How to sell to a $5bn 🦄 + Sahil Lavingia joining NCF 🎉 + Build an NFT Chrome extension! 🤯

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Selling to a $5bn 🦄 company

It took Ben Tossell just 26 months to launch, grow, and sell Makerpad to automation tool, Zapier.

Before being acquired, Makerpad was turning over in excess of $450,000 ARR.

Ben had no coding knowledge before launching his startup. Makerpad was born and raised (and still thrives) entirely on no-code tools.

If there's ever been evidence that the sky's the limit for non-technical entrepreneurs, this is it.

Here is Ben's story.

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Humble Beginnings 🔰

Makerpad started as a side project for Ben.

He wanted to build apps but didn't know how to code. And he wasn't comfortable spending 9 months learning how to code.

He didn't want to find a technical co-founder either.

This is how he described it—

These "new ideas" were mostly templated apps such as an "AirBnB for X", or an "Uber for Y".

Left with no other option, Ben started to dabble in no-code tools to build out his ideas.

The Birth of Makerpad 🌱

His products themselves didn't get much traction, but the videos and screencasts he put out building these apps generated a lot of interest from his audience.

V1 of Makerpad was screencasts of Ben building no-code versions of popular apps.

It had content that would help people build side projects without code.

But the business model was a monthly plan and a promise of a new tutorial every week.

Ben wasn't comfortable with that.

He felt stressed out about producing tutorials consistently, and felt "indebted" to his users to deliver value to them every month.

That's when he knew the project wasn't working for him.

Instead, Ben became very intentional about the company he wanted to create.

He wanted to build things for the sake of building, and he wanted to build them whenever he wanted—

The positioning of Makerpad is that once you pay the annual fee, you get access to the entire back catalog.

It's not the promise of future new content at a regular schedule.

The moment you pay, value has been delivered to you as a user. Everything after that is a bonus!

The Acquisition 🤝

After 18 months of Ben working on Makerpad full-time, Makerpad was approached by Zapier.

And it all started with a tweet.

​Ben tweeted that Airtable and Zapier were the top 2 tools used by Makerpad members, to which entrepreneur Walter Chen replied that one of them should buy Makerpad.

Walter Chen @smalter one of them should buy @makerpad asap Walter Chen @smalter this tracks my intuition that if there's going to be a central utility of no code, it'll be either @airtable or @zapier. puts an interesting strategic frame on airtable's decision to build native workflow automation into airtable. twitter.com/bentossell/sta… September 15th 2020 3 Retweets 58 Likes

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Zapier's CEO Wade Foster saw that tweet and got on a call with Ben, which would eventually lead to the acquisition of Makerpad.

Zapier positions itself as the glue that binds all the no-code tools together. You can automate workflows and connect different apps together to build functionality.

At the time of purchase in March 2021, Zapier was valued at $5 billion, and Ben had grown Makerpad to over $450,000 ARR.

The acquisition means that Ben now reports to Wade, but he still gets to run Makerpad the way he wants to.

Lessons from Makerpad's story 💡

Key learnings for indie hackers and those using no-code to build online success:

👉 Start with what you know. Ben worked at Product Hunt before starting Makerpad, and was surrounded by new tech products every day.

👉 High quality content sites and communities have great value.

👉 Often, just repositioning an existing product can work well, like Ben did with Makerpad and Nadav Keyson did with Riverside.

👉 Know what works for you and focus your business on that. Ben gave up the monthly recurring model because he wasn't comfortable with it.

👉 Pursue your ideas even if you lack technical knowledge, which can be improved as you test out no-code tools.

👉 Control your environment; join the right communities that get you to take action. Ben was part of Maker Hunt, an invite only slack community for Product Hunt makers.

👉 Build side projects. They are great way to test ideas and see what sticks. Ben had multiple side projects before Makerpad.

👉 Build then learn. No-one has all the answers right away and everyone fails somewhere. You'll learn what works and doesn't much more quickly once you start building.

👉 Build, learn and grow in public. The more people who know your story, the more interested and invested in your work they will be.

​Share this story.

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📺 New tutorials

🔩 Tool-Path: Build a Chrome extension with Bildr

One of the most popular requests in no-code is a way to build a Chrome extension. Through this tool path, our Creator in Residence, Tessa, will show you how to use Bildr to create a Chrome extension that helps you easily check the rarity of a Non-Fungible Token (NFT).

​View this tool-path.

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🧑‍🏫 Courses

🎉 Sahil Lavingia (The Minimalist Entrepreneur) joining No-Code Fundamentals!

Gumroad founder and new author Sahil Lavingia will be joining us for a special one-off live Q&A in the next cohort of No-Code Fundamentals which starts November 2nd.

Sahil is much loved in the maker community, having grown a successful startup that to date has helped creators earn more than $520 million—and for candidly charting his highs and struggles along the way.

His first book, The Minimalist Entrepreneur, which goes on sale later this month, is "the manifesto for a new generation of founders who would rather build great companies than big ones."

Not only will Sahil join us for an exclusive live session, but all students of the next cohort will also each receive a free copy of Sahil's book! 👏

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🤩 The No-Code Playbook

In case you missed it, we've published our first ever playbook! Get it here 👇

​Get the playbook.

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📅 Events

(Recording) 🌴 No More 9-5: A Special Q&A With Makerpad Graduates

Thank you to everyone who joined our panel event on Wednesday! We appreciate you all taking the time to connect with our fellow panelists, who had so many inspiring things and anecdotes to share.

​Here's the event's recording link if you weren't able to join us or would just like to revisit some of the advice gems each of our panelists shared.

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🚀 Community Projects

​TinyLaunch is Live 🚀 - Requesting Beta Testers, by Paul.

"Hi All, I have launch a Bubble product called TinyLaunch - a place to save all of your crazy product ideas 💡 Why would you want to use it? Well, after spending countless hours thinking about the process founders go through getting their ideas off the ground from validation, market research, product roadmap, and user acquisition - I have brought them all to TinyLaunch!"

​No-Code & Low-Code Development: The Ultimate Guide Pt. 1, by Mariam Ispiryan.

"There has been a lot of mixed talk about low-code and no-code development over the past couple of years. Being confused about what these terms mean can be a significant barrier to adopting these approaches. ...That’s why I’ve compiled some of the most important information on no- and low-code development to ensure that your next project is a success."​
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​NFT Launch List side project, by Chris Brownridge.

"Built a side project using Typedream & Google Apps Script yesterday to pull newly created NFT projects from Opensea into a daily report. No idea if it's something people would want, but it was a fun 3 hours! Check it out"

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💼 Jobs

​Freelance No-Code Designer/Developer – Growth Collective

​Growth Engineer – Stacker

​Product Engineer – Stacker

​Director of Product: Canvas – Airdev

​Growth Marketing Manager – Airdev

​(Senior) Software Engineer - Backend – Priceloop

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Until next week!
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Ben & the Makerpad team ✌️