5 No-Code Tools to Launch your First Startup

A cheat sheet that'll make you smile.

So you’re launching your first startup, but don’t know a thing about technical development. Lucky for you, you don’t have to! We’re cruising through the 21st century and the internet has never been easier to use. 5 years ago you would have needed an engineer to write code, a graphic designer to make your chicken scratch look pretty, and 3 other developers to tie it all together. It would have cost you a second mortgage and taken 2 years to get an MVP. Now, you just need to know where to look 👀.

You’ve come to the right place. Kernal is a community of entrepreneurs building kick-ass projects from the ground up. We’re a team of thousands and we’ve got your back. Our No-Code Experts have seen it all and their recommended tools make Bill Gates and Steve Jobs' life work look easy. Anyone can do it. And now it’s your turn.

First, you’ll need a place to keep track of everything.

Notion

A productive workplace that keeps everything organized. Its uses are limitless but project management is a good start. Test out templates, make a to-do list, set reminders, and create a roadmap for your startup to take off 🚀 .

Dig deeper and you’ll learn Notion has more power than just note-taking. Light the fire and these notes easily become landing pages, scheduled social media posts, a CRM, and so much more. As I said, its uses are limitless.

But a startup isn't a startup until a product is built. You’ve posted on Kernal (if not, you can do it here), your idea is popular, and you are ready to take action. How are you going to create that unicorn without knowing a lick of code?

Bubble

The Beauty behind No-Code Building. This no-code web app builder is trusted and preferred by most. Described as robust and versatile by our experts, it’s the top choice. Its user walkthrough takes you from Kindergarten to a Master’s in Computer Science in a matter of minutes. More so, there’s a whole community behind it that can answer your product questions 🎉.

If you’re not ready to take a deep dive into building from scratch, no worries, there are templates to choose from, which makes building the Uber for X or Twitter for Y, that much faster. Simply choose a product type (marketplace, job board, social media, etc.) and use the language you already know - English - to clone an app and develop your own custom technology. See ya later C+, Piece out Python! JK programming is pretty cool but ain't nobody got time for dat.

You can build a webpage using Bubble but you need it to look the part 😎. It's got to represent your vision and its meaning needs to be clear. The problem is you don’t know the difference between Adobe Creative Cloud and Window’s Paint. You can’t design graphics. You don’t have a budget for someone with an Arts degree. And you don’t have time to learn. You have a start-up to build!

Canva

It’s so easy it’s scary. It’ll honestly make you lose appreciation for that cool marketing campaign you spent 5 minutes watching on Instagram. Canva uses click-and-drop technology so you can align stock images, change colors, add filters, text, and everything you need to be an advanced graphic designer. You’ll need this, especially for your webpage and marketing 💻.

They’ve changed the game. Follow along as they just announced new features in their Visual Worksuite at the Canva Create 2022.

You’ve now got a place to organize your systems, a way to build your product, and a way to make everything, including social media, look amazing 🙌 .

What’s next? Let’s get you set up with a database. You’ll have to collect information somewhere.

Airtable

Let’s be real. You’re on the internet. You’ve heard of Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets. And you might have even heard of the other tools above, but let me explain why Airtable is on this list. Airtable can be used in more ways than just a spreadsheet. When users go to your landing page, their contact information can then be automatically sent to Airtable to be categorized as customer type, email, visited date, contacted, link source, etc. I know talking about collecting user data is creepy, but this information is important to create authentic relationships with your users. AirTable makes it REALLY easy to securely store, categorize, redirect, and manage this important information. Forget those formulas. From there you can set a workflow for how to take action. A new user did X, you do Y. The information is plain and simple. Even automated.

🚨Buzz word alert 🚨 “Automated”. This is part of your business plan, right? You want to do less work while providing the same, if not more, value. Everyone wants passive income and that doesn’t happen without automation.

This brings me to tool number 5. Drumroll for 🥁…

Zapier

Now, this is where the magic happens.  As a founder, you’ll have to keep up with 12937 different applications. It’s annoying, but builders like you, have a lot of tools. That’s where Zapier earns its stripes. Zapier is your connectivity engine that stitches everything together. It gives you the power to automate anything and connect all of your apps to organize internal operations 💥.

So, what’s this look like? A new customer visits your website built on Bubble and expresses their interest by clicking the product/service image you designed on Canva 🧑‍💻. Airtable collects the appropriate information 📥. When this happens, Zapier then connects this information to your Welcome Email Series built on Notion and automatically sends this new friend of yours an email thanking them for their interests/purchase 📮.

You did nothing at the moment. You set up your processes beforehand and let your systems work their magic🪄. This will repeat every time. Automatic. All without even lifting your pinky to type a single line of code.

Your startup is now on its way to unicorn status📈.

Now, to be honest, you’ll need a little more help than that. Like a good web domain, email provider, marketing strategy, payment processor, and so much more. That’s the bad news.

The good news is, that this process used to take incredibly longer. You just saved yourself so much time and money. Use that extra time to learn more in our other blog posts or let me know what tools we missed that are your favorites. If you need any inspiration check out this Kernal idea that was built with Bubble or ask our experts, Tanveer or Lola, for help. Don't forget to share your progress on Kernal!

Honorable mention tools:
Yep.so, Caard, Glide, Tally, Softr