🌊 Product Maker Officer

Welcome! I’m Ivan Landabaso, VC at JME.vc. Join 1500+ Startup Riders discovering new startup trends and leverage every 2 weeks (+ a little surfing 🤙).

Summary

• 🌊 Startup Wave: Product Maker Officer

• ⚡ Lever: Brownian Noise

• 💵 Recent Deals in Spain: Microverse, Toqio etc!

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🌊 Product Maker Officer

This one is fun. My friend Vaughtton - Product-Maker at Minimum.Run and Founder at NoCodeHackers - is going to walk us through it:

😧 Problem

IT departments and Startup Product Teams are resource constrained. They often can’t build the tools they need to do their jobs more efficiently.

🤩 Solution

Empower individuals with no-code to speed up operations and improve the product - allowing them to obtain insight, data and validation faster.

This allows:

• Faster implementation and development of internal tools

• Improving the team’s efficiency

• Develop solutions custom made for the user’s needs

• More focus on improving the product

🗺️ Market map

⏳ How we got here

The nocode movement may seem new at first glance, but exists since the early-days of computing.  Languages such as C introduced a layer of abstraction over the assembly language, simplifying the way we generate code.

However, any abstraction is associated with less control in exchange for an easier way of generating the result you are looking for.

Particularly, visual abstractions - which seek to interact with the computer through a visual interface - and not through lines of code, tend to be very attractive to the majority of consumers. Reducing the learning curve and lowering barriers to entry the technology usually translates into an exponential increase in the number of users.

The arrival of Visicalc on the Apple II illustrates this well. By creating an application that allowed you to manage and process information visually - and not through a command line - the business world adopted it fast and quickly became a standard in the corporate world.

Is there anyone who does not know how to use Excel?

However, there have been several attempts to create code in a visual way - usually resulting either in overly complex interfaces or in resulting code of low quality and low performance.

Why now?

The creation of API-First products, which allow you to connect and interact with applications in a simple and standardized way, as well as the evolution of product design and user experience, creates a perfect breeding ground that explains the boom of this nocode/low-code movement.

It is easier than ever to connect services through their APIs, to take advantage of the best features of each tool, and not depend on a central service that offers everything (relatively well) but doesn’t excel at anything.

In addition, the emergence of tools such as Integromat, Zapier or IFTTT, again reduces (as happened with Visicalc at the time) the overhead in connecting tools, allowing teams to easily design and automate efficiency-seeking processes.

The last piece of the puzzel is the rise of SaaS for the creation of apps and webs in a visual way. This bucket of apps include Webflow, Bubble, Glide or Adalo and of course, databases such as Airtable.

How does this affect the startup/corporate world?

One of the biggest problems that a startup faces, especially in the technology sector, is that its developers must be focused on iterating and improving the product, but without neglecting internal tools or creating, for example, landing pages for marketing, A/B testing to obtain insights or relevant data for experimentation.

Resources are limited, which makes it necessary to prioritize and focus development efforts on product iterations and new features.

However, what if we could empower individuals to automate tasks and processes and create internal solutions, without relying on the technical department?

Towards The Product Maker / Low-Code Officer

This is where the figure of the Low Code-Officer arises, which is a profile obsessed with improving internal processes through nocode tools, or if necessary, introducing a bit of programming to overcome the limitation of the tools (low-code).

This person must have a strong product vision, lots of empathy (to identify user needs across stakeholders), sufficient knowledge of UX/UI design to create usable solutions, and of course at least a basic understanding of how the technological ecosystem works - preferably with a background in technology, but not as a requirement.

Having someone thinking about how to make processes 1% better, translates into marginal gains, and in the long term can make a big difference in productivity.

We should not overlook their ability to empower non-technical employees to use these tools like Integromat or Zapier to create systems that allow them to be more productive and create their own solutions.

The solutions created by users, in turn, have a greater understanding of the problem - they are ultimately solving something they see in their daily lives and the ability to create solutions for very specific use cases - that might otherwise be overlooked.

What are the challenges ahead?

Although some large companies such as Netflix are starting to look for profiles of this type, there is still a long way to go in the adoption of this profile in large companies, due to the risk of generating "shadow IT", solutions outside the control of technology and not having many tools with a sufficient level of security for many standards of a large corporation.

However, we believe that especially in the startup world, no-code/low-code will become a great partner for product people, such as product managers, marketing people or even business people.

That is exactly our challenge at Nocodehackers, to show how no-code/low-code can be useful to improve your life. And we’re doing that by creating content related to how this tools can help you, through a weekly newsletter, and our courses on how to use tools like Integromat, Webflow or Airtable from the ground up.

If you use the coupon STARTUPRIDERS, you will have a 20% discount on any course on our platform, to discover how no-code can help you to create more.

👌 Hacks / Tips

• Start by focusing on identifying repetitive tasks in your day-to-day.

• Learn Integromat and Zapier.

• Start small: Try to get a 10% increase in efficiency in one of your processes by using automation.

• Explore the use of tools like Airtable for data handling and creating internal tools. You can create your own internal tools to improve your productivity.

• Learn how to talk API - Learn a little bit about how to consume APIS - even if you're not a technical profile. Learn what is a CRUD Operation, a Webhook and a HTTP Request. It will help you to understand better how to connect apps between them - and how they work.

• Leverage powerful tools like Arengu to build parts of your product that are not your core focus.

• Leverage powerful analytics tools like Graphext or Segment to understand better the behavior of your users.

• Take this free course to understand how programming works.

📧 You have insight into an emerging tech wave or startup trend and want to write about it on Startup Riders? 

Send me a DM 🤙

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⚡ Brownian Noise

I’m experimenting with this one, follow along if you are curious about focus tools.

Brownian noise is supposed to be a masking tool - which means it can help block out external sounds and distractions.

Compared to white and pink noise, brownian noise (after Robert Brown) uses mostly lower frequencies and is considered the most soothing to listen to of the three.

Some people find it helpful for tinnitus. Give it a go.

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💵 Recent Deals in Spain

You love startups and want to enjoy a Spanish lifestyle? Come join the Spanish startup ecosystem. Here’s a list of recently funded startups:

• Microverse (edtech) raised 10M

• Toqio (fintech) rasied 8M

• Simplr (marketplace) raised 4.5M

• Tetraneuron (health) raised 2.5M

• Corify (health) raised 2.35M

• Transparent (proptech) raised 2.3M

• Velca (electric motorcycles) raised 2.1M

• Tropicfeel (ecommerce) raised 2M

• Auravant (agrotech) raised 1.6M

• Ketonico (food and health) raised 1.1M

• Inspide (Saas) raised 800K

• Freeverse (blockchain) raised 800K

• Cafler (car ITV services) raised 800K

• Reental (proptech) raised 400K

• Cleb (marketplace) raised 225K

• SEOCrawl (SEO) raised 125K

• FisioCampus (education) raised 110K

• Plant on demand (food) raised 100K

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If you find this interesting, please consider sharing with your friends. I’d also love to get your thoughts and feedback on Twitter. Until the next one! 😃