Unleashing NO-Code superpowers for Product Managers – With Marcel Schneider (HuggyStudio)

Summary:

In this episode of Reasonable Product, Salva has invited Marcel Schneider (Product Manager at Huggy Studio) to deep dive into the world of No-Code development and its pivotal role in product management. They explore how No-Code empowers product managers to rapidly bring their ideas to life, focusing on high-priority tasks while reducing the time and effort spent on development.

Marcel provides a foundational understanding of what No-Code truly is, and concrete examples of the most powerful no-code tools out there. Most importantly, he also provides practical examples of when No-code is NOT the way to go.

Marcel and Salva discuss various scenarios where No-Code proves to be a game-changer for Product Managers, emphasizing its effectiveness in the early stages of product development. They underline the importance of testing ideas, even before considering development, to validate their viability in the market.

He highlights No-Code as a powerful tool, emphasizing that it’s not just for non-technical individuals but can also benefit seasoned developers looking to streamline their processes.

One of the key takeaways is the necessity for product managers to prioritize their core responsibilities, avoiding the temptation of becoming deep into No-Code development. Marcel advises that while No-Code is a valuable resource, it should be used as a superpower to enhance productivity rather than a rabbit hole that consumes precious time.

The conversation also touches upon the future of No-Code, with Marcel expressing his belief that the integration of No-Code and AI will open up new possibilities. He envisions No-Code as a gateway for non-technical individuals to access AI technologies, thereby accelerating innovation across various domains.

Marcel’s practical insights and real-world examples, such as the success story of a specialist using No-Code to scale content creation for SEO, serve as valuable illustrations of how No-Code can be harnessed effectively.

Listen to the full episode to:

🚀 Dive into No-Code development’s potential.
🔑 Learn how to prioritize core tasks while No-Code handles the technical heavy lifting.
🧪 Understand which no-code tool is helpful for what
🦸‍♂️ Learn to use No-Code as a superpower, not a time sink.
🔮 Explore the future: No-Code and AI integration for innovation acceleration.


You can contact Marcel
– through Linkedin, at https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcel-schneider-149209222/
– through Huggy Studio at https://www.huggystudio.com/

Here are some of the resources we mentioned in the Podcast:
– No-Code tools for early product validation: https://reasonableproduct.com/no-code-tools-for-early-product-validation/
– HuggyStudio guide to No-Code Tools https://www.huggystudio.com/blog-article/the-best-no-code-platforms-and-tools

You can also read the full transcript here:

Salva:
Hello and welcome to reasonable product. Today I’ve got Marcel Schneider with me. Marcel is a product manager and responsible for the agency at Huggy Studio. Hello Marcel.

Marcel:
Nice to be here!
Agi Agi 
Salva:
Nice to see you again. So Marcel and I have been working together. So short disclaimer about this. And our life separated a few years ago and Marcel decided to go in a way that I find extremely interesting. And that’s why I wanted to have you with us today, Marcel. Marcel, can you tell us in a nutshell, what are you doing today?

Marcel:
So today I’m working, as you said, I’m working at Huggy Studio. And what we do at Huggy Studio, so we are a small startup and we are helping non-technical people to actually get their ideas started and creating like MVPs or helping them to find their first customers even before they build. And we do that for entrepreneurs and we do it also for companies like teams, like product teams or innovation teams within. companies and we help them by using a lot of like latest no code tools. So non-technical people are also able to actually build software. And that’s something we use a lot within that.

Salva:
And that’s very interesting. That’s one of the reasons why I want to speak with you, because lately I hear a lot talking about no code. And I’d like to demystify the topic with your help. And I know that many product managers in particular are referring to no code, either using or referring to. So can you help us? What is no code in the first place? When people say we are using no code or you should be using no code, what are they talking about?

Marcel:
Yes, like I mean, the field of no code is quite huge, right? Like there are many tools which belong to no code. So what’s our interpretation or our definition of no code is usually these are tools which visually programming tools, which help you to actually build some parts of websites or web applications without the need of actually using or applying a programming language. So there is still used code. but they simplify actually the way or the access for non-technical people to also build things like an app or building a website or building an online shop or whatever you can imagine of.

Salva:
And so technically, where do you draw the line? Because this is not new. We’ve been using, I don’t know, like WordPress for the past 15 years, perhaps for doing basic website, and not so basic either. Would this kind of technologies go into what you call no code? Or do we have to only to think about very sexy and complex tools like the more modern ones?

Marcel:
Yeah, actually you’re right. Like, I mean, the topic is not new, right? Like already 10 years ago, you had already those website builders, for instance, where you could build like Jim Do or Wix or yeah, WordPress you mentioned, uh, where you can easily with drag and drop, you can connect your, your website together. And within the last years, um, there was a huge improvement, uh, how far you can go and that’s the big difference. So today there are many tools which go much further than static. websites, even going in a direction where you can build marketplaces like an Airbnb or an Uber or a LinkedIn, those kinds of things. You can build basically yourself as a non-technical of someone who does not code or does not know any programming language. You would be theoretically able to actually build those things as well. Of course. There are also certain things you need to consider then and also learn, but you work with pre-built elements, you work with building blocks, and it makes it much easier for you to understand and to learn and to make progress.

Salva:
So I understand the promise. And I’m sure we talk also about the reality and the limitations, because you kind of mentioned between the lines that you could do this alone, but not necessarily. But before we get to those limitations, I am understanding that there are tools that help you to create from the static website to a very complex marketplace with basically no code understanding. But the question I have for you is, should you do that? What is the reason and why would people build a full marketplace on this technologies?

Marcel:
So that’s a great question, right? Like because it’s also, we often also get these questions, like why, why should you actually do it? And I think there are certain use cases or certain things, which it makes very much sense to use it. Let’s say for it, for example, you are an entrepreneur and you have an idea. An idea of, I don’t know, like the new, the new Airbnb, let’s say. And, and. How do you get started? Because you cannot code yourself. So either you need to find someone who built, who found with you, so a co-founder, but that’s probably quite difficult, right? Like they are not just waiting on the streets and looking for you, that they can actually found something with you. And another issue you probably face, and that’s also something I experienced and also my friends at Huggie Studio experienced quite a lot when doing, following our ideas ourselves. Then the other way you can do is, okay, then you can pay someone who built it for you. But then you usually need to have a lot of money and high invest. And then usually you also start building and you start testing it on the market probably. And then you figure out that this is not the big idea people were waiting for and you need to pilot, you need to adjust, and then you don’t have any money left. And that’s where No Code can help you quite a lot to get started quick. into the market. Maybe even you can learn it yourself. You can adjust until you reach kind of a level where you think, now I can get the funding, I can get the invest because I could prove some traction. And that’s, for instance, a great way to start. And you can do it as an entrepreneur, but you can also do it, of course, transfer it to a company where teams also need to bring up new innovations or new products.

Salva:
Well, so there are already a lot of different paths I would like to get into. They’re

Marcel:
Hehehe

Salva:
very interesting already. The first thing you said, or I heard it this way, it was that it’s very useful if you don’t know how to code. And for whatever reason, you cannot put your hands on somebody who knows how to do that. Either you don’t want to spend this money right now, or you can’t attract the right talent, and you’re still trying your idea, basically. So. Does this also mean that if you know how to code, you probably should not use no code tools? So imagine

Marcel:
That’s

Salva:
you’re

Marcel:
a good…

Salva:
a tech entrepreneur, you’re starting from tech, are you still better off using no code or not?

Marcel:
That’s a funny one because in reality, I had some talks with different people, of course, with product managers or non-technical people, and then also with developers. And usually the discussion is a different one because the developers, they don’t really see the advantage of no code because they say, okay, it’s interesting, but then I need to learn this new tool to actually achieve something I can already do myself. And they are right. for them probably makes sense, or what could be interesting for them is that they like, usually good developers, they like to work on complex problems. And creating a front end, like a design, the thing the user can see, right? If they start, if they do this kind of work, maybe they don’t like it that much either, because they like to work on technical things, on complex problems. So no code can also help them to actually… focus more on the complex work with code and to kind of outsource all the other parts they don’t like that much and using no-code tools for this part. And then you can easily connect those things together. So that’s usually a different discussions with non-technical people and technical people.

Salva:
So what you’re saying is not necessarily do what you know how to do, is do things where you’re bringing value. Also as a developer, you can do the frontend, but probably it’s not where you’re bringing the most value at the beginning. So you would want to spend your time doing something very complex, probably doing the algorithm, which is behind and not necessarily the frontend. And I understand the same, of course, if you are more of the business person, of the product manager person. You can spend your time. You don’t have to learn a language, but you can just try your assumptions without spending time on tech. Right?

Marcel:
And also, for myself, I didn’t even have the opportunity to do it at all. Maybe a website that was the maximum I could achieve. And then having those wonderful toolbox of, oh, I can now somehow building an app for a to-do list myself was crazy because I couldn’t do and still cannot actually do any… JavaScript programming language. And that was for me, really a game changer in terms of, oh, now I get access to technology in a different way. And that was the thing I was missing. And even in the beginning, I thought like, now I can build my next big startup, because I always thought like, oh, that’s the thing which is missing, stopping me from actually achieving something to then quickly realize like, okay, mostly it’s not about the tech stack. at all, it’s mostly about do you solve actually a problem?

Salva:
Right. I know you’re a huge defender of no code. I mean, this was the idea today. So let me be the devil advocate. So what do you think? The fact that you’re reducing the entry bar, right? So I understand with no code, you can do relatively complex stuff easily. Isn’t this a two-edged sword because you might be tempted to do too many things that you wouldn’t do otherwise?

Marcel:
Yeah, probably. Maybe an example here, I usually do a lot of those talks to teams on companies who don’t know what is no code. And then I explain them what it is, similar like I did today. And then usually they came back to me and say, hey, Marcel, okay, we have this app idea of creating a parking slot app where people can book parking slots. And you said no code is so easy. So we have a budget of 1000 Swiss francs. can you do it for us? And then you realize like, oh, okay, probably I gave a wrong touch of it, because it’s still a lot of work to do. It’s not just that easy. And I think that’s always important to consider. You also need to learn the tools and as more complex the outcome is, as more time it also takes. And that’s always important to consider. So if you have a very, very simple tool, you are super fast, but you have a lot of limitations, whereas you can use tools which cover more complex stuff. But then it takes you just also a high learning curve, time and invest.

Salva:
So my takeaway from a product perspective here, and tell me if I’m wrong, is twofold. One is that it is easier, but it’s not that easy either. I mean, like, not as magic, and you do whatever you want. So you still have to prioritize things eventually. You cannot say, I’m going to do everything because it’s no code, I can do everything. It still requires you, which is good, right, your prioritization work. The other thing I’m hearing also is, again, about prioritization. I hear a little risk of focusing on how easy it is rather than on the impact you’re creating. Do you see the same with the projects you’re managing?

Marcel:
Yes, I see it the same. And also what we should not forget is losing yourself in building. And that’s a danger, right? Like which product manager I think also often fail. It’s, it’s always easier to actually lose yourself in building something because that gives you a great feeling, achieving some pages where something works. But you didn’t create any value at this stage. And that’s. That’s important. You should not just build because it’s easy. You should not build because you can. It’s just something it can help you as an additional tool stack to your other skills you have as a product manager to maybe test something or try something out, but always consider, is it at the right stage of the maturity of the idea you are working on?

Salva:
I think this is really key. And you know, everything which is about avoiding low-hanging fruit resonates very strongly with me. But I mean, we should repeat this again. The fact that you’re lowering the entry barrier is not a reason to do things just because they’re easy. And that’s probably the biggest trap with no code. You still have to prioritize by impact. Is this going to be useful? Do we? Is this going to contribute to what you are doing? How can no code help you in that? Like by. probably facilitating, I guess, iterations or testing, what do you usually see?

Marcel:
Yeah, there are many, many ways it can help you or it cannot help you, of course, but maybe let me make some examples. When you look at the classical product team working on an already working product, then it depends on what’s their goal, what is their job, what KPI do they want to improve? Probably they have some ideas of how they can improve it. better, they have a team of developers and they have a designer probably in their product team and then it’s probably easier to just run some experiments with them. But in my previous position as a product manager, for instance, with a technical team as well, we also had the challenge next to that to improve the current product, to test out new stuff for instance. And then was always the challenge, hey, the developers are already… full of work and you still needed to somehow get some feedbacks from the market or you needed to test out something. And then it can help you because it reduces the dependency on the technical team, which is heavily working on stuff, which is super important for the company. But still you need to figure out new stuff and try out new stuff, doing some experiments. And I think there less dependency, the product manager and the designer together can actually achieve more. and then bring it back to the developers in a little bit more validated state, for instance.

Salva:
This is going to be very controversial. I like this. So what you’re saying, I’m using my words, is especially, I guess, if you’re in larger teams where you’ve got developers working on the original code base on things you have already validated, what you’re seeing is potentially that you might be encouraging product managers to use no code on their own to test stuff together with the designers or product researchers, for example. So kind of mimic the development team in parallel. How does it work usually in reality?

Marcel:
So I would not say it’s mimic. It’s just like, it’s a part of the product manager to actually make sure that the thing you build is the right thing, right? That the time, the valuable time of your developers is used in a good way. And I think it’s just about prototyping, right? You can use some NoCo tools. It doesn’t mean that you need to build a whole app, but maybe you can create a landing page, a form where you can have a signup list for something. where you just test this, if there is any demand actually for that certain thing. And that’s something for instance, we do at Hockey Studio as well. So once we had the idea of creating a cohort based learning course for to learn bubble, and we just deployed a landing page, we had a form on it to sign up and we didn’t build the course even before. We actually had a certain amount of signups we defined before. And these are things which in the product discovery phase, which I think can help to get started, to not bother the development team too much with like such simple things.

Salva:
Right, so it technically is… Actually, it’s not coding, but it’s creating something. But in reality, this creation is part of the discovery, is not part of the creation phase, right?

Marcel:
I would say yes, because I mean, you did it already before. Like usually you use prototypes, you use Legos or you use paper prototypes or Figma prototypes are often used, I guess. And then, so you have those low fidelity prototypes which have more on a qualitative way, you can get some feedback and then you can go more high fidelity. It looks for the end client, it looks more like a real product. And with no code, you can just go further than before and getting even more stronger feedbacks on if this idea is worth to invest more in

Salva:
Right,

Marcel:
it.

Salva:
so basically in the usual, and then we’ll be interested to know from you if you see any difference in this applied to more startups or zero to one kind of projects rather than corporate or bigger companies. But in general, what I’m hearing is that you can use in a code as a different way of doing discovery. Like it’s basically you’re doing a prototype and instead of showing it during your interviews, you’re showing it to larger masses by putting potentially. a working prototype online, but it’s still

Marcel:
Mm-hmm.

Salva:
discovery. How does the transition to a working and product that is meant to be there forever usually work?

Marcel:
Yeah, so that’s a big challenge. And usually it’s one of the first questions. If you talk with entrepreneurs, it’s less the case, right? Because they want to get started and they don’t care about how is the future then, or they less care about the tech stack in the future. But on existing companies, this is like kind of the first question. So, okay, when we then have our 1000 users every day on this new product, how do we then transfer this into our main tech stack, right? And usually it’s like, Hey, rarely you go there. It’s not that easy to get your 1000 monthly users. That’s the first point, right? So that’s a problem of the future, which is a nice problem, which you have. But the fact is you can go like, they are scalable solutions out there, even with no code where you can go quite far. If it comes then to the question, how you. bring it back to the, you don’t want to have 10 different tools in place as a company. If it’s then going back to that question, then you have different opportunities. So there are no code tools where you can sometimes export the code and run it on your own servers. There are options for that. That’s one opportunity when you choose one of those tools. Another option is to say, Hey, I have the perfect blueprint. and I just build it now. I know exactly know what to build in my tool stack and it will work. And then I just need to migrate it. Of course, it’s also an effort or I just keep it. And why should I change it tech stack if it works pretty well? But of course, there are some more questions then for some people on those companies, but that’s usually the things you can do.

Salva:
So you see basically the three of them. So either you say, this was a test. Now we’re going to do the real version, or this was a test, but actually it’s working. And we’re keeping it there. But also what I’m hearing is that most of the time, you’re not going to have to ask yourself the questions, because in reality, you’re not going to have the thousands of customers you’re expecting. And there is where you’re saving time. It’s more of the cases where you don’t have success.

Marcel:
Exactly. Because often, and that’s just the reality, like a lot often that the initial idea you start working on is not giving you the result you expect. And also there is the question of, do you stop the project or do you do a pivot and go in a different direction? And that’s often what happens, right? To find the right spot. And this makes you much faster compared when you do that. Because imagine with no code, you’re building a checkout process where someone can buy something. Checkout process to buy a car, for instance, online. So when you ask your developers to build that checkout flow, this new idea of this checkout flow, and they spend, that’s quite a lot of work. You need to do the design, all the design phase. You need to have front end. You have to need to have the backend, the structure of the database. Everything needs to be proper. The QA at the end. So you don’t want to hack it too much. So it should be proper because it’s in your tech stack. It takes time. And then imagine after two weeks, you figure out, ah, it doesn’t work really like the way we want, so just throw it away and do something else. And this feels like real pain. And I had that in past as well. And also then going to the developer, say the things you worked the last month on, we just throw it away. So that cannot be a good thing, right?

Salva:
That’s a great tip I’m hearing, because you’re saying, on one hand, you’re not really saying this, but I’m guessing that there is kind of a friction with developers, because you might be perceived like the one doing development without doing development. But in reality, you’re also saving frustrations of developing stuff which is useless, right?

Marcel:
Yeah, I would say, especially if you are really in an early stage, testing out stuff stage. So I think you, yeah, frustration can come. I don’t know. Like I don’t can judge how people think, but I can imagine like, at least for myself, like if I work one month on something and then you, someone decides or with the team, you decide that this doesn’t make sense. It’s a little bit hard. And on no code. If you build it quite quickly, it does not really hurt you because you have changed it so easily. You can just build it in a new way, copy paste some stuff. It feels much easier to throw things away and to do it new than when you do it on a real tech stack. But of course, it’s a very biased view from a non-technical non-developer, right? Like me, just to be clear.

Salva:
These are differences in the way, like again, small company, larger companies approach to knockout.

Marcel:
Yeah, I mean, the biggest difference is smaller or especially startups, they usually build their, like, if they choose no code, they usually build their first tech stack on that. So the whole tech stack will be will be no code. We have even worked with companies or startups, they build their first initial version on no code. And then they started to hire actually no code developers to continue. Because For them it worked and they never came, like they had the speed, they had the ability to change stuff quickly. And then it was, yeah, they were basically going in a, the whole tech stack was then just no code. But well, that’s usually less happening on the company, on bigger companies, because there is more the question, how do you combine it or how do you use it as a tool and how do you combine it with your main tech stack?

Salva:
because you still want to add some consistency with your user basis, I guess, so eventually can’t really be standalone for long.

Marcel:
Yes, and what you don’t want. And also, that’s not the advantage of no code. If you have an existing user base, and then you want to do some migration to a no-code solution, or that’s probably not the right place to actually use no code. Because no code is helpful when you are independent from everything as much as possible. You can connect to everything, but you don’t want. Because connect to something. like an internal database, it just is the same effort like you would do it on another tech stack. The big advantage is when you are independent in the process as much as possible in building, testing out, as more independent you are, as faster you are, and then you have the advantage. But when you want to build like huge internal tools, which everyone is working on then, or customer facing products, which you already know that it will work, but you just choose a different text like no code. I don’t, I would challenge that if that is the right thing.

Salva:
That’s extremely interesting. So that’s coming to when no code is useful. So you said if you already know it’s going to be useful, because you don’t have to test whether overall it’s going to be useful, then you don’t necessarily need no code. You might still need iterations. You might know that the product as such is going to be useful, but you don’t know, for example, which functionality is going to work for you. Is there something where you should use no code or go in a more traditional way? So you’re not reconsidering the concept in general. You

Marcel:
Mm-hmm.

Salva:
know the product overall works, because either it’s a product you already have or something where you can make educated guesses, but you don’t know exactly how. So.

Marcel:
Yeah, I mean, the question you need to ask you first is like, how confident are you that the solution you have in mind to build or the feature you want to build is generating the impact you expect, right? If you have like a lot of data collected because you know, I don’t know what reasons, but you know like this, the probability is quite high that this will be the right thing to build, then please go ahead and build that. And… If you are in an environment of high risk and high uncertainty, it can be, or it should not be, only because you can know code, you should not just use it. It’s more about, is there a way we can test something and by using any of those no code tools. That’s the questions you need to ask. And I cannot make a general thing and say like, in this case, it doesn’t make sense. And in this case, it makes sense. But as an example, If a company wants to rebuild their app because they are not happy with their app, they currently using, let’s say it’s for news or it’s a newspaper company with an app for news, you probably, it’s not the right thing, no code for instance, because you have so many dependencies on different interfaces and all those stuff. You will go crazy with doing that with no code. It’s a huge IT project then, and you don’t want to do that.

Salva:
Right, so I took my notes and I think two things really stick in my mind. One is look at dependencies. If you’ve got too many dependencies, probably no code is not the right thing because you are reinventing and you’re regaining this complexity. And the other one is uncertainty. If you don’t have uncertainty, probably you don’t need no code. Can you tell us a little bit more about this uncertainty? What is the kind of uncertainty that you have usually that brings you to no code or not?

Marcel:
That’s also a great question. I think more in this space of zero to one ideas, right? Because then you have probably the highest uncertainty because you have the most assumptions and you don’t have a lot of data, either qualitative or quantitative, to actually help you to understand is this idea we have actually helping in some way. Is it solving any problem? And also, I guess you have the most unknowns in terms of you even don’t know that this could be a problem. So I would see it more really in early, early stage or when you don’t have any data to collect or already there, which can help you to gain some confidence.

Salva:
So this is more uncertainty like an uncertainty about the need of the market rather than an uncertainty about your ability to deliver, right? It’s more uncertainty on the external side that you’re testing.

Marcel:
Yeah, I think uncertainty is mostly coming from the desirability side. So from the, do actually does actually someone care about my idea? I think that’s the most. Of course, there are extreme cases in terms of technology inventions, which are more the question of, can we actually build it? So like, can I have a better cure for cancer, for instance? I mean, That’s quite a challenge in terms of can we actually do that? Are we able to deliver that? But most of the ideas for digital products we are working on, for instance, that’s more the question, like the number one question is less about can we do that? It’s more about does actually someone want that?

Salva:
Is it like on the feasibility side, you said at the beginning, it also helps you to focus on what matters and potentially if you’ve got a very unique product where your key is not your front end, but again, is a new query you’re creating or something like this. And does it also help probably you to focus your highly talented resources on these hard problems and what you can do easily, you do it easily or is not a good usage of no-code stuff?

Marcel:
So what I would do in this case is, so no code is not a tool which helps you when your value proposition or your secret thing or your game-changing thing is technology or something similar, like you have a product, which a nice algorithm, right? Like which can do a lot of stuff then you don’t use no code to build the algorithm. No, never, please don’t do that. And it will get you crazy, but you can build. those, this algorithm in a classical traditional way. But then you can use no code for instance, to connect the user experience, right? You can make the onboarding, the sign up. You don’t need to build that from scratch. When you think about a kind of a software as a service platform with an algorithm behind. So you can then do basically all those customer facing sites and you can perfectly connect it to then your. technical invention you made. That could be, so then it’s more about helping you to get to the clients, to make, to actually show your idea to the people and give them a way to interact with it. Then you have also a way to use it, but it’s not the core. It’s not the core itself, right?

Salva:
Do you have examples in your either custom-raised example, project you run, where

Marcel:
Yeah.

Salva:
you say, wow, that’s probably the best usage we can imagine, like the best kind of project we saw, and vice versa, the one where we said, with the benefit on the inside, probably we should not have done this?

Marcel:
Yeah, like a good example. It’s not a one we built, but I mean, currently like the whole topic of AI, right, this is huge, right? Like you have all those AI products. And I saw one, which is an interesting use case because there was a guy, he is an SEO specialist and he was thinking of how can I… So he’s going to companies, helping them to write great blog articles, SEO relevant stuff. And then he thought about himself, like, how can I scale that? And he saw like, there is the technology from OpenAI, which is the GPT language model, right? So that’s the technology, the language model. And how can I, he use his knowledge and his language model to actually give a lot of value to clients by… creating automatically SEO articles. And he used no code to build a landing page, to build a signup, to build a project dashboard, right? Where people can input their keywords. Then he takes this keywords, which he saves in a database and he does that manually in the background. He generates with ChatGPT basically, he generates those SEO articles because he is scaling his whole knowledge, but he is proving the quality. And he’s giving it back to the client. But the client only thinks like the software does it. But in the background, this guy did it. And he went from zero to more than 100,000 articles generated alone within one year. And it’s byword, AI, by the way, how it’s called. And that’s a good example of how someone can make the use of no code for a benefit.

Salva:
and

Marcel:
if this helps for the understanding.

Salva:
Absolutely. And if you think about larger customers, so you said this is mainly used when you’ve got uncertainty, so you’re not sure about the desirability of your product, which is always the case in 0 to 1 or in startups, how does this work for larger companies? Does it mean that you mainly use this with innovation teams, for example?

Marcel:
Yes, often this is a use case. It can be an innovation manager, but it can also be someone who has a new idea to work on. But it’s not about just adjusting something on the current product. It’s about a new business model, a new revenue stream they want probably to generate. So for instance, we… have a lot of those projects where they even go off brand, for instance, and say, hey, we find a way to help SMEs understand better their cybersecurity risk profile, for instance. That was one example. And then you can easily build this product, like this first quiz or test to actually give something to the… into the market and to test the demand and test, okay, do people go to the website? Do they actually doing the quiz? What are they doing with the result? You have the option to contact those people, to talk with them and so on. So that’s usually the most common use case when you have a new idea and you want to go out and test something.

Salva:
Whether it’s a new product or just a new idea or a completely spin-off of an existing product, but I hear you less of when it’s just an evolution, like an organic evolution of what you already have. In this case, you would go rather with traditional ways. And

Marcel:
Exactly.

Salva:
still test probably, right? Still do your discoveries, still work iteratively, but not necessarily creating a new stack, no code just for this.

Marcel:
Yes. So what we usually encourage people and then we’re going like at the beginning of Hockey Studio, we were really like, hey, we are building MVPs in eight weeks. So that was our thing, right? Like we said, hey, we built the MVP and we believe that building an MVP is the best thing you can do to validate if the idea is correct or not. But we also figured out during this journey, a few years now, that probably Yeah, maybe people will say, yeah, of course, I didn’t like MVP is not enough to just figure out that it doesn’t work or it works. But what we what we felt was, and also we did it ourselves, by the way, we also build our own ideas as well. We realized like, okay, you need really the highest risk first as easy as it sounds. But and usually that’s about do people care? Can you actually sell your idea? And then we started from then on before we built anything, doesn’t matter with no code or traditional or whatever, even before we built an MVP, we always search first for paying customers. So, and paying customers in our definition is a commit. We looking for commitments from people who like your idea and who commit something, either money, either time or something else to your idea, even before you have built. anything.

Salva:
I like

Marcel:
And

Salva:
this.

Marcel:
that’s really the thing we do now. And we really encourage people, of course, NoCode can help you in this journey, but it’s not about building, never. It’s always about selling your idea first, get it somehow proved that you can sell it. And then in the next step, you build something and then you continue from there.

Salva:
I think this is very important and I think is key for people to understand. So what you’re seeing here, you’re selling us your no-no-code technology, basically, which is even before going no-code, you can do some tests with even less than no-code, right?

Marcel:
Yes.

Salva:
Which is basically to simplify this, sending an invoice out rather than sending a fully functional product running on no-code, kind of.

Marcel:
Exactly. Take it this way. No code is not the solution for everything. No code is nothing else than it can be kind of the Iron Man suit for you as Tony Stark to get the superpower. That’s the way we see it. If you smartly use it, it can help you in the journey of entrepreneur, in the journey of building as a product manager, building a product from zero to one. It can help you, but Use it wisely and don’t just build. It doesn’t help at all. It’s just something on this way you can use, but it gives you, especially as a non-technical people, it gives you kind of superpowers, which we didn’t have before. And that’s the main difference.

Salva:
How do you check on this commitment? I like this idea being like, I want to check the commitments. I kind of want to get a paying customer, whether he actually pays or not, but I want to get the commitment first. How do you actually do this? And when and how do you do the transition then to something working, like basically a no-credit prototype, for example.

Marcel:
So maybe as a great example, we started because, okay, at Hockey Studio, we say, hey, we help you as an entrepreneur to get started or as a company to get started testing your idea. Right. That was often about, hey, why should people actually trust us? Why should we believe them at all? Like, and then we thought about the concept of, um, psychology. Like they, if you want to be a therapist, then you also need to go to therapy yourself. Right. And we said, okay, let’s do that as well. So also let’s start building something from scratch and start with an idea. And that’s what we did. And we called it culture talk. That was our product idea. And we talked about that also publicly, about every step we did a newsletter. And so we started with that and we did the same approach. Like what we did, we started to… We had a, so what we wanted to improve, we wanted to solve a problem about company culture. We wanted to improve company culture. And then we were starting talking with our EDL customer profile or with our target group. And we were doing a lot of talks. And we were just talking about the problems they face. And we were at the end, usually pitching our idea. So how we want to solve it, really at the end of the interview, we get many insights. And at the end we said, okay, that’s how we believe we can solve it. We do that. So that is this product costs you, I don’t know, 20 bucks a month per employee. We plan to do it half starting in three months and then for half a year, are you in it? Yes or no? And then most people said, they said like, oh, the idea is great. The idea, we love. And then you ask them, okay, cool. You love the idea. So we will start at the end of next month. Are you in it? Can we sign the contract for the pilot phase? And they said like, oh, wait, maybe too fast. And that’s great, you know, because you can then ask like, OK, obviously, you don’t give the commitment. But why? And this is so insightful because you learn a lot about what’s missing on your idea to actually get started. And to make it now shorter. We found finally a company which after several talks, we found a client who said, hey, that’s so amazing this idea. We want to be a part of it. We want to co-create with you. And for us, for instance, was enough to get started. And we said, okay, we have our first paying customer who signed a contract that they will pay for six months, a certain amount, I think a few hundred bucks per month for several months per week. per month for several months. And that was enough for us to get started to the next stage. And then we started to build the first prototype, not before.

Salva:
And that’s, I mean, first of all is cash smart. And secondly, I guess I usually call it like the credit card feedback. I mean, the only feedback I believe in too is the one coming from your credit card. Everybody can tell you, yeah, she’s great. It’s going to work, but until you see the commitment, probably it’s difficult. And I guess something you can also get in there is no good stuff. It’s something where Also, from a no-code perspective, it’s not because it’s easy. It has to come like a big bang. You can also go in stages and try to verify this interest on a first iteration.

Marcel:
Right. And I would really encourage to do that. Like start with nothing more than the pitch of your idea. You don’t need even, even like, you can fill out so many canvases. It that’s a good, that’s a good exercise. Yes. I’m doing a canvas to break it down, your idea in one short pitch that you can say in one, two minutes, what you’re doing. That would be super helpful. And often people already challenge with that because we help some of them. And. And that’s enough to get started. Then go out, organize talks and interviews with people you think they could be interested in your product and pitch the product. That’s the first stage. And when you can sell it this way, in certain way, you can go ahead and you can say, okay, let’s now create a first landing page with the offering and add either a checkout where you would really gift the credit card. And you say it will be available in three months or whatever. and check if you can convert people this way. And then you figure also out like the whole acquisition because that’s often gets, in my experience, that part often people forget about the acquisition part. Like it’s so crucial to your product. Where are the customers coming from? How much does it cost to acquire them? Like they are not just there because you launched something. And if you don’t get that right at the beginning. Then the whole work on your experience of the product is just waste of time because you need to make sure that you acquire them, that you find them. And this step, we go along the funnel and we try to first make the beginning of the product funnel right, find the customers and bring them to convert. And before that, you don’t need to build anything.

Salva:
And that’s probably the key message today for the product manager’s listening. So I think from the tech perspective is clear, but the key message I’m hearing now for the product managers is the MVP done in no code is not one monolith. It’s not like, hey, I’ve done this one, now next. But even within this no code project, you’re still going to have phases. You still have to prioritize. And you were mentioned before, Marcel, there are still like the most critical. Hypothesis, the highest risk you want to get cleared first, even with no code, even if it’s easy, even if it’s easier than normal code, you still have to prioritize, right?

Marcel:
Definitely. You always, I think, prioritize is one thing. So deciding what you’re doing first and what you’re doing next, but then also having a focus on what do you focus on? Because then that also happens a lot that you do so much stuff. You’re so active and working on different things, but at the end, you need to focus on a certain… know you want to make goal or you want to mention it. Like for instance, you say, I want to find five people who commit to a pilot phase. And then you focus only on this thing. And it doesn’t make sense to continue before you get that. And I mean, that’s super relevant also for any product manager. Prioritize and then getting the right focus on that.

Salva:
And that’s exactly the point I want you to get to. So even if it looks like, and we started saying, oh, no code is great because as a product manager, you could develop something, you could create something parallel. I think the real power is still there. You still have as a product manager to force yourself to understand what you’re trying to achieve. What are your goals? Even getting the right measure and saying, in this first phase, as you said, the highest risk, we don’t get acquisition. So can we get the minimum we need to validate the aggravation? And then the second is we’re not sure we actually can convert these people. We get their interest. So the one thing we want to test here with the second phase is can we get the interest? And this is how we measure. So it’s not because you are no code that you don’t have to care about the measures. To the contrary, right? You have to focus. That’s what is mattering for you. And no code is just helping you not spending too much time on the rest because you as a product manager. You have to spend your time on getting these goals clear, these measures clear and prioritized. That’s my understanding.

Marcel:
100%. That’s the big difference you can build in eight weeks. You can build a great MVP, but you didn’t learn anything. Or you start in week one by just talking to people about your idea and you try to sell it. And that’s much more, it gives you much more back in terms of knowledge. And then of course, in milestones, when you can sell it to some people, you can figure out, can I sell it to a hundred people? And then you can start using, and it’s all about speed. It’s about being flexible. And then no code of course can help you, especially because your time and your budget is limited. So instead of hiring an agency with 10 developers and spending 100K a month, you could also just do it yourself. And that’s the big difference. And in the context of a company, it’s of course, instead of… using your whole team working on this little thing, which is so far away from getting money compared to they could also work now on a product and improving the conversion and getting a lot of money. So that’s all about opportunity costs, right? And then it makes sense. Why should you bother then the development team? Just use something you can actually get started quite quickly and it helps you. because you have always limited resources. That’s in every talk I have with company or product managers or whatever, that’s always the case.

Salva:
which can be money or time, right? It’s either of the two. And Marshall, I’m sure people are now wondering, okay, that’s great, but concretely, what are the tools you would suggest us to look at? What are the categories of tools you can think?

Marcel:
Okay. So first thing is very simple landing. So let’s start even further. Like just to draw your idea, you can use wireframing tools. For instance, we use a lot of Whimsical. So I just, Whimsical is great for non-designers, non-developers to get started quickly with how should maybe an idea look like. That already helps often also for discussions. Then landing page builders like CART, for instance, super simple, super fast to get started with when you start a signup or a waitlist page or just, we do actually a lot the exercise of just doing a landing page to actually structure your idea because this helps you to figure out what is the value you want to create? What is the offering? We call it offering, actually. What is the offering you get and what is the price? And the landing page structure helps you a lot. And then when you go further, automations. If you never heard about automations, that’s super powerful. Zapier and Make are those automation tools, which enables you to connect already existing tools smartly together. So often, you don’t need to build anything. You can just connect existing tools together. That’s amazing. And then after that, there are those website app builders like Bubble.io, which is probably the most powerful tool out there, but also Glide apps, for instance, which are more simple or softer. Those tools can help you to get started with application design, like software building with logic, with data, with design. And, but to be honest, They require a learning curve as well, and as more as they can, like Bubble is probably one of the most powerful tools, but also the most, it takes you a lot of time to actually learn them.

Salva:
how people usually learn them. It’s more like

Marcel:
Hey.

Salva:
self-education.

Marcel:
There are like, I think a lot start with a project and start just figuring it out. And you find so much content online about, especially bubble, for instance, you find so much courses, but also free content to learn. The challenge is you don’t learn. Yeah. It’s like you were learning driving a car yourself. You learn it somehow, but the question is, do you apply the best practice? Do you learn it the right way? And that’s why I usually like everything, do it yourself as well, but also getting then a coach or a course where you learn the best practices would be super helpful.

Salva:
I know you guys, you’re on classes for new code. What is the approach you usually, and advertising is welcome, don’t worry, but what is the approach you usually preach? Is like try yourself and then get a coach or come to a class and then we do together what works the best in your experience.

Marcel:
So we did classes on building, but since we now transferring more to helping entrepreneurs and companies to get started with their ideas in general, we less focus on that. But to get started, what helps is always use a real project. So don’t build something you not really love. You know, like you need to build a project which you really happy when you… I don’t know, I started with building an online shop for my dad. He’s… selling some wood craft stuff and he did by his hands. And I started to build an online job for him. And then I had a goal. And that was my first kind of project I started to learn on. So that’s the first thing. And then there are some great free content, of course, to get started. And then at a certain point, I would encourage people do it like bubble IO, for instance, does courses themselves, which are qualified ones. And I would definitely. recommend them to do something like that to get to get started and then to get the best practices and more knowledge to understand better how you could do it. Because it’s same, I guess, with development, but you can build so differently and it will work but somehow it’s crap and some is great build. So there are huge differences and you can achieve the same thing in different ways. And yeah, that’s why. you need to invest a little bit of time.

Salva:
So the material is out there. In which cases shall people starting with, or not starting, with Necode get to an agency like Hague Studio or others? What is the use case where people would come to you?

Marcel:
I would say when you probably have a little bit budget and not really the time to do it yourself or you don’t want to learn it yourself, I think then it can be helpful.

Salva:
So it’s even more focusing on your core business. And yes, you use the easiness of no code, but in the, they can say, can kind of cash versus time balance. You’re more like in needing time to talk into your customers, to getting your strategy straight and, and you can’t really, even if it’s not a lot of work, we can’t really do this no code inside, right?

Marcel:
Yes. Yeah. The question is how much time do you want, like, do you really want to learn it properly? And then you’re, and that’s the danger, right? As a product manager, falling in the trap of building stuff and not talking to people.

Salva:
That’s a good point.

Marcel:
And, uh, this, this can help you to get so often it’s like an initial project. Uh, we don’t just build. We are always try to be co-founders. Our mantra is be the best possible co-founder. And that’s always how we behave. So we are on your side and we accompany you in the process. And our main benefits are we are quite fast because we mastering the tools and working with us together can help you achieve more in less time. And you can focus on what matters most instead of maybe, and you will definitely also learn the tools yourself in this process, for instance, but you also don’t need to be the master from day one. And that’s probably one of the benefits you get.

Salva:
So you’re probably saying you’re warning PMs from what I’m hearing is that be careful. Don’t become yourself a developer of no code stuff. That’s not the goal.

Marcel:
Yes.

Salva:
The goal is not that you become the best developer of no code is you make no code work for you when it matters.

Marcel:
Yes, use it as a superpower and not… I speak because I know it happens to me as well, because it’s so amazing when you can build an online shop yourself and you’re losing so much time and make it super perfect. And

Salva:
And that’s

Marcel:
it’s

Salva:
not

Marcel:
just

Salva:
a girl.

Marcel:
not the best use of your time. Definitely not, because it doesn’t create value.

Salva:
Absolutely. Marcel, a last question. Where is this no code going? How do you see the future and how do you see the future also for yourself in this space and for Huggy?

Marcel:
So as I said, no code is not everything. It’s something that can help you. We see the future in especially helping for new products from zero to one. I think it’s a superpower, non-technical people can use to achieve more than before to be less dependent. And in future, what’s super interesting is, so there is this huge thing of AI. this trend or hype, I would even say, about the topic of AI. And obviously a lot will happen, and also a lot will happen to software development in that. But what’s happening in the next short term, I would say, or midterm is that the connectivity like no code gives also non-technical people like great access to the technology of AI. And I think a lot will happen in this space that you start much more to… make use of AI by using no code tools. It can be for improving your work or it can be to building new startups and building out new ideas and helping people to solve a problem better than before. That’s why I think no code makes it easier for you to get the access and AI will accelerate also the use of no code, I’m pretty sure.

Salva:
And we’re already seeing a lot of new ideas based on Ni, whether it’s a hype or a trend. We don’t know yet, but we still see a lot of people leveraging the score functionalities and bringing their shell around. And you’re right there, probably, No-Code can be a big enabler. Marcel, thank you very much for being with us today. I think you provide a very, very valuable point of view on No-Code, especially for product managers, and how to live and how to navigate in this area. Where can people reach you and what is the best way to get in contact with you?

Marcel:
So yeah, thanks first of all that I could be here and that people listen to my opinions and what I say. No, you can reach me by email for instance, Marcel at hockeystudio.com, but also on LinkedIn, you can reach out to me. And what else? Well, I think that’s kind of the, or on the website hockeystudio.com.

Salva:
And we’re going to have all the links that you mentioned in the notes of this podcast. Thanks again, Marcel. Thank everybody for being with us so far and wishing you a very good day.

Marcel:
Thank you, Salva, for the invitation. I wish

Salva:
Bye.

Marcel:
you a good day too. Bye-bye.

Salva:
Good.