What Do All of the Top No-Code Experts Think About Our Future?

- This story starts on a plane without Wifi. I'd highly recommend taking time off to come up with new ideas. -  ‍

A few months ago (before the world began dealing with the COVID crisis), I was on a flight returning to St. Louis from New York when I experienced a feeling I hadn't had in over a year. A moment of silence. Something very rare for a startup founder. The combination of forgetting my book and the fact that the plane was too small for Wifi (which is apparently a thing?), there was nothing to do. So for three hours, I was forced to — sorry, I mean fortunate enough to — sit back, relax, and reflect. 

While in NYC, I spoke at the No Code Summit, met with some investors, and had the chance to squeeze in hanging out with some of my best friends from college. All these different experiences in NYC led to many different conversations about no-code. Some with people that are really into the movement (at the summit), some with people that are interested in the big picture (investors); and some with people that had no idea what the heck no-code is (my friends). It was this unique combination of conversations that sparked an idea.

The most obvious takeaway from these conversations is just how intrigued everyone is about no code. When I first started working on Adalo, back in 2018, the term "no-code" wasn't a thing yet. The space was really just a group of somewhat-related, established SaaS companies (Squarespace, Shopify, Zapier, etc.) and a few new startups trying to help people create things without code. Yet just one year later, there's hundreds of meetups, a huge global conference, and even a Product Hunt Golden Kitty category for it! Talk about a quick change. By no means is no-code mainstream just yet, but it's very clear that it's officially a thing that a lot of people are excited about.

What was also clear from these conversations, is that there are a lot of questions about what the no-code movement means for our future. And these questions are hard to answer. They're challenging because 1) the space is new & thus not well defined, and 2) it has the potential to affect a lot of people in a wide range of roles & contexts. 

Seeing as my world revolves around no-code, I've gotten into the routine of passionately answering these questions and talking about how amazing the future is going to be. So as I sat there on the plane, I thought to myself I should record my thoughts. I should write down all of the questions that I often get asked and how I believe it's going to affect everyone in the future. But as I started to organize my thoughts, I had a little bit of an existential crisis. Do I really know all of the answers? I'm just one founder and our no code app builder is just one piece of the no code puzzle.

And that's when things started to click. What if I could get together all of the no-code experts to answer the same set of questions?? My adrenaline started to kick in... What if I could talk with Vlad, the CEO of Webflow, Ben Tossel from Makerpad, and Wade Foster, the CEO of Zapier?! 

If you're familiar with Tim Ferriss's Tribe of Mentors book (which I'd highly recommend) then you might understand what I want the outcome of this project to be. But if you’re not, what I'd love is to have a clear definition of what no-code is and as best as possible a set of predictions for what our world will look like when no code becomes mainstream. I'd like one piece of content that you can read regardless of whether you're really into the movement or like, my friends from college, don't know what no code is all about. You can think of it as a No-Code North Star.

So what did I do with all this adrenaline?

I reached out to a bunch of the top no-code experts in the space today and sat down with them to answer some of the most pertinent questions about no-code. I talked with Vlad from Webflow, Wade from Zapier, Tara from Apps Without Code & many more. We discuss things like their definition of no-code, what the future holds, and what it’s going to mean for everyone — and believe me, it’s inspiring!  On May 14th, I’ll be sharing a large webook (free and built with Webflow, of course) to showcase the experts' answers, where you’ll be able to see all they had to say and see how it compares to each of the experts. 

But that’s not all, once you’re finished reading the encouraging news about no-code — you can participate! I want to know what YOU think.

Throughout the next month, we’ll be collecting everyone’s opinions on the same questions the experts answered and each week I’ll be releasing the full interviews from each of the experts. Once all the interviews have been released, and all your answers are submitted, I’ll be putting together a huge conclusion piece! 

I can’t wait for you to see all the experts’ thoughts — even though I work in the space daily, I couldn’t help but get excited listening to the passion that these experts have when talking about no-code. 

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