In this post, I’m going to share with you 5 highly successful no code startup success stories. I will be breaking down how they did it, the tools they used, and how much roughly they are making, and make sure to stick to the end. Because one of these stories is absolutely crazy as it involves organs, complex logistics and saving lives.
Let’s jump into it.
Startup #1. TealHQ
If you’ve ever tried looking for a job online, you would know exactly how difficult it can be. And if you’ve tried looking for a solution to that problem, then you’ve probably run into one of our first success stories as the founder, David Fano used no code from day one to develop an awesome job search platform. A platform which evolved into an all in one suite of tools to help you find your next job fast. And the name of it is TealHQ.
TealHQ allows you to organize and manage your entire job search in one place. You can bookmark any job board using their chrome extension and keep track of all of your opportunities all in one place. It just keeps everything organized and simplified to make sure that you can apply to as many jobs as possible. It then allows you to quickly tailor your resume for each job application to improve your chances of getting hired and saving you a lot of hours.
It also has a lot of other features like:
- AI resume builder
- AI resume checker application
- Autofill
- LinkedIn reviewer
- Cover letter generator
and a lot more.
It’s a very powerful platform with deep functionality that provides a lot of value if you’re trying to find a job, and investors think so too. Teal has raised over $11 million from City Light Capital, Flybridge Capital and human ventures.
But how did they build it? Well, David, who’s a former architect, used Bubble IO to build out his idea. Bubble is a full stack, no-code development platform that allows you to build any web app idea into reality without writing a single line of code. You drag and drop components together. You link the components using their logic features and connect to other apps using APIs and plugins. When it came to building the Bubble, David’s exact words, as long as I’ve been building technology, it’s as easy as it’s ever been. No-code was in our DNA because we needed to get a product out in front of people and we wanted to iterate quickly.
David also used other no-code tools to bring his app into reality. He used Typeform for surveys, HubSpot for his CRM, Zapier to automate workflows, Airtable for any additional database management, and of course, Webflow for their front end website.
And David believes that getting your product into the hands of your customers as soon as possible is the most important step. You have to put things in front of them. The more usable, the better. Mockups can only do so much. That’s where something like Bubble is invaluable. Now, I wasn’t able to find exactly how much TealHQ is making, but in 2020 they raised over $5 million. So their ARR is definitely in the multi million dollar range.
Startup #2. Qoins
Now that is probably one of the biggest pain points for most people. It’s not easy to plan, strategize and pay it all off by yourself. But what if there was an app that helped you do exactly that automatically?
Well, Qoins is one of our next success stories, which does exactly that. Nate Washington, who is one of the founders of the app, was at an all time rock bottom. He was broken, couldn’t afford to go back to school, and was sleeping in his car for some period of time.
But one day, in the backseat of his car, Nate discovered Bubble and decided to dedicate himself to learning it while working two jobs at the restaurant. After mastering the tool and slowly improving his life, he eventually met Christian Zimmerman, who was another aspiring entrepreneur with a dream to build his own fintech startup. The problem was that Christian had no idea how to code well.
Luckily, Nate knew how to Bubble. So after meeting each other, they decided to team up and build their idea with Bubble, an app that automatically uses your spare change from everyday transactions to pay off your credit card and student debt. After building their app using Bubble, they managed to grow their user base to over 10,000 paying customers and helped their users pay off more than $35 million in debt. That’s a serious impact. They also raised over $2.3 million in funding and went on to win Fintech Innovation award challenge. Pretty awesome for a startup built on Bubble.
Unfortunately all of this did come crumbling down, but it wasn’t due to no-code, it was due to some complications in migrating their bank. Due to that, the app had to declare bankruptcy and they were shut down.
I’ve tried finding a clear story on exactly what happened, but it’s all very blurry. I can find reliable information from both sides of the story, but I still wanted to include the story as what they were able to accomplish. The bubble was still incredible and it shows you that business is a lot more complicated than what tech stack you use for your startup.
I’m sure if they didn’t run into the issues at the bank then this startup would be around for a very long time. This is some serious valuation. Acorn, for example, who is one of their competitors, was valued at around $2 billion in 2022.
Startup #3. Dividend Finance
So you could imagine the opportunity for growth that coins had. Now this might not relate a lot of you, but if you’re a homeowner and you’ve ever wanted to install solar panels on your roof but couldn’t up for the upfront cost, our next success story solves exactly that. While it might seem pretty niche, it’s still a very big market.
And as we all know, the green energy market is growing rapidly. Well, this startup was able to process billions of dollars of loans through their app, built on no code. And the web app we are talking about is dividend finance.
Dividend is a leading national provider of renewable energy financing solutions for property owners. In the early days, they’ve tried developing their app using traditional developers, but it was taking way too long. They were running out of funding and that’s when their head of product decided to give bubble a chance. They hired a bubble agency to help them build out their MVP, and in just six weeks they had a working product. But this MVP was built at scale in mind, so over time they were able to build more features onto it and build out a legit solution for their business. Dividend finance would go on to raise over $380 million in funding and end up getting acquired by the fifth 3rd bank.
Now I’ll be clear, after some time in the market, Dividend did hire developers to build out more custom integrations and functionality on top of Bubble, and it is not clear if they’re still using bubble to this day or if they have switched to 100% custom code. However, what is clear from this story is that despite what all of the naysayers are going to say, is that no code is a legit solution for founders of any scale.
Building your app with no code, launching into the market, making and raising millions of dollars, and then having to hire developers to build out some completely custom functional analogy, or even rebuilding the entire app is a problem that you want to have. It’s a thousand times better than spending five years learning how to code just to have someone else build out your idea, or spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on your app just to realize there is no product market fit, or even worse, sitting on your idea thinking that it’s impossible and never executing and regretting it five years down the line. But you should be worrying about getting your first thousand customers rather than worrying about how you’re gonna scale once you have a million users before you even have the first version of your app. And no code is perfect for that.
Startup #4. Airspace
Now, we’ve talked about startups in the fintech space as well as a marketplace. How about something that has a lot more impact? Something that involves complex logistics, commercial flights? Or how about something that involves donor organs? Well, a startup known as Airspace decided to use bubble once again to tackle a pretty big project. Kory, who is a non technical founder, discovered bubble by accident while he was doing a few Google searches.
And after messing around with the free plan, he realized that he had the functionality to build out pretty much anything that he needed. I was able to go in and create the rough sketch of the application that I needed without having to put in any payment. So in under a month, Kory was able to develop an app for one of the largest organ procurement organizations in the US to transport donor organs, which are referred to as gifts.
So the way it works is once somebody passes away, the gifts from the donor need to get sent out extremely quickly. Each donor might have, let’s say, twelve gifts, which need to be routed appropriately to research facilities or receipts in need. The solution that Kory built on bubble allowed users to do exactly that.
It allowed for multiple gift shipments to be placed and routed instantly, rather than one by one. There’s a viability window of how long these organs can be out of bodies. What we were able to do was create a front end experience for the team to be able to interface with the airspace API and create multiple orders from one single origin instantaneously.
Bubbles reliability is not only impressive, but reassuring, making it a trusted platform capable of handling critical systems like orchestrating human organ donations. Kory essentially developed a life saving medical app, all using no-code. Airspace is still fully operational, and they are growing day by day to include more hospitals and more regions in their service. And their ARR contracts are in a multi million dollar range and they’re currently servicing over 120 facilities. This is probably my favorite no code success story.
Startup #5. Better Legal
So if you ever want to start your own business, one of the issues that you’ll run into is officially registering it. For some people it can be an absolute headache to find, prepare and file all of the needed documents. And that’s exactly where our next startup success story comes in. Known as BetterLegal, this startup helps you do exactly that for just $300. They take care of the entire business setup in just 10 minutes so you can focus on actually building the business. And Better Legal is of course another no code success story. Originally, Chad Sakonchick, who is the founder, was just trying to help out his lawyer friend to automate legal services. But once realizing that there’s an actual market gap for the solution, he decided to start paralegal.
For years he was spending tens of thousands of dollars on part time developers to build and maintain design.
This went on for years. I kept adding developers to try to solve the front end design problem. We were spending upwards of $8,000 - $10,000 a month on four different JavaScript developers just to keep the site up and get basic stuff done.
But everything changed once he stumbled onto bubble.
What took him four years to build the custom code. He then rebuilt himself with bubble, in just a few months a light bulb went off in my head.
We can completely rip and replace everything we built with bubble. The result of that was saving hundreds of thousands of dollars in development fees and being able to iterate his product himself without relying on developers. In January 2023, BetterLegal had its best month ever and was on track to $1M annual recurring revenue.
Instead of spending his days managing developers, Chad now focuses on actually growing the business, which was something that was holding him back for years before. Now that it’s built on bubble, better legal is a well oiled machine and it’s time to scale. The next year will largely center on marketing and growth.
Conclusion
So what’s the conclusion from all of those success stories? Well, is that no-code is a legit building solution for ideas of any scale and you can get started today. There are hundreds of tools available on the market for different kind of use cases.
Number two is that no code can give your business a serious advantage due to its speed to market. If you’re able to iterate really fast and listen to your customers and improving your product constantly, then you’re going to be so far ahead of your competitors. And that’s where no-code shines. You can actually make updates within days rather than spending weeks or even months adding small new features.
Number three is that outgrowing no code and hiring developers eventually to scale further is a problem that you want to have. So many founders will overthink this. They’ll say, oh, but what if my app will need this and this and this and that? It doesn’t matter. What matters is getting your first version of the product into the hands of your customers as soon as possible. That should be your focus. And there’s no better way to do this than using no code, because you can build fast, get into the hands of your customers, listen to that feedback, iterate, build on. And when you need to hire developers, once you have some revenue, you can do so. But there’s no reason to get started with developers from the start. Waste all that money, waste all that time.