Apps Without Code

Hey. Tara here! Nice to meet you. 

Lately, I’ve been launching cool software products without writing code. 

Here’s what I’ve been up to:

Building Apps without Code- As a non-technical founder without a ton of money to spend, building without code was the best option for me. Here’s my 3 part story of how I  validated my idea, started generating revenue & got VC funding without writing a single line of code...

Getting coached by a Google UX designer-  Totally the coolest thing I’ve done in while. I learned Google Venture’s 5-step process of designing products directly from an ex-Googler who worked on Inbox by Gmail. Here’s what I learned...

Doing TEDx Talks- I got asked to present at TEDxDetroit . I also recently did a talk at The Lean Startup Conference. Video of that coming soon!

Raising a $300,000 seed round from J.P. Morgan Innovation Fund, Google for Entrepreneurs,  and 500 Startups.

Sharing everything I’m learning along the way- Subscribe to my email list if you want to learn what I’m learning. I try to keep it fun!

My Projects:

Kollecto- The first recommendation engine for affordable art

ArtCollectingSchool.com- Interractive lessons & videos teaching you everything you need to know about buying art on a budget. 

Yesterday I spoke at the Create Leaders BAWSE conference in LA.

The speaker line up included Russell Simmons, Jillian Manus, myself, etc.

It was so much fun!

I ran a workshop on Building Apps Without Code

And I got 57% of the audience to subscribe to my blog & request more information about my Apps Without Code Bootcamp (happy to have you guys onboard!)

To get this crazy conversion rate, I tried a wacky tactic that I totally planned LAST MINUTE…

Honestly, I set everything up 1 hour before my presentation, and it completely paid off.

Here’s the strategy I used...

Part 1- Where do you get these crazy ideas?

Before I share the details of the crazy experiment I ran, I want to tell you WHERE the experiment idea came from.

Because it actually came from merging 2 separate tactics together.

Tactic #1 came from my friend Danielle Leslie.

Danielle is a crazy genius when it comes to course selling & list-building.

And a few weeks ago, Danielle recommended that at the end of my presentation, I should offer 1:1 office hours to the first 10 people who came up & talked to me.

She recommended I get out a pen & paper & have people sign up for office hours on the spot.

The strategy was to generate urgency by creating a big line waiting to signup!

At first, the idea worried me...

As a digital girl, it seemed inefficient to have people write their name on pen & paper for office hours.

But I understood the psychology of creating in-person urgency around free office hours with me….

… And Danielle is usually right about this kind of thing...

...So I was willing to try the idea.

That was Tactic #1.

Old School Pen, Paper, & Urgency (details on how that performed below).

But a few days after talking to Danielle, I was listening to the Conversion Cast podcast & heard something that also really inspired me!

The podcast episode discussed a case study on how marketer, Bob Jenkins, uses SMS text messaging to convert audiences at live events.

Bob asks his audience (on the spot) to text a ‘word’ to a ‘number’ in order to get a special gift.

And I thought- Oooh I should try that!

That was Tactic #2

The New School way- SMS lead generation.

Here’s the Podcast episode that inspired me:

Part 2- Last Minute Implementation

Now remember I told you that I set this all up 1 hour before my presentation?

Well honestly,  it’s true!

Last minute, I worked up the courage to try this live experiment…

Here’s how I set it up:

Step #1- I stumbled around!

I started off looking for the cheapest solution. I searched ProductHunt, but I was super surprised to not find many options there.

Then I found JoinbyText.com & TextMarks.com, which were $19 & $49 respectively, but user onboarding was taking a long time & I was in a RUSH.

Step #2- I spent 5 mins setting up LeadDigits

I landed on LeadDigits, which was more expensive than the other options, but given my time crunch, the price was totally worth it.

It took me 5 mins to set everything up.

I created my own unique code (BAWSE1, inspired by the name of the event).

I customized my opt-in instructions & ‘gift’ email copy

DONE!

Step #3- Then I updated my final presentation slide

...and pressed ‘save’!

Part 3- The Experiment Results

So I stood there on stage & delivered a killer presentation!

And at the end, I offered to share my slides & details on my Apps Without Code Bootcamp with the audience.

I encouraged everyone to get out their phones & text me if they were interested.

And then I paused to give the audience time.

The novelty of the text code made everyone smile & a lot of people pulled out their phones.

Next, I explained that people often find it helpful to talk 1:1 with me about their app ideas & the best way to start building them. So I offered a handful of 1:1 calls with the first people who signed up on my list in the back of the room.

I combined the old school way, which created urgency with the newer school, which felt really novel to the audience.

As a result 57% of the audience opted in.

But that success was totally reliant on the fact that I COMBINED the two strategies.

While most people engaged with me via SMS, there were A LOT of people who rushed to talk to me immediately afterwards.

If I had done ONLY the SMS strategy, I would have lost over 40% of my conversions.

And if I had done ONLY the pen & paper strategy, I would have lost over 50% of my conversions

So I’m super glad I tried both!

But there are definitely some things I’ll be improving for next time…

Lessons learned:

Fully Test Your Tech: Some people had trouble with the text code. Still not sure why, but I bet my conversions would have been EVEN HIGHER if I had time to fully test my technology

Offer a Juicy Digital Gift: Since I planned everything last minute, I didn’t have time to make a juicier lead-magnet (like a checklist or getting started guide). I bet a sweeter gift would have converted better than an offer for the presentation slides & more info on my Bootcamp.

Pitch the Text Code Twice: I only pitched my text code once (at the end of the presentation). Next time, I’ll try it TWICE: once at the beginning of the presentation and AGAIN at the end.

The In-Person Line Effect Is Still Valid You can be high-tech if you want, but FOMO (fear of missing out) still sells & works best in-person.

Have you ever Googled "how to get app signups"?

If you need a good laugh, you should try that Google search.

There’s a ton of vague and annoying advice like:

Go viral

Do retargeting

Consider running Facebook Ads

Build an email list through content marketing

Make some videos for YouTube

I’m not saying this stuff is useless.

But for me (someone running an early stage startup & small business) I’ve never been “wow”ed by the results I got from these tactics.

So a few months ago I went on a hunt for non-conventional growth strategies for my startup, Kollecto.

My team & I spent a lot of time experimenting with new strategies, and started to see results with a handful of social media hacks.

So here’s a recap of all the things that worked (and didn’t work) on our journey hacking social media to reach 1000 signups/ mo.... All the juicy details.

Part 1 - How we hacked Twitter to 10x our traffic

Which comes first? The Chicken or the Egg?

Nevermind, don’t answer that…

Here’s an easier question:

Which comes first? The web traffic or the signups?

Obviously it’s the signups, which is why my first goal was to boost the amount of traffic coming to the Kollecto site.

To do this, I leveraged an awesome marketing tool called Socedo.

Using Socedo, we jumped from ~1,000 visits per month to nearly 10,000 visits per month in just a few months.

Here’s how we used Socedo:

We targeted people saying certain keywords on Twitter:

“Wish I could buy art”

“Wish collect art”

“Went to art museum”

“Went to art gallery”

etc.

For example, we targeted people like this:

Socedo hunted through Twitter and automatically found tweets like this for us.

Basically this is what was happening:

And then the software did something really cool.

For each of these Tweets, Socedo:

Followed the lead

Added them to an “Art Lovers” list

Liked their tweet (24 hours later)

And sent the person a DM (if the person followed us back)

DM example: “Hey Chris! Saw your tweets on art. If you’re interested in collecting, check out our Art Collecting School program {link}”

This strategy brought a solid chunk of traffic to our site.

And this was the result….

We went from about ~1000 views/mo in December to almost 10,000 by March.

And almost all this traffic was coming from social media!

Twitter & Pinterest to be exact...

I’ll come back to Pinterest in Part 3 of this post.

But if you need a breakdown of why we saw success with hacking our Twitter account using Socedo...

Here's what was happening...

Users would see us engaging with them.

Then they would get interested and click one of 3 things:

They would click on the DM link we sent. This was easy to set up because Socedo did all the work

They would click our bio link. This was also easy to set up. We just made sure we had our website url in our Twitter bio

Or they would click on a cool Tweet we posted. This was a bit tougher to maintain, because it meant we had to CONSTANTLY have fresh & interesting Twitter content for people to discover.

That’s where the next hack came in…

Pro Tip:

If you want to try this strategy to 10x your own website traffic, I’m putting together an awesome SuperClass Webinar with tons of gems:

The Socedo targeting strategies that worked & didn’t work

My analysis of Socedo vs. other similar tools

The one trick that boosted our success

and a bunch more!

Learn more about the SuperClass Webinar

Part 2 - The crazy Twitter experiment that worked

Next we hit another challenge.

We had all these art lovers clicking on our Twitter page….

And we needed a way to convert them!

And get them to click on our links...

As I was pondering how to tackle this issue, I landed on an awesome podcast episode that gave me a crazy idea!

At our next team meeting, I told my team about my new plan.

So we tried it!

For 14 days...

...we posted 25 tweets/day

And each tweet linked to a blog post!

Here’s what the calendar looked like:

And the results were awesome!! First, I had my whole team listen to the podcast episode that had inspired the idea. Check it out below if you’re interested! Specific part that inspired me at 26:35

Garrett Moon on the SPI Podcast - talking about maximizing the reach of your content I also had my entire team read Jab Jab Jab, Right Hook - a really insightful book on connecting with customers via social media by Gary Vaynerchuck. We framed it as a fun book club so everyone was super pumped to read, discuss & implement the ideas.

Then we pre-planned ALLLL of our tweets

25 tweets

for 14 days

meant that we had 350 unique tweets to write.

Crazy, right?

Each tweet had totally different copy. We ended up with a MONSTER spreadsheet of planned tweets like this:

Then we started posting.

It felt like we were posting a lot.

But we kept referring to some awesome data that confirmed our strategy:

The average Twitter user spends just 13 minutes using Twitter… so the chances of someone seeing more than one of our tweets per day was super low.

At the end of the 14 day experiment, the numbers spoke for themselves.

Here’s what happened:

BEFORE the experiment, we were averaging:

267 link clicks/mo.

400 retweets/mo.

540 likes/mo.

And AFTER the experiment, we were up to:

3,500 link clicks/mo.

2,900 retweets/mo.

4,300 likes/mo.

That’s WILD!!!

We didn’t double our traffic coming from Twitter

We didn’t tripple it

We didn’t even quadruple it!!!

We grew it 13x!

That’s 13x the number of leads coming to our site!

We also grew retweets 7x and likes 8x, which was nice too.

And it turns out that maintaining this success was easier than we thought it would be!

It was pretty clear that we couldn’t continue to write 25 new tweets every day.

That would literally turn us into Twitter Zombies!

So to maintain our success, we turned to another amazing software tool, called Edgar.

We used Edgar to build a library of our best tweets from the experiment & automatically repost them, based on a calendar we built

Remember that we had 350 tweets from the experiment.

So even though we were posting a lot, we had tons of content our Twitter followers had never even seen before!

That’s why Edgar was so helpful.

Here’s how Edgar works:

You build a library of all your tweets

You set a schedule for when each tweet type should go out

Edgar grabs random library tweets, and sends them at times you scheduled

So our virtual assistant loaded all of our top tweets into Edgar and set up a schedule:

Using Edgar, we were able to automate the success of the 14-day experiment and keep our Twitter link clicks high.

The moral of the story?

Socedo and Edgar helped us increase traffic almost 900% — overnight.

With traffic trending in the right direction, we turned our attention to one last hack….

Pro Tip:

If you want to try this crazy Twitter experiment too, I’m putting together a SuperClass Webinar with tons of gems & details on this hack:

How we hired a virtual assistant to help

How we decided which tweets were “top performers”

The #1 thing we wish we knew before starting this experiment

and a bunch more!

Learn more about the SuperClass Webinar

Part 3 - How we hacked Pinterest to win 1,000 subscribers / month

Hell yeah! We made it to the final hack!

And there’s one thing we haven’t talked about yet….

Yup!

We haven’t talked about Paid Ads.

Now here’s a real confession:

I get nervous when people start talking about paid advertising.

Facebook Ads

Google Adwords

Promoted Tweets

etc.

It seems like a HUGE MONEY PIT, unless you have $10,000+ to experiment with.

The reality of my situation was this:

I didn't have $10,000 to spend

I didn't want to “just run some Facebook ads” without seeing any results

So my team & I went on a hunt again, and this time we looked for non-conventional advertising strategies.

We found a ton of success running ads on a lesser-known ad platform: Pinterest!

Now before you jump to any conclusions, let me just share one thing!

At first I thought Pinterest only worked for us because we had an art startup.

Art is visual.

So it makes sense that we would advertise on Pinterest- a visual ad platform.

But recently, I tried Pinterest ads for a totally different topic.

I ran some ads for my Apps Without Code Bootcamp, and they performed even better than the Kollecto ads.

So here’s my learning:

Now here’s why Pinterest worked for us:

There are A TONNNN of people running ads on Facebook, Twitter, Google Adwords, etc!

Only a small fraction of those people are running ads on Pinterest.

And since ad platforms are based on bids…

...our money stretched way further on Pinterest when there were fewer people to outbid us!

Cha-ching :)

So our Pinterest strategy went like this...

First, we got a subscription to Twenty20.com, which gave us stock photos that look like someone real actually took the photo for Instagram (or something like that).

Pinterest is all about strong visuals, so I knew we needed some “images with character”.

When cropped the right way (we used Canva.com for this), these photos were perfect for Pinterest :)

The downside?

Twenty20 access was pretty expensive. They have a secret startup plan, but it’s still not cheap.

So we made sure we fine-tuned our Pinterest strategy before investing.

As we started experimenting with Pinterest, we learned a lot of lessons.

For example:

1. Keyword targeting worked better than targeting by interest.

Here’s what I mean...

On Pinterest, there are 2 major ways to target your audience.

You can target keywords like “street art” or “Bansky”. Keywords = things someone might type in the search bar.

or you can target specific interests like “Art” or “DIY Crafts”. Interests are Pinterest’s pre-built categories.

We landed the best results when we targeted a mix of general keywords and specific keywords, but skipped the “interest” targeting.

Here’s another thing we learned...

2. Vertical images converted better than horizontal images

So we mainly looked for “portrait” photos.

But if there was phenomenal horizontal image, we used Canva to put into the optimal format!

3. The jury’s still out (we’re still testing), but it sure looks like our Pinterest ads perform better in the afternoon and evening. Buffer noticed the same thing:

4. Oh, and people responded really well to humor. This was one of our top-performing promoted pins:

We started with a budget of $10/day and grew it from there.

And as a result we DOUBLED the numbers of users signups each month.

BEFORE Pinterest (when we were just hacking Twitter): 540 signups/ mo.

AFTER 1 month of Pinterest hacks: 870 signups/mo

And AFTER 2 months:  1115 signups/ mo.

And the crazy part about it all?

Non-conventional marketing strategies drove all this growth!

Which is amazing.

But there was one last thing that made a huge difference.

We sent our Pinterest ad traffic to an Engineering as Marketing project, which was the trick to converting all this traffic into real app users.

Engineering as Marketing is when you build mini-apps for the purpose of marketing or lead gen.

Our Engineering as Marketing project was a mini-app landing page, that was CRAZY GOOD at converting new users.

When I first pitched the idea to my team they were like:

“What?!”

But the results were AMAZING.

And then they were like:

I’m sharing more about our mini-app landing page projects (the last piece of the puzzle to how all these strategies succeeded) in my upcoming Webinar SuperClass.

If you’re interested, check out the details below.

Otherwise, jump on my email list & I’ll shoot you an update when I share my next blog post.

This week I’m going out on a limb to do something crazy.

I’m launching my Apps Without Code Boot Camp program- which is a 6 week training for non-technical founders who want to build their own app MVPs.

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For the last 2 years I’ve been blogging about my experience building the kollecto.com and artcollectingschool.com apps without writing any code. 

What’s funny is that when I first started, I didn’t even want to blog about this stuff.

But 2 years ago, I went through a program called Orbital Boot Camp, which required me to write weekly blog posts about the progress I was making on my apps. 

Turns out that being forced to blog was a blessing in disguise. 

So many people have told me that I’ve helped them tremendously by giving them access to a play-by-play of my story building apps as a non-technical founder.

And after sharing my story on the TED stage and also at the Lean Startup Conference, I got a lot of people asking me to help them build their own apps without writing code. 

Until now, I’ve been politely saying no to these folks.

But today, I’m launching my Apps Without Code Bootcamp- a program for non-technical founders interested in building software MVPS.

I’ve been super inspired by the countless people who’ve encouraged me thus far & I’m excited to be able to help more people in a hands-on way!

If you know anyone interested in building their own apps, please direct them to appswithoutcode.com & this blog! 

I’d love to see them in my next online program (opening July 2016).

Here’s my talk from the Lean Startup Conference last month. 

This was such an awesome experience... from backstage pep talks with Eric Reis to speaking on a panel I felt totally unqualified to be on ;) 

I met tons of people who wanted me to help them create their own apps without code. And this week I finally started helping people actually brainstorm ways to launch their ideas via my email list.

 It’s been super fun thus far. 

Last week, one of my email subscribers introduced me to the term ‘engineering as marketing’ from Gabe Weinberg’s book, Traction. 

I haven’t read the book, but I love the concept of ‘engineering as marketing’!!

 I looked up Gabe’s Medium post about the topic...

Your team’s engineering skills can get your startup traction directly by building tools and resources that reach more people. You make useful tools like calculators, widgets, and educational microsites to get your company in front of potential customers.

And to me, what’s exciting, is that you no longer have to rely on “your team’s engineering skills” to do this. As a marketing, designer, finance person, etc, you can do engineering as marketing without code!

Here are my favorite examples of engineering as marketing (without code):

notrealtwitter.com- A twitter replica built without writing any code. Marketing airdev.co’s services of building without code for you (if you don’t have the time).

my new project artcollectingschool.com- teaching people about buying affordable art through interactive activities. Helping people feel more comfortable making art purchases via Kollecto

Recap:

In October, I started working 1:1 with an amazing designer named Xander Pollock. He’s been coaching me on Google Venture’s process of UX design.

The first phase in the process was ‘unpacking’. I wrote about that on Monday. The second part was Sketching (that was my favorite part). I wrote about that yesterday.

But the part that pushed me the most was Phase 3- Deciding

I wrote an Amazon-style press release

I pulled in my team to get feedback. I showed them my Solution Sketches and got their feedback on them. Xander taught me this cool process of getting team feedback. My team got to put dots on the sketches, based on what they liked- different dots mean different things and there were a few rounds for dotting.

I used all the feedback to determine what we would prototype

I formalized the Solution Sketches into a storyboard detailing each view of what the prototype would look like & I got another round of feedback.

And then I was off to start phase 4- Prototyping.

I built my prototype using Bubble.is. Today I launched it & sent it to friends, & family, & supporters of Kollecto

Check out my prototype at ArtCollectingSchool.com. I’d love your feedback.

Quick recap from part 1 of this post

In October, I started working 1:1 with an amazing designer named Xander Pollock.

Xander is a badass.

He worked on Inbox by Gmail… and before that, he co-founded a company (Punchd) and sold it to Google.

Xander’s been teaching me about Google Venture’s process of UX design

The first phase in the process is unpacking. I wrote about that yesterday. 

But my favorite part was phase 2- sketching

I did an activity called Crazy 8’s, where you divide paper into an 8-part grid. 

You get 1 minute to sketch a version of an idea for each grid (8 mins total). 

Doing this with Xander was super fun (we did this part in-person) because he rolled up his sleeves and did it with me. We would show each other our ideas & Xander’s a genius so he really inspired me and got my creativity flowing. 

Plus, once you get to the 5th sketch, you really want to stop, but Xander pushed me to finish & sketched 6, 7, & 8 were usually some of the coolest

I learned that words are design too

I took the best Crazy 8 ideas (some of them sucked but others were surprisingly nice ideas) and fleshed them out in Solution Sketches.

Again, Xander did these with me & seeing how an ex-Google designer sketches, really helped me get my own ideas out of my head & onto paper

In October, I started working 1:1 with an amazing designer named Xander Pollock.

Xander is a badass.

He worked on Inbox by Gmail… and before that, he co-founded a company (Punchd) and sold it to Google.

Xander and I met through 500 Startups (he was in batch 1)

and he’s been teaching me about Google Venture’s process of UX design

GV has written about this process here, but it’s a whole different story to learn it directly from someone who has done this process with the GV team, who can customize the process just for you & can give you an accountability structure (which I need. Xander and I video chat once a week and I have homework).

So there are 5 steps in the process:

Unpack

Sketch

Decide

Prototype

Test

I’ve been applying these steps to the way I built Art Collecting School, which launches as part of the ‘test’ phase tomorrow.

The unpacking process was really fun.

I got on the phone with a bunch of Kollecto users. We talked about art & what they wish they knew about art, but mainly we talked about non-art stuff: their favorite books, things they’re proud of, guilty pleasures, etc.

I wrote personas for the 5 different types of users we have at Kollecto (I later built this into an art collecting lesson. See lesson #2 of Art Collecting School)

I wrote a bunch of user stories for each of the personas

I did a competitive analysis, mainly focusing on the cool things that MoMA, Sotheby’s, Christie’s & Museum Hack are doing in the art education space

And I developed some clear KPIs I would use to measure success for Art Collecting School

Lately I’ve been falling asleep to interesting podcasts…

But this one kept me up, furiously taking notes

Highlights:

#1- Seth Godin is experimenting with a super cool pricing model ( in the podcast at 23:30). I’m going to be borrowing from this concept as I launch ArtCollectingSchool.com next week!

#2- I just re-activated my Audible account to check out “Debt” by David Graeber

http://www.forbes.com/sites/geristengel/2015/12/02/cross-cultural-opportunity-leads-to-business-growth/

My talk at TedXDetroit

Well...I guess this is becoming a series!

See part 1 & part 2 here

For over a year, I’ve been chronicling my experiences launching a tech startup, without writing any code.

As Kollecto grows, I get more sophisticated in how I build.

Thus far, my posts have unintentionally been helpful to lots of non-technical founders, so I wanted to share another update on how exactly I’m making this work.

Update:

In May, Kollecto raised $100k from 500 Startups & was invited to join their accelerator program in California.

We entered the program having written zero code. At the time, we had an invisible app that was run by stringing together a handful of existing (logic-based) software tools. The first part of this post is about how I built that app.

By the time we left 500, we had our first ‘real’ web app, plus a cool art matching algorithm- all built without any code.  The second part of this post is about the current app & how we’re building today!

Recap on why I’m doing this:

Part experiment & part necessity.

The experiment- In the past year I’ve had a good number of people share that my process has helped them launch their own startup ideas.  That really fuels me to see how far I can take this! But on top of it all, the process has also been super empowering for me. 

The necessity- 

COST: Building without code has helped me operate a business at a really low cost. Our product/ operational costs are still under $600/mo.

TECHNICAL DEBT: My friend Brennan speaks the truth when he says, “Hell is building fancy stuff that nobody uses.” Building this way lets us spare ourselves of all the technical debt of writing code for features that our users don’t actually want. 

MANAGING DEVS: As a non-technical founder of an early-stage project, I have a unique dilemma. It’s hard to afford top-notch devs. And it’s even harder to manage medium-notch devs… like really, I have no idea if you’re doing a good job or not. I’ve talked to a lot of non-technical founders who have the same problem. For me, Building Without Code was the solution

So here are the tools I used to create v3 of Kollecto’s app:

1) Typeform

to let users sign up & create a ‘taste profile’

2) Zapier

to send data from Typeform to Google Spreadsheets

3) Google Spreadsheets

Using Zapier, I sent each user’s data into a spreadsheet

The ‘raw data’ speadsheet was referenced by a different ‘taste profles’ spreadsheet which put each user into a taste bucket using an “if statement”

For example, if the user had a budget of $100-$300 and was mainly collecting, and was looking for known artists & wanted street art, then the spreadsheet would put that user into a taste bucket called: “Street B”

4) Art Advisors & Upwork

each week, Art Advisors found art for each taste category.

Then, over the weekend, we would have a freelancer on Upwork upload all the art into SurveyGizmo

5) SurveyGizmo

Most surveys have show/hide logic.

If you notice, all the tools I use to ‘build without code’ have heavy logic capabilities- that’s the key to making this work. 

Each artwork  was assigned to be shown to a certain ‘taste group’ by the Upwork virtual assistant.

When we emailed users with a link to their art, we put the user’s info in the URL. We used Campaign Monitor (a Mailchimp alternative) to dynamically create urls for each person. Like this:

“art.kollecto.com?profile=StreetBB&name=Tara&[email protected]”

SurveyGizmo could read the info in the URL & show the right artwork to the right user. 

Building without code- V4

In June, everything I knew about ‘building without code’ changed.

I know that sounds super dramatic, but it’s true!

To be honest, we hit an unbearable place with Kollecto’s ‘invisible app’.

Stringing together a bunch of tools worked well until we hit ~1500 monthly active users… and then it fell apart.

The main issue was that we were still partially relying on human labor.

This was a good and bad thing. Good because human art advisors could read between the lines to understand the tastes of our users. Bad because the human process was much slower & also- each human advisor was limited by his/her own tastes & biases.

But the main problem was speed. There was a period of time where it took us weeks to get art recommendations out to our new users.

So it was clearly time to update our process & technology.

By July I stumbled upon AirDev, an agency that builds apps for people using a new platform, called Bubble- which lets you program without writing code.

PS- If you need an MVP built really fast- talk to these AirDev guys! They’re good!!!!

I had heard of Bubble before and had been meaning to use it...

AirDev was hosting a free 2-weekend workshop on how to use Bubble.

The course was intended for college students at Berkely & Stanford, but they let me sit in on the class.

After the workshop I hired the AirDev team to consult me when I got stuck learning/using Bubble. This isnt their normal business model- they usually build the app for you! But built it myself & did a few consultation sessions with them to learn some of the more complicated tricks in Bubble. 

Here’s what I ended up with & what our current app looks like (built on Bubble):

Home page

Chose Art Type

Sign up

Set a budget

Answer some questions about your taste, based on the genres you selected

Get art recommendations, rate them & we’ll get smarter about your taste over time.

Here’s what some of the logic looks like inside the app. 

If you can understand an ‘if this, then that’ statement, then you can program in Bubble.

Translation: When the art genre/ category button is clicked, then add that category to the user’s list of ‘Art Categories Selected’

Translation: When the art genre/ category button is clicked & the user has already selected that category, then remove that category to the user’s list of ‘Art Categories Selected’

There’s lots of logic like this in Kollecto’s app including a really complicated thread which is our matching algorithm. 

Perfection

Man! There’s never been anything perfect about the apps I’ve built. For example, when we launched v4 in Bubble,  the UX was terrible. 

This kinda stuff happened

And this stuff happened too

Lol I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to share your negative support tickets, but I’m just trying to share the real deal. 

Now, we have a lot of the kinks worked out!

We’re still working out issues with speed & we’re still iterating on the matching algorithm. But we’re getting good feedback!

Community

People ask me all the time, for a list of entreprenuers who also ‘build without code’.  Until this summer, I pretty much thought I was alone. 

But I’ve met some cool people through the Bubble community that are doing cool things!

For example, I’ll leave you with this crazy project by the AirDev team who are doing some cool things while building without code!: Check out  notrealtwitter.com

everydayartcollectors.com

Through Kollecto, I’m learning that most people are intimidated by art. 

No really... Most people think that buying art is more intimidating than buying a car or real estate (from a 2014 study)

So I’m starting a blog, chronicling stories of everyday people who own and collect art.

I’m currently interviewing people for the blog, but I started with my own example.

I'm hoping that the stories on the blog help people understand that you don’t have to be super rich to live with art in your home.

everydayartcollectors.com

Excited to be part of @offscreenmag's new issue. Talking about turning side-projects into full-time projects

Offscreen Mag Issue 11 http://orbitalnyc.com/

Wow! My batch-mate Guy summed up week 2 of our 500 Startups accelerator program perfectly in this video.

Catch the back of my head throughout the video :) 

Good luck today, Batch 12!

Where Kollecto’s most active users live

:)