S2 Episode 2: Can No-Code and Low-Code Platforms Replace Traditional Coding?
Dive into the second episode of Season 2 of The LowCode Podcast, where we unravel the future of not coding, featuring Adalo's CEO, David Adkin.
Through David's unique perspective, learn about the intriguing evolution of no-code technology and its impact on websites and custom apps. He also captivates us by sharing his experiences, bringing Adalo, a simple but powerful no-code app builder (and one of the pioneers!), to life.
This storytelling voyage offers insights you can't find elsewhere. Make sure to tune in!
Transcript
Jesus Vargas: Hey, welcome again to the Low-Code Podcast. Today we have David Adkin. He's the founder and CEO of Adalo, one of the, I don't want to say, old No-Code platforms, but they've been around for a while compared to a lot of newer ones. So David, welcome. It's great to have you here with us.
David Adkin: Yeah, thanks. Thanks. Yeah, it's crazy that there are some now old; I'm going to call them OGs, you know, originals, but I know that can probably get into a whole other debate. There was no code before no code, all that there was actually OG no code before us. So happy to get into any of those topics during this as well.
Jesus Vargas: Right.
David Adkin: But yeah, fun, fun time, really excited to talk with everybody. I just care the most about people creating new things with no code or low code or shoes to do it the best enables them. That's what I've been really passionate about and excited to talk to you all.
Jesus Vargas: So let's start there with a history of no code. How did you find no code and why did you end up deciding to build a no code app builder?
David Adkin: Yeah, that's right. So for me, I was, I guess, you described, we were around before the word no code was even a thing. So I was a product designer, UX designer, and designer before this. I was working at a different startup for quite a while, another great SaaS company. And I was doing mockups every single week. And I think I was in that era, like the sweet spot of prototyping. If you think back, I don't know, depending on who's listening to this. So I guess this was like 2010 ish, you know, there were mainly front end engineers doing the design work. Actually, there was not. I mean, at some companies, there were UX designers dedicated, but primarily that was kind of a new thing where I was like, wait a second, we're gonna have a brand new role, you're not actually going to know how to code, all you're gonna do is produce mockups. And I was one of those in that era, actually, I came from architecture beforehand. So jumped ship there and into this brand new field of UX design. So I was in the, and in that era, the tools progressed really fast. So I started using Balsamiq at the very beginning. I don't know, some people may or may not know that. Now it's used for very different use cases. But at the time that was like the most beautiful way that you were presenting mockups was through Balsamiq.
Jesus Vargas: Okay.
David Adkin: And then for anyone who doesn't know, it's, it's, I guess maybe we would say ugly looking by today's standards. It's supposed to be very sketchy looking, if you will.
Jesus Vargas: Yes.
David Adkin: And you couldn't really get pixel perfect things. It wasn't really the point. It was just like, Hey, here's, here's what this is going to look like. Really fast over the next three or four years. It went from, you know, Hey, there's a new thing called sketch. Oh, cool. So you start working in sketch and then envision and it's like, Oh, we're bringing this thing to life. And then tools like UX pins came out. It really kind of exploded really quickly and everything started to look more and more realistic. And you started to put as a product designer, UX designer, you started to put a much more detail into what you were kind of handing off to the engineers. So much so that I remember actually fooling and tricking some of the, not on purpose, but tricking some people in the company, specifically on like, you know, sales or marketing teams at the previous company I was at, into thinking like, oh, this is like, it's really, it's real, this is live. And it was like, no, like, this is just, you know, this is just David's fake, you know, kind of mock up of what of what it's going to look like. So I think that moment definitely had some kind of triggering effects for me. I was like, wait a second, this is getting, you know, so realistic, between, you know, where where I just come a few years later. So that's one strand that's happening where it's getting more and more realistic. And then I did try to
Jesus Vargas: Okay.
David Adkin: definitely, I definitely, you know, really empathize with all the no coders out here, because that is me, right? I don't know how to code. So I tried to learn for a little bit took some courses, you know, treehouse did all that kind of fun stuff. And I remember being up late one night just thinking, you know, by the time I get really good at, I'm definitely a perfectionist as a designer, you know, I want things to be perfect. And I was like, by the time I feel really confident in this, somebody's just going to come up with a way for me to drag and drop and do it. So it was that those kind of sparking moments back in 2018 where I was like, wait a second, why can't we just take the progression of design tools and make them into real things? So I definitely came at this from a much more design centric perspective and a true kind of no coders perspective, I guess. So yeah, that's a little bit about how it was born.
Jesus Vargas: And then you partner with an engineer to build a dial-up.
David Adkin: That's right. Yep. Yeah. So yeah, I had a couple other co founders, we came together. Yeah, obviously, on the engineering side, because I couldn't make it. So but yeah, I definitely came at it from, you know, a design perspective and how the product should kind of look and feel from a true kind of no coders perspective, if you will, during that era. And then No code, the term is still not really quite there. At this point, people are kind of at least speaking it occasionally, but it's not really a movement quite yet. So during that era, you know, before we had publicly launched, when we were just kind of like building a dollar, which actually had a few different names before we landed on a dollar.
Jesus Vargas: I'm going to go ahead and turn it off.
David Adkin: But so when we were building that, I actually went out to startup events for local businesses, and I would say, Hey, you know, I can make an app for you. And I remember at the beginning that people were like, what do you mean? You can make an app without coding. Like they were very much at that moment in it was hard to even convince people that this was possible. I would say now it's funny to look back. Everyone's like, well, yeah, I don't think you just do this. Right. But at that moment,
Jesus Vargas: only three years ago. Yeah.
David Adkin: yeah, I know it was only three years ago, but like you really did have to convince people who are very skeptical. But some people didn't have any, they were like, oh, whatever. It's not that much money. So we started selling some individual apps where I would actually build it myself. And then when something didn't exist, like a feature in Adalo, I'd be like, hey, can we build that in? So then we would add in new features into the platform as I was going out and selling. So I definitely, to some extent, accidentally, Yeah.
Jesus Vargas: Has the client changed? Like who did you build the DAL for originally? Who was the client? Is the client a different persona today than it was three years ago?
David Adkin: Um, that's an interesting question. Yeah. So, uh, I do think as a whole, no code is now, I guess, in a little bit of like a glow up phase, if you will, we are starting to move a little more and more to, um, establish businesses or small businesses, those types of things. It was definitely, um, at the time, I would say the easiest, um, was the clients that, uh, you know, were startup aspiring startup founders, and they didn't have any other choice but to go with us. They're like, well, yeah, I don't have a technical co-founder or $100,000.
Jesus Vargas: Right?
David Adkin: So yeah, I guess I'll spend a little bit of money to make an app my MVP type of a thing, especially because platforms really hadn't even got to the point where you could even scale MVP. So it really was just kind of an MVP. Bubble hadn't raised $100 million in that new era of like, no, you can make, you know, legit funded startups on it. But so yeah, I think it was definitely a lot of startup founders, but there was still a lot of the same, you know, local business apps that I would go out and, and I would say, hey, you know, you realize that you could make this, I think maybe this gets into another topic, but I like who it's for and I think the biggest message and most important thing that's starting to change, but is really gonna, like I think one of the biggest things for this to really kind of take off is the ability for businesses at any scale, existing businesses, to realize like what they can do with this.
Jesus Vargas: Mm-hmm.
David Adkin: If you look back at, let's just go way back in time it's 2000, right? At that point, none of the website builders, what we would call no code website builders had really launched yet WordPress and Squarespace both launched in 2003. So really, you're just kind of like developers making websites for people. And businesses didn't really understand like what you're supposed to do with the website at that point. Like if you were to tell somebody, hey, you should have a website, they would go, oh, all right, like, cool, like, I guess so. But don't we just have the yellow pages or, you know, whatever? Like,find us. Like it's not really that important, right? And obviously, that's funny to say that like thinking about today, it's like, well, yeah, every business sees a website, like it's very obvious that every business needs a website today. And that wasn't the case. And then those kind of tools came out, you know, you started having freelancers and agencies making websites for different businesses. And now those tools have matured so much, they're so easy that, you know, now much easier. So that kind of evolution happened where the key thing there though is that like you would start to see one business have a website and it was successful and you're like, oh, I should do that. Or that message kind of spreads. That same thing is going to happen with no code and low code where businesses are starting to realize like, wait a second, I could build custom tools, software, whatever you want to call apps, whatever that word And I think the fact that the word is a little muddled is a little confusing,
Jesus Vargas: Yeah.
David Adkin: now, but you know, apps, tools, software, whatever it is, or even websites, because a web app is confusing to people outside of the, you know, the tech space. Like, what is a web app? Isn't that what's Twitter? Is that an app web app? I don't know. So like, you know, whatever that terminology that you feel most comfortable with, but that idea, let's just go with app, you know, that idea of custom apps for businesses hasn't really taken off yet.
Jesus Vargas: Okay.
David Adkin: And in that people don't quite know what to do with them well enough to, I think, the amount of demand that will come. You know, the same change is going to happen just like with websites where people are going to look back, I think, five years from now, 10 years from now, and businesses are going to go like, wait a second. Well, yeah, I have tons of custom apps all over the place doing things. Like, this makes so much sense. That shift for people outside of the no code space or even outside of the tech space Where they understand that this is an option for them hasn't quite taken root yet and I think that is the largest kind of You know, I think Aspect of society that has to change for no code to like really take off
Jesus Vargas: That's interesting. Does that mean that you think that businesses will end up choosing? Because with websites, it's a little bit different. You have one website, usually like a WordPress website. And that's it with no code. We're talking about custom apps. So you might have multiple custom apps for your inventory for H or whatever. Does that mean that, or do you think that businesses will end up choosing a platform? Let's say a Dell and then they'll build a bunch of apps using a Dell. Is that like the progression you think, or you think that they'll use something and bubble for something else and the web for their website. What do you think will happen in that sense?
David Adkin: no, I definitely think it will be a range of choices that happen. I do think, well, let's see one thing. website builders, there are multiple of those that have been around there's 11 website building unicorns right now, in terms of valuation for people that can build websites and that type of stuff. So I do think that there will be a lot of, let's say no code software builders in the future as well. I don't I don't platform to rule them all. I think you'll have different use cases.
Jesus Vargas: I think that Bubble is trying to position themselves that way. Like you can do anything in Bubble, everything
David Adkin: Yeah.
Jesus Vargas: in Bubble. Like Glide's recent pricing change, like fixed price for unlimited apps, might be related to that as well, which I hadn't thought. Like use Glide for any type of thing that you might do internally.
David Adkin: Yeah.
Jesus Vargas: So yeah, there might be some platforms that look into that as a strategy.
David Adkin: Yeah, I agree. I think there'll be different use cases where you might use different things. I think there's some internal only kind of dashboarding process stuff that I think you might use a different platform for. Depending on the size of your company, you might use different platforms. Just like smaller companies today tend to choose Squarespace versus larger are choosing Webflow, there's different choices that you might make, depending on the size and complexity of, you know, what you're trying to solve. I do think there's a, so if you're trying to build, you know, let's say there's another thing. So there's, there's internal only apps. And then there's this, these other apps where you're, it's an app that's interacting with your customers and clients in some way
Jesus Vargas: Uh huh.
David Adkin: for, for that business, let's say a fitness you know, that type of situation. And then there is another category where you're trying to make a tech product with no code or low code. Would be that, you know, a venture backed startup that's, you know, scaling forever or an actual SaaS product that you're trying to sell. In those cases, you only have external customers.
Jesus Vargas: Mm-hmm.
David Adkin: You're selling that as the product. So that's kind of another subset. So I think you'll have different platforms be designed for those different use cases or who's creating it, whether you're a high end, very professional dev shop and you're using low code is very different than if you're making an internal app at your 50 person organization and you're just kind of making it yourself. Those are very different use cases.
Jesus Vargas: Yeah.
David Adkin: multiple no code and low code software building tools fit into some of those different subcategories.
Jesus Vargas: And then in five years, where do you see Adalo in that space?
David Adkin: Yeah, that's a great question. I definitely think, you know, we are trying to continue to be both simple and powerful to kind of fit into that, you know, middle.
Jesus Vargas: Because let me interrupt you for a second.
David Adkin: Sure, yeah.
Jesus Vargas: In my opinion, I think that Adalo is a tool for people who are building consumer-facing apps that want to be in the app store.
David Adkin: Yeah.
Jesus Vargas: So I see Adalo being mainly used, or most of the Adalo apps I've seen, are consumer facing apps in the app store instead of internal apps. Is that still today's main client persona that uses Adalo or not anymore?
David Adkin: I think that's certainly the same thing. We do have a big Adalo 2.0 launch that will be coming up early next year for responsive web apps. So that way, you know, it won't necessarily just be, you know, because I do agree right now, you can make web apps today on Adalo, but we don't really talk too much about it because you can't make them responsive design is certainly, you know, you have one app and you can put it wherever you want to put it. So a true cross platform app that is designed for all the different screen sizes, you just design it once and wherever your end is, wherever your end users want to be, they can get it. You know, some of your most loyal customers might want to get it from the app store and have it on their phone. Some of your, oh, this is my first time interacting with this business. You know, I just look good with all the different screen sizes. In all those cases that I just explained, it's still external, if you will, in that sense, but it is, I don't know, it's an external internal bridge. And maybe that's like a weird way of describing it, but you still have some parts of that process. So let's just go, let me backup for a second. So at the end of the day, like any piece of software is a process that you are making it. It's a long like, UX designers always call it like the user's journey, right? There's a user's journey that
Jesus Vargas: Mm-hmm.
David Adkin: exists. And now you're making that a more pleasurable experience and probably automated in certain parts, right? So even if it's, you know, Uber, right? Like that previously was, you know, I got to call up a taxi, you know, I got to wait for them. I don't know if they're coming, you know, there's a whole user journey there. If you call, you wait, I don't know, like you gotta pay afterwards. That's a pain point. Like all of that stuff, there's, you let's just say 40 steps on that user's journey. I don't know. It depends on how much you put in. Could be less or fewer, but there's a whole journey there. And now it was turned into an app that made that a more kind of pleasurable experience for all the different parties that were involved. The driver had a better experience. The rider had a better experience. The rider's friends had a better experience. In all of those, there were different parties involved. And there are different steps along that. So where I think Adalo is great for is, and I think no code in general, what I'm really excited about are those types of processes happen, you know, at every community, at every organization, at every business where you have something today that you are probably just using email back and forth or docs back and forth or spreadsheets, or maybe you're manually collecting some information or a forum over here, it's a, if you take that user journey, it's a process that's back and forth. It probably involves now your customers or clients, but also probably involves you as like a staff or that's why I say internal user, like,
Jesus Vargas: Apple owner. Right. Right.
David Adkin: yeah, as the app owner and, you know, whether that's a scheduling thing, or just to go back to that fitness example, just cause I said before, you know, if that is the, you know, you have the trainer and those are internal staff members Previously, they would have to send their workouts through email and back and forth through clients and through docs and spreadsheets and maybe they send them a video. It's very like, I think we'll look back five years from now and think of all those types of processes as very being just like the Yellow Pages was a little backwards where you're like, oh, well, yeah, we have a website now. I think we'll look back and be like, oh, I was doing that very haphazardly through email and like docs and spreadsheets and this like very convoluted process that was like, well, Why don't I just make a custom app for that? But in that process, the roles that exist, there are sometimes some of them are internal and sometimes it's external and there's interactions happen between those people. So that's why I say it's kind of internal, kind of external for where I think Adalo's best kind of position, just because you can make it into the app store or onto the web. And you can customize it to be your exact brand. So it does fit that look and feel versus, hey, this is internal only. And we just want it to look professional, so it doesn't quite need to be our brand. And we don't really care about the app stores because it's just an internal only thing. It's pretty simple in terms of the number of steps that process that I think you're trying to simplify, that's kind of a different subset of no code, low code, app builders that I would talk about.
Jesus Vargas: Okay, okay.
David Adkin: Airtable is kind of jumping into that space, I would say. There's those types of things that are internal only kind of, they're simple processes in the sense of, it's probably like five or six steps that you're trying to automate instead of the 40 steps that you're trying to automate from, or maybe automate, of them or make them better experiences. And then there's the opposite end of the spectrum where it's like a tech product and you're selling a SaaS product. Yeah, exactly. Every last bell and whistle has to be, you're competing against true code at that point, true development. themselves. I think you talked about that for one platform. I think they're just trying to say, hey, you can do everything because you should make tech SaaS products on their platform. So yeah, that's a little bit about where we're definitely, I think a little more in the middle there in terms of what we are best suited for and where we're kind of headed.
Jesus Vargas: Does that give you more clarity in terms of what new features you are working on? I think there's always this, I don't know if struggle is the right word, but it's challenging to decide what to do next. Your users are asking for certain things.
David Adkin: Yeah.
Jesus Vargas: You might see an opportunity if we launch this feature, we may get more money, more paying users, less churn, whatever. That is hard. I think that that is quite challenging. features to launch or what features to work.
David Adkin: Yeah, it's a really great question. And it's especially true, right? Because every single platform in the no-code, low-code space, there's so many features that we all kind of need for the products to be great. I don't know if they'll ever be complete, necessarily, because it's just such a big problem set that you're tackling compared to. If you look at the spectrum, it's always going to be important to put into place, too, these platforms are in their maturity. If you look at any startup, let's go all the way to the farthest ends of the spectrum. An autonomous self-driving car takes so much capital and resources and time before you have your very first product that people would actually purchase a self-driving car. Almost billions of dollars, essentially. Maybe not that much, but a lot of money to get that. On the opposite end of that tech spectrum probably actually the early days of, for example, something like Instagram is much bigger now, but Instagram at the very beginning was like, you know, post a photo and post a photo and put one filter on it, right. And, you know, it was actually done by like, I think it was like three people before they were like a billion dollar company selling to Facebook, right, because there is a much more simple product. Now, again, it's gotten more complicated because they're, you know, bigger,
Jesus Vargas: Yeah.
David Adkin: it was like able to, to, you know, be successful with, with that small amount of time and resources, right? I think no code is somewhere in the middle of that. And that's important. And again, every single notebook platform is important to acknowledge us that I know you called us at the beginning, the old OG ones, but it still is. We're still all pretty early in our infancy in terms of like the number of features that we like Like all of us don't have all the features we would really want, I think, to make it. Oh yeah, like they've got everything. I don't really need anything.
Jesus Vargas: Right.
David Adkin: You know, like at some point new features just kind of sweeten the pot. And at some point it's like, no, I still need some more things. I still feel like all of our platforms are in that stage where you're like, ah, there's I want more. I know you want more and I want to give you more. So we're still kind of there. I think that's another reason why no code and low code hasn't totally the whole world yet because the platforms are still trying to add some of those, you know, kind of core things to, to unlock all that. So anyway, so that's, that's one way of saying every platform has way too many features that they wish they could immediately get to. Um, I think it's important to, when you're thinking about it, recognize, yeah, how, um, how technical do you, um, you know, that platform. Yeah, like I know we like, yeah, is this a low code platform or no code platform? And I do think that's a different, I think they are. I know it's a spectrum and it's hard to tell. But I think whether whether you call when you call yourselves a low code platform, you're probably making more feature choices that are like, no, it's fine. Like, this can be more technical. It doesn't need to be as simple for for people to, you know, use that feature who don't really know anything technical. And you're trying to probably make feature choices that are set up for that app to be more powerful or scale for wherever it's going to be versus are you making a feature choice on the opposite end of the spectrum that's just making this thing really, really simple? And I think we are kind of right, again, we're always trying to be right in the middle there for where we think we kind of fit in terms of, we have to think, okay, we want to do that feature, but how can we pull it off?
Jesus Vargas: How do we make it easy enough for coders?
David Adkin: Exactly. where Adalo is still simple enough to get started with, but you can get the customization you want. So that takes us time sometimes to make sure we are striking that kind of balance like, well, let's add a bunch of things, but then it's really hard to use. So yeah, that's, those are some of our thoughts. Certainly us being cross platform has a lot of extra things that we have to kind of deal with. You know, we do have that vision where you just make one app and put it wherever you want to put it. That hopefully should come to life at the very beginning of next year. When we launched Adala 2.0. And, you know, so we have to think about, okay, how is this going to work natively? How is this going to work on the web? Those types of choices, you know, are also, you know, what we're thinking about there as well. So, yeah, those are some of our choices. I think another big subset we haven't spoken about today is probably exactly what you do, but there's a whole subset of freelancers and agencies, whether it's a one person, All the way up to five to 10 person, you know, a little dev shop, whatever you want to call yourselves, no code agency, you know, all the way up to, you know, 100 person, you know, this is a dev agency, you know, highly professional, very much going after enterprise types of clients there, if you will. So, trying to make sure that we have features and things for that category is also really, really important to us right now. I think that businesses,
Jesus Vargas: That was my next question. Do you cater to that target of freelancers and agencies building for businesses? Because I think, and something that I see every day is a lot of no-cone-local tools defining if they wanna go direct to the client, to those multimedia businesses, to the entrepreneur, to the builder, or they like that channel, traditional channel setup, like very legacy, their legacy like FileMaker and Microsoft products, that they have this channel partner and the channel partner is the one who builds for clients. It's a different, I think that today most NoGo tools haven't figured out that yet. Some of them are starting to make certain moves, like we're going to go the channel route and have our partners and really strengthen them, in order for them to bring us business. A lot of other ones are like, we want to go direct and we want to make it as easy as possible for anyone build their own app and then maybe like they have partners just in case a large enterprise comes along or something. It's an interesting trade-off especially with NoCo tools. I think they haven't figured it out yet. They want to have both or like who their target is.
David Adkin: Yeah, yeah, we're definitely a lot, as of recently, a lot more focused on freelancers and agencies and making it much easier for you all to, you know, what do you all need? What can we build in there? That type of thing. I think it is interesting, though, what you're saying.
Jesus Vargas: You see that what is the best growth strategy for Adalo? Is it partners like freelancers and agencies or is it direct? How do you get your customers?
David Adkin: Yeah. You know, we want it to be like right now, you know, for freelancer agencies, we want that to, I'm not saying we don't want the other things as well. And I know there's two of you saying like, well, what are you trying to pick? It is important that for us, that if we make it too difficult then no code won't have its ultimate kind of, you know business employees just building it everywhere. So we don't wanna push it too far where it gets too difficult, which can happen if you're just kind of focused, let's say, on very, very high end agencies, right? And that type of a model. So we still want people who want to build on their own, of course, but right now we are really focused on, okay, I think we had previously probably been really, really focused on that, to say, okay, no, like, wait a second, these freelancers and agencies, you know, you all are really helped to push this, this movement forward. So we're definitely leaning into, okay, how can we be more focused on, on making sure that you all have what what you need during this, during this, I guess, kind of next phase of Adalo is really important for us. like, well, which one? And it's like, well, it's it's it is freelance agencies, but with the caveat.
Jesus Vargas: I'll let a bit of both.
David Adkin: Yeah, but with the caveat of like, yeah, we just feel like if if you go so much onto that, then you risk, you know, it being we don't want to be too difficult for, you know, I guess, let's say, non technical people to to to make to make apps. So we still want that to be the case. So it's and we see success in growth from both of those channels. So I think that's another thing.
Jesus Vargas: Okay.
David Adkin: You know, it's not, we see a lot of people that just start and come on and build their app and that's great. Fantastic. If you want to do that, you should do that. If you come on and you try to build a little bit and you're like, wait a second, oh, I could use an expert to build this for me. Oh, fantastic. You know, I'll pay them that. Or if you never really even hear about the platform and it's just an expert that's like, you know, build this app for you. For us, all three of those channels are still showing, you know, really soft, strong signs of growth. So yeah, it's, I know, yeah, we don't have, and your question is like, well, what's your hard line? We don't have a hard line, you know, just yet. We're kind of still in, in those three things, but trying to show more, more love to freelancers and agencies. You know, I think it's another interesting thing that, you know, You know, we see a lot of people that start building on their own and just love to build things and then they actually become freelancers and agencies and they're like, whoa, this is cool and like they grow on their own. You know, so that's another reason why we still, you know, like that, like interacting with everybody. You know, because then they actually, you know, right now, it's like, seriously, like the best time to create a this, this, you know, if you truly believe in the vision of all talking about where 10 years from now, every, you know, every organization will be like, Well, yeah, of course, we have customs apps, what am I doing, you know, just like they said, you know, back in the website in 2000, right. So if you have that vision and that conviction, then it's like the best time to create a freelancing agency business. And those types of things, because there just are inherently going to be businesses that even if they could do it on their own, they still are gonna wanna hire people. So yeah, it's a little bit of, for us kind of being in both parties, similar to what Squarespace does for websites today, what Webflow does for businesses today where you can either make it on their own or you can work with an agency. So yeah, I don't think you have to pick just one, I guess I would say.
Jesus Vargas: Okay, okay. Do you think that NoCode will stay in the SMB space or will it grow into the enterprise level?
David Adkin: Oh, I definitely think it'll grow into the enterprise level. You know, I think right now in the enterprise space it is primarily the established low code players. So these are like the Appian's Mendex out systems, you know, of the world.
Jesus Vargas: But this new wave of no-code platforms like Adalo, what needs to happen for enterprise clients to adopt them? Do you think that there'll be major acquisitions in the space, just like AppGyver and a few other ones? I don't want to say smaller, but let's say the Adalos of the world out there are bought by a very large enterprise, and then that becomes a shortcut for that enterprise software that brings no code into their enterprise clients? Or do you think that the platforms with time will eventually become robust and secure and pass all those compliance processes with enterprise and get there?
David Adkin: I'm not trying to cop out, but I do think it'll be a mix of both. I think it'll be, I think there'll be some no-code platforms that are really big and enterprises are using to do their things. I think there probably are some that would get acquired or now be a quicker way for some of those more larger established companies to kind of have that set of enterprise customers. So yeah, I think it will be, I think it'll be a mix of both probably. But I do think there will be, you know, some one or two no code app builders that yeah, are huge and are used by, you know, businesses of all sizes, you know, all the way up to, you know, the large enterprise, you know, someone on the marketing team was like, oh, I want to make a little custom app. Here I go. And then, you know, someone on a marketing team that's like, you know, a massive company. Um, I think that will, will happen. You know,
Jesus Vargas: So other than time, I mean, you mentioned several times that we're still early. So other than time for NoCode to become mainstream, what is lacking in the space? And I'm not talking about specifics, maybe more generic. What do you think is lacking in the space in order for NoCode to become really mainstream? Obviously, other than interest from SMBs into NoCode and obviously marketing and content and all of that. for that gap to be shorter.
David Adkin: Yeah, let's see. Well, there's certainly like I was talking about that number of features before, you know, I think just like all platforms
Jesus Vargas: Right.
David Adkin: are just, you know, desperately trying to make sure you come out with the features. And you're trying to do that to your target persona. So whether that means you're coming out with them, but they're still easy enough to use. And that's challenging, right? So there's a number of, of, I think, features there that, you know, will just as well as actually create. Like, there's a lot of things you can do today. It's just trickier. They're like little hacky workarounds in all the platforms, right?
Jesus Vargas: Yeah
David Adkin: You know, making those much more simple. You know, I think having the databases be connected easily between, again, you can do a lot of these things today in the platforms, but in more difficult ways than somebody technically savvy could do. You're just talking about a one-click integration and it's done type of thing, right? I think that will be helpful for wherever that data exists from those different businesses. There's certainly a number of infrastructure requirements that I think, you're talking about enterprise four, of want as those platforms are scaling where they want to put, they being larger enterprises, have requirements, exact requirements, where, no, no, no, we use Microsoft Cloud. So we have to be in this cloud and we have to be done in this exact way. And it's like, well, whatever, wherever other platforms like, no, well, sorry, our thing's over here. So that type of situation. And flexibility, I think, you know, kind of. So there's a certain number of infrastructure improvements and feature improvements. And then there's that education improvement that I think will warrant the demand where the end, you know, customer, if you will, will understand enough, you know, oh, yeah, I should just make a, you know. make an app for,
Jesus Vargas: Right
David Adkin: That type of thing. So yeah, I think it's a combination between more features, infrastructure, and improvements and flexibility, as well as that, whatever you want to call it, educational piece to the world for it to really kind of take off.
Jesus Vargas: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. David, thanks so much for joining us today. It was really a pleasure having you.
David Adkin: Yeah. Where's where you get chatting? Thanks for having me. I've always said from the beginning, I just really desperately want this whole no code. Or if you want to create something new, I just want you to be able to do it and push this whole movement forward. So wherever you're doing that from whatever platform that you enjoy, you know, go for it. Anyway, whatever you're trying to solve, do it in a way that doesn't require you to learn years and years of technical skill set to make what you want to make. So yeah, that's exciting to have everyone listen. Thanks for listening to me ramble for a little bit.
Jesus Vargas: Yeah, thank you. And then these will be launched next year. So check out Adalao's website, probably they've already launched version 2.0. That'll be fun to try out.
David Adkin: Cool, sounds great.
Jesus Vargas: Thank you.