
How Bubble bootstrapped a visual programming tool for non-coders to $100k/mo - ChanningAllen
https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/bubble
======
le-mark
Wow this has been a disappointing discussion up to now, with most commenting
on how much visual coding tools suck. That's not the take away here, at all.

A frequently asked question is "where is Access for the Web?", closing aligned
with "what happened to 4GL languages and tools" or "where are the RAD (rapid
application development) app builders for the web?". This is an answer;
they've hit $100k monthly. They have found a market where many, many similar
projects (I've listed them here before) have not. The relevant and amazing
thing is _how_? How have they succeeded where so many others have failed?

The interview gives some answers:

 _He (Josh) was in New York, and everyone, literally everyone, was asking him
to be their tech co-founder to start a business._

 _We started "recruiting" users at tech meetups in New York. With the startup
wave, everybody was looking for a tech co-founder, and there were plenty of
co-founder-dating meetups. ... We went there and told people that while we
couldn't be their tech co-founders, they could use Bubble, as it would allow
them build the whole thing themselves. _

_The following year (2013) we did a pilot at Harvard Business School, which I
had just graduated from. Their first year entrepreneurship class required
students to build something under a very tight budget, and Bubble was a good
solution for this._

Answer; these guys had a kick ass network and expanded it. They had direct
access to people in their market who were starving for this type of app.

~~~
JVIDEL
TBH (and it is an impressive app) there isn't much competition, not much going
on despite coding-as-a-job being hammered in every article even remotely
related to education and not just an extra skill but a vital one.

And in those meetups you tend to find a lot of people looking for someone to
code their ideas. These guys put a lemonade stand in the middle of the desert.

~~~
mcguire
The question then is, what happens when they drink the lemonade? Thirst
quenching? Butterflies and rainbows? Diarrhea? Cirrhosis?

When you start building a normally-complicated application that isn't going to
be thrown away at the end of the semester, well, then what?

~~~
delhanty
Perhaps the point of Bubbles is product validation for a semi-technical
founder without having to hire someone who can code.

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swiley
I've seen plenty of visual programming tools and lots of other things to help
"non programmers." I've even helped build one.

The fact is that if you can think and communicate precisely enough to describe
your ideas then you can enter them into a computer fairly easily in a language
like python or basic. If you can't then no matter how fancy your tools are you
still need something intelligent (currently a human programmer) to pull the
idea out of you and encode it.

Stuff like this isn't useful to people who are incapable of programming and is
just a highly coupled mess that can't be easily automated and version
controlled.

~~~
waytogo
This and I would go one step further: visual programming tools are like GUIs
and they are the main reason that people can't code nowadays.

When I switched back to a shell after 20 years I realized how much a GUI
hurts, how much I unlearned to work with computers. After decades of Windows
and OSX, I got Arch with i3 (so no desktop environment). I am mainly using
text-based software like the shell, bash, tmux and vim every single day. Then,
it's a very small step to program or to get a programmer because you are
already programming in little steps here and there and every day (bash
scripts, vim macros, etc.) and you deal all the time with text.

Visual tools don't teach you to code, they introduce an unnecessary layer and
create an even bigger insecurity when dealing with real code. Real coding with
text is quite easy—and this should be the actual message. A very good example
for an educative text-based coding environment which is even functional is
Logo. But again, the best way to get into coding is to get an OS on your
personal computer which focuses on the shell.

~~~
murukesh_s
Coding with text is easy, but then why we there is a gap between getting a
prototype/design done and the actual implementation? Text based coding is
certainly more efficient in representing logic in a concise way, but the
current set of frameworks and tooling on text based environments requires an
exhorbitant amount of learning to produce a working application(e.g React),
that's where the rapid application development tools like bubble comes in. In
my opinion a combination of text and GUI should work together to provide the
best possible efficiency for developers and other members of a team..

~~~
bitwize
> Coding with text is easy, but then why we there is a gap between getting a
> prototype/design done and the actual implementation?

The solution for this is simple, really: simply declare the prototype the
working implementation, and put devs on the hook for maintaining it.

~~~
collyw
Don't see why you are being down voted. That always seems to end up happening.

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pmontra
I watched the demo video. It looks like what the Visual Basic form builder was
for Windows programming in the 90s.

However it will be difficult for non programmers. The very first dialog about
Google Maps has menus "API provider" and "Query". I wonder how many non
programmers know what they are. They can take a guess and learn but maybe this
is still too low level. The second example is about building a login form by
configuring its input fields. Maybe adding a completely configured dialog
would be good enough for non programmers. Programmers can edit the details.
Same for every other component.

However I remember that non programmers didn't use Visual Basic, as easy as it
was. Programmers did. Some non programmers built sites on MySpace some 10
years after VB, then wrote on various blog platforms and configured themes,
then ended up on Facebook and other non programmable social media platforms.
Outside the Web the most used non-programmers programming tool is still
probably Excel. I've seen amazing stuff build there from people who couldn't
write a two lines script in Python.

~~~
Kiro
Your comment sounds like something straight out of a Show HN, not a thread
about a 5 year old service with 100,000 users and $100k in monthly revenues.

There's obviously a big demand for this so either you're wrong or people using
it are actually programmers.

~~~
rjzzleep
I just took a quick look at it and GP has a simple misunderstanding here. When
they say you don't have to be a coder that doesn't mean the target market is
my girlfriend who has no interest in this whatsoever(she's a doctor).

The target market is those people that sit in places like the AWS loft or
places like that, listen to tech talks and wish they had a coder to build
their ideas for free.

Most of them already know what an API is. Even if you don't use the external
data sources, what bubble provides is somewhat enough to win hackathons and
get funding provided you can present and sell.

I've seen a bunch of traders, business people and otherwise people with random
ideas that fit in that group. So yes, not at all surprised they make that much
money.

~~~
spraak
From the people I've met in start ups so far, the most likely to use it would
be Designers and Product people. The Product manager I work with knows what an
API is, and could probably hack out a solution to something, but really
prefers not to.

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eljimmy
I had to learn and use Bubble to build an application (no choice, per client's
request) and as a programmer I found it to be a nightmare.

I can definitely see it as a great and useful tool for non-programmers, but
having to go throw your entire skill-set and decades of knowledge out the
window to use a tool like this was just a horrible experience.

Again, I don't mean to disparage it, as I can see the benefits, but for
programmers, you're better off building an app with the skills and knowledge
you already possess.

~~~
aeorgnoieang
There's something like an 'uncanny valley' between RAD tools and a more 'best
practices' setup/workflow.

The upsides are obvious – someone that's not a 'software engineer' can program
things that do real work!

The downsides tho are much less obvious; more 'hidden' costs really. It's easy
and quick to bang out a new feature, but also really easy to inadvertently
update or rollback another unrelated set of changes. As a professional
programmer, I sure don't want to give up version control, unit tests,
integration tests, automated builds, and automated deployments.

Tho in fairness to RAD tools, and both the code they produce and the whole
workflow involved in using them, when I started my current position the non-
RAD-tool code was (much) worse, and much more difficult to refactor and
cleanup, than the RAD-tool code.

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kristianc
As a marketer, I've found Bubble to be really useful for building out small
micro-apps for data-capture for clients who for whatever reason weren't ready
to move to a solution like HubSpot.

I'm not sure how I'd feel about using it for anything larger than that, though
I've seen some worked examples of Twitter clones etc. There's probably
slightly too much Bubble-specific terminology and concepts to make it worth
learning if you are not going to become a Bubble consultant.

Also, kind of expensive (monthly subscription) if you want to run a large
production app on it. I love the range of API s and connectors though.

~~~
wolco
It sounds like the "remedy" for app dev.

------
andr3w321
What I'd really like is a smarter compiler. My normal dev process is

1\. Write code

2\. Run code

3\. See error

4\. Google error

5\. Write code to fix error

6\. Repeat

I'd like a compiler that helps speed up steps 3-5. I know IDEs do some of
this, but I'd like a compiler that automatically fixes errors instead of just
telling me what went wrong. One that fixes parentheses that I left off or
automatically fixes typos in variable names or function calls. One that knows
to keep things DRY and creates a function for me when it sees the same similar
code written twice. One that knows when I wrote an inefficient bubble sort and
swaps it out with a faster sorting algorithm etc. One that can make my code
run faster. I think this is a long way off, and I know it's really hard to
write a program that writes code, but it's always seemed that programming
simple things is way harder and takes longer than it should to me.

~~~
pjc50
Typesafe languages are potentially a lot better here; they move "see error" to
before "run code". Visual Studio or even Eclipse are quite good at inserting
parens or quotes for you, warning if they're not there, and providing
completion over identifier names to avoid spelling errors.

> One that knows to keep things DRY and creates a function for me when it sees
> the same similar code written twice

This is potentially an interesting idea.

> One that knows when I wrote an inefficient bubble sort and swaps it out with
> a faster sorting algorithm etc.

This is also the sort of thing that optimises out your security-critical delay
loop or memory wipe.

~~~
andr3w321
It wouldn't overwrite your code without your approval of course, but if it
could at least provide helpful suggestions that I could choose to approve it
would be immensely helpful.

------
samspenc
Am I right in understanding that Bubble is a GUI for building CRUD
applications?

If so, great work! It shows there is a need for these simple, automated tools
for building simple CRUD applications, and that it is possible for these to be
built and automated.

~~~
collyw
We have had MS Access for years. It still requires a bit of knowledge about
database design to use it properly.

I don't know Bubble but I am skeptical about visual programming, as syntax is
one of the easier parts to learn when coding, and isn't in my opinion what
makes our profession difficult.

~~~
ivanhoe
IMHO visual programming should really aim more to be a scaffolding tool - so
instead of replacing the syntax to focus more on speeding up the structuring
of the code, helping you to easier manage and understand the blocks and the
flow. Ideally it can then auto-generate the most of it and leave you to fine-
tune the details of logic directly in the code (where it's faster and more
expressive to be able to type the code directly).

~~~
carlmr
Also if it's not in text, you can't use all the tools effectively, like
diffing, versioning, to actually create reliable tools with few bugs. I'm very
skeptical of graphical programming.

~~~
spiralganglion
Unfortunately, there's a long history of graphical programming being foisted
upon text-centric domains, which is just as bad as the reverse, so you're
right to be skeptical. But if you shift perspective to another domain,
graphical (or otherwise non-textual) programming becomes much more appealing.

For example: Game devs build themselves sandbox environments in which they can
test out their physics engine, dynamic music systems, animation playback, etc.
These sandboxes are like REPLs, but for non-textual data. One can imagine how
much nicer it would be if the full system's code were represented first-class
inside that sandbox, so that you were introducing and manipulating system
abstractions close to the truest representation of the data, rather than
having to leave the sandbox to go back to your text editor to make system
tweaks, far away from the data.

Still skeptical about why that might be nice? Your text editor and terminal
know nothing about the full, live representation of the data, so they do
nothing to help you work in that domain. The nice things you get when working
with text — diffs, versioning, etc — you don't get the physics engine / music
engine / animation engine equivalents unless your code is somehow present in
the same space as the live data.

------
levonterteryan
Bubble platform is the most advanced no-code tool that exists so far. It
allowed many entrepreneurs (including me) create apps fast and with low budget
which otherwise would take many months and tens of thousands dollars to build.
It's true, I'm a bit biased here, because it also became possible for me to
start a no-code development business which never existed before. So we focus
on building apps without code for people who don't have time or patience to
learn the no-code tools or who don't have budgets to afford the traditional
development. And for the sceptics that doubt about the complexity of apps that
can be built without code you could check our portfolio at
[https://bubblewits.com](https://bubblewits.com) (this web-site is too built
on Bubble). But we have taken it 1 step further and created a no-code platform
for all things no-code. The main part of the paltform are the no-code
templates built for Bubble. Which makes building new products and startups
even faster (just like creating a web-site with Wordpress themes is easier
than doing it from scractch). If you are curious take a look here:
[https://zeroqode.com](https://zeroqode.com)

~~~
JVIDEL
So you guys are a service that build apps on bubble (for people that I guess
can't even deal with a GUI) and also sell templates?

------
stuartaxelowen
"Josh and I both had enough savings from previous jobs to be able to live in
NYC for more than two years (with a simple lifestyle…), and we didn't start
paying ourselves a salary until 2.5 years in."

Critical factor here.

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shostack
Has anyone had experience transitioning a Bubble app into an actual coded
app/DB outside of Bubble?

I could see it as an interesting solution for rapid prototyping of ideas, but
I'd be concerned about lock-in and extra expense later when migrating to
something more robust.

~~~
rtpg
Based off the demos, it seems like you can integrate HTML directly, so it
might be possible to move from Bubble to "external API + Bubble frontend" in a
straightforward fashion.

You could also likely put a layer in front of Bubble to only serve some pages
with Bubble, other with your replacement.

Also from the FAQ: > The good news is that Bubble is fully extensible via
Javascript plugins. The Bubble model is to write the core website
functionality using our super-simple language, and plug in Javascript to
handle algorithms that are hard to build in Bubble.

So you could probably add shims and move around.

I think the most interesting way of doing this would be something like
embracing Bubble for a lot of work and having the "serious" code relegated to
places that are easier to manage, like complex API or some custom widgets

~~~
aeorgnoieang
> I think the most interesting way of doing this would be something like
> embracing Bubble for a lot of work and having the "serious" code relegated
> to places that are easier to manage, like complex API or some custom widgets

This is basically what I do now at work. I was hired to, in part, work with
several RAD-tool projects. I pretty quickly ended-up tho working on mostly
backend code that the RAD tool projects interact with via, e.g. web requests.
That's been a pretty good division of labor given that most of the RAD tool
project's features are fairly simply in terms of UX. They're definitely not
good enough to be widely used by lots of users tho, e.g. there's no real error
handling.

------
acangiano
For a similar idea, but more aimed at programmers, there is Anvil:
[https://anvil.works](https://anvil.works)

~~~
tluyben2
I tried them both and (probably obviously as a programmer) find Anvil faster
to work with. Some things are really fast in the visual environment, but when
you are stuck, getting code out is really convenient. I do like both
approaches.

------
BLanen
I'm very pessimistic of these types of products.

Mostly because there have been ideas to do this for around 40 years.

In the end any non-trivial business logic is too cumbersome to make in a GUI
and is build much faster in text form ( programming language) or just can't be
made with your platform. At that point it requires specialization and your
need for a programmer is born.

~~~
aeorgnoieang
> I'm very pessimistic of these types of products.

> there have been ideas to do this for around 40 years

You _should_ be "pessimistic" – if the implied claim is that "these types of
products" will replace all of the other standard programming paraphernalia!

But, as you wrote, this stuff has been around for decades. And that's because
there are lots of people that can do real work with these tools, but aren't
otherwise willing to pay the (pretty) steep costs to get up to speed using the
'pro' programming tools.

------
Postscapes
I found this product awhile back and was so excited at first.

I have a design background ( but can dabble in css, hack at php and python)
but had trouble trying to get some APIs connected and displayed with Bubble.

Please oh please, can one of you developers have Airtable and Webflow make a
baby? This combo would be amazing for functional business use and data display
and I would pay good money for it.

~~~
spiralganglion
I agree — as someone with as much of a design background as a programming
background, seeing something like Bubble described as "visual programming"
feels a bit offensive. Yes, there's a bit of meaningful visual structure
sprinkled here and there throughout their environment. But it's nothing like
what one would imagine if they were left to freely ideate about some
hypothetical, ideal "visual programming" environment.

In a post-Bret Victor world, we know what such an environment might look like.

Stop Drawing Dead Fish:
[https://vimeo.com/64895205](https://vimeo.com/64895205) Drawing Dynamic
Visualizations: [https://vimeo.com/66085662](https://vimeo.com/66085662)

As a visually-minded developer constantly hunting for such tools, and even
working on some myself (in a small way — nothing that anyone here will ever
end up using, surely), I can assure you that there's enough smoke that
eventually we'll see something like what we desire catch fire.

If I had to guess, I'd say we'll see it come out of the world of video games,
not web applications. So don't fret that Bubble looks like a step in the wrong
direction. They're not building tools for visual thinkers, they're building
tools for MBAs.

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dkersten
I just wanted to check out the website (not actually try it), but the Bubble
page shows a blank page saying it doesn’t support my browser (safari on iOS).
What a pity that it won’t even show me a landing page or whatever.

------
Impossible
"Then, in October 2105, we launched publicly on ProductHunt"

I'm guessing this should be October 2015, but it'd be awesome if Bubble was a
product from the future sent back in time.

------
Lapsa
yet another LightSwitch. with better marketing

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akashpaul
Keep it up!

