from off-shore devs to shame.
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Pro tip: Having a disciplined, clearly defined process is as important for QA testing as for building. This enables you to catch bugs, errors or glitches before your users.
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Resource: The PM OS Notion template I built has a QA Unit Testing table fully integrated into the high-level User Flows, Features and Bugs/Fixes databases, so you can track your product from the highest level to the smallest granularity easily.
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As a Fractional Product Team, we worked with the founder each step of the way, helping her strategically prioritize the roadmap, build the MVP, iterate the UI and catch the bugs. All in all, we’re now ready to ship the release to her first users, less than 1 month after we started.
Feel free to ask any questions if you’re working through a similar process and need help on the no-code ecosystem or 0→1 product management!
We’re excited to announce we’ll be working with an outdoor activities marketplace for urban communities. We’re excited to be bringing our experience as a no-code Product team for a company that hits all our criterion:
- Concept validated
- No MVP
- Non-technical founder
With a background in marketing, this founder was able to validate the initial concept of her business with a basic website and drive traffic to build a waitlist of 5,000+. She is too early to raise funding, but needs help building and iterating a functional mobile app to get from MVP to PMF in the product lifecycle.
This is where we plug in. As a Fractional Product Team, we lead no-code builds for rapid launches and releases. We also roll up our sleeves to guide user feedback sessions and collaborate on product strategy so that each subsequent release is closer to PMF.
Marketplaces are an exciting space to play in with the current no-code ecosystem as they are uniquely suited to non-technical founders. As an investor from FJ Labs said, “marketplaces are execution constrained, not technology constrained.”
We’re stoked to get in the trenches and look forward to helping other awesome marketplace founders in the future!
14 Comments
This is great. Which no-code tools did you use for you app?
We built the app entirely in Adalo as it comes with a relatively robust database native to the platform. As I mentioned in the post, we found Adalo to be the right balance between ease-of-use and customizability compared to other options in the market. Essentially, if you know how to use a database tool like Airtable with its relation feature, you can really get the most out of Adalo's as a functionality engine for most apps.
Thanks for the writeup - creating an app from scratch in only 6 days is a really great achievement, congratz!
Much appreciated. Definitely goes to show how powerful the modern no-code ecosystem is. With a well-defined product specs, it's really just a matter of digging in a cranking it out!
May I ask for a rough explanation of what you've built? I'm interested in what you could achieve in 6 days and how much time I'd estimate for traditional development.
For sure. Without getting into too much detail (still pre-launch), the basic idea was essentially Meetups for outdoor-focused events. So the main features included the user flows of accounts, events (paid and free), hosting groups, forum discussion boards on groups and events, friend requests, and community browsing. Pretty straightforward from a build perspective, with only a few nuances to really tease out.
That's indeed a lot to do in six days, especially for native mobile development.
Do you have some experience with accessing native APIs from no-code tools? Currently, I'm on a mobile project for which I use React Native but have some requirements for which I have had to add native modules.
Definitely a solid output for a week!
To your question on accessing native APIs, I'll defer to my cofounder @JohnKrueger. In our agency, I lead product and he leads dev so can speak to the more technical aspects.
Hi, nice! no code approach seems interesting to me, especially for mobile apps as I have no exp building those. Is the no-code approach just for initial launch/MVP or you will be actually maintaining this app in a no-code way?
Great question. A couple years ago, we would have said that the app could work pretty much just for MVP launch.
However, the ecosystem has really matured to the point where we can feasibly run it on a user base in the tens of thousands and it'll still function well. As a rule of thumb, we've heard from investors that they are now seeing no-code products run anywhere from launch to $1MM ARR. After that threshold, you would want to really double down on custom dev. But at that threshold, you can easily afford custom dev.
So you can feasibly get from MVP to PMF with the current state of the no-code ecosystem today and benefit from rapid iterations along the way.
I got to ask what is a fractional product team?
Great write up though, love what you have built here. As a product strategist/designer myself I know the power of simplifying and scaling back at the initial stages. You can launch faster and with less risk.
You just need to get to the point where someone can buy your idea and then invest in more extensive customer development work!
Great question. The way we define it is a non-staff team to handle the full product dev cycle from strategy to specs/roadmap to UX/UI to dev to QA and launch.
Our observation is that most early-stage, non-technical founders look to contractors to get an initial build out the door. But an execution-focused agency that only helps deliver a single build is actually at odds with the goal of an early startup, which is to iterate quickly. So we plug in as a fractional product team after an initial build to deliver 1 new product release per month (at minimum) as well as roll up our sleeves in product strategy by leading user feedback sessions and providing thought partnership on roadmap decisions. In short, our goal is to help founders get from MVP to PMF as quickly as possible so they can they hire a full-time head of product or CTO.
And, yes! Less is more at the early stages to help refine your focus and test what matters.
Hey, what happened to y'all?
Sorry, been off IH for a while.
We're still rocking, just made a name (and domain) change to dreamlabs.pro
I updated the url attached as well.