Rich and Paul discuss how low-code or no code, which promises to replace engineers, doesn't deliver on that promise. Aboard which was at some point a low-code platform for people to import and manage their data collaboratively, was changed because of the realization that the mass public doesn't want to build their own database. Also, people don't seem to know what data is. Aboard has now developed into a revolutionary software where people see immediate value in it.

Hi, I'm Paul Ford

And I'm Rich Citi.

and this is the podcast for a board, a product that

you'll be able to use one day.

We're going to inject a little bit of advice

everybody likes when you inject

especially since we inject a lot of it in the other podcast.

We have Z and Ford advisors.

Uh, I wanna talk a little bit about and tell people what low-code.

Or no code is

code's supposed to be the answer to everything.

It's supposed to be the answer to everything.

can fire all of your engineers.

You don't ever have to write another line of code again.

That is the promise.

Mm-hmm.

. How's, well,

talk about it.

Let's talk about it.

All right.

Low code.

What do you mean?

What is it?

The best way I can define low code or no code, if you want

to really go for it, is that it.

Software that makes software without engineers.

That's how I would define it.

Okay.

And so there's this, and this is, by the way, this isn't a new thing.

It's been around a while.

I just saw an ad from the Zoho people they just launched the no

code or low low-code platform.

And what it is, is it's like, okay, regular people who aren't engineers,

who aren't technical can essentially.

A visual interface, a UI that lets you kind of drag pieces of

software together and then all of a sudden you've got software.

You know, where you do see this for real, for real, is in music.

There's a lot of, like, you make your own instruments by dragging oscillators

and putting lines between them.

Programs like Max and there's, it's sort of, this is actually

pretty normal in that world.

Yes.

And this trend is kind of everywhere, and I'm mentioning this to

you now, Paul, because the first, I would say 18 months of a board's design and

development and the thinking behind it, I think you can unequivocally say we were

building another low, low-code platform.

code.

Uh, I think you could unequivocally say that.

I don't think we're building that anymore, and I want

to talk about why we stopped.

Great.

Okay.

So what were we.

building?

We were building a tool that let you essentially assemble different kinds of.

Data objects.

Let's call them that for a second.

And then you could work on, and there's workflow around them.

So for example, a data object could be a sales lead that moves along

from coming in, uh, inbound to call, scheduled to, uh, proposal drafted.

so it looked like can band meaning like post-its moving across

vertical columns, but the cards themselves had these very strong types.

So the types would be like sales lead, apartment that I want to rent, shoe I

want to buy, um, church group member like, like very, and then you would.

anything

and you, you could add any kind of data to that data and you

could then move things from position A to position B, and it would tell the

other people that they were moving.

So membership dues are processed, shoes are purchased, et cetera.

So it was an engine for doing that, that we, we conceived of and

wanted to build because we had been working together at the agency and

we saw this pattern over and over.

We were building software like this for lots of different people,

and we said, why don't we just build it once and then license it?

to them.

Yes.

And look, there are, it was not revolutionary, mainly because,

uh,

There are a lot of credible tools that do what you just described,

right?

And it wasn't, we were specifically not going for revolutionary.

We weren't.

The big thing worth noting that we thought made it distinct was

chat was kind of built into it.

So you were getting chat

little bit, little bit of slack, a little bit

of air table, a little bit

a pinch of this and a pinch of that,

that little Trello.

And so now we've, on our way, it was still rough around

the edges, but it was starting to become more and more credible.

And then we stopped and I want to talk.

And we stopped for a handful of reasons, mainly because, What we

thought was a pretty cool idea of where to take a pro, the platform.

But part of the reason we stopped is a realization

Hmm.

that I think we had but didn't articulate

it.

Okay.

Okay.

Nobody wants to build software, even if it's drag and drop.

The work involved of designing what these data objects are kind of sucks.

So the way that I was looking at this, cuz my job is

to tell the story and educate people about the product, right?

Like it's a big part of what I do.

And I

like, we're gonna have a really big problem.

And the big problem is that nobody knows what data is.

Explain that.

All right, so low-code tools, ultimately if you, the idea, the fantasy is like,

hey, you won't have to write a line of code and you'll just be able to get,

uh, you'll be able to tell everybody, um, you did it and you will move some

boxes around and you will upload a spreadsheet and, and now you'll have a

worry about the database.

Amazing

software solution all ready to go.

So.

What we were building was this tool that was gonna make all that really easy.

And the way we were focusing was on the data, make it really easy to make kind

of a smart database almost casually and migrated and changed the way it worked

with your friends, like the people you are, you, you're working with.

Anyone could change the database, but it would be smart about that and so on.

So we had this whole big story about data, data, data, data.

Yeah.

And as we told that story, I started to realize the mountain that we had to

climb because no one knows what data is.

They don't know what code is.

Trust me, I know, but they also really don't know what data is.

That's right.

I think.

and but also like there is no product where you can sit down and say,

in the next three weeks, I will teach you everything you need to know so that

you can be really powerful with this.

Unless it's like nuclear engineering or weapon systems.

Yes.

And it turns out nerds like us think it's cool.

Yeah.

Nobody else does.

Nobody else does.

You know it's the spouse test too.

Like we have very smart wives who actually organize and run their own things.

And you showed them this tool and what did they say?

Good for you.

Cool.

Yeah.

I Maybe I could use this.

Yeah.

And I know this is like this entire podcast to this point is just one

teaser trailer after the other.

But when

don't, don't worry, nobody's listening,

But fair enough.

But when we brushed aside what we thought was sort of the software builder, software

tool and focused on the value, the immediate value to customers and users,

it immediately resonated for people.

And that's, I started this podcast by saying there's gonna be a little

piece of advice embedded in here.

Uh, it's hard to kind of,

Convince

Yourself that the things you care about, nobody else does.

I've started to really accept it.

Oh, is this recent Paul?

No, it's been working.

I've been working on it for, well, it's a funny thing because I, I

care really deeply about nerdy stuff and, and very often people are like,

wow, you really care about that.

You should write about that, and I'll share it with a million.

people.

Yeah.

Okay.

And so I have this weird thing where the things I get excited

about, I get to transmit that excitement and the other excited

a huge megaphone.

this huge megaphone, but the reality is then, then you go one

level out and people are like, what?

What are you talking

Well, what she do is you bring it up at the barbershop that

that article you just published,

no,

doesn't really want to talk

you, you can find the point of connection.

Like for instance, I talked for an hour once with a barber who could

have done a little, gone a lot faster an hour, but he really wanted

to talk about the game hitman.

The video game.

Oh yeah,

a good game,

Apparently.

So I learned a lot about it.

And, uh, and you know, actually what's interesting is like, I mean, that,

that's the point of connection, right?

Like, hey, you ever think about like, making video games?

Like you could do that.

I didn't do that.

I just wanted to get my hair cut.

And he told me about the TV he bought specifically to play

him, man, for like 45 minutes.

Seriously, I, I, I have to give it to him.

I was really impressed.

I mean, I respect

cuts hair and then he goes home and he plays hitman.

Uh, so that, but you know, it's like that guy doesn't want to hear about

my theory of abstract data types.

He doesn't and nobody does actually.

Uh, and and what you see with these tools, by the way, and the tools I'm

talking about if you want some examples are like monday.com, uh, click up.

There's sort of these low-code, no-code.

There's others, there's many.

By the way, if you just type in Lord's low-code into into

Google, you'll see a ton.

And what you see with these tools is what?

The way they take hold is they get one person who's technically savvy enough,

who sort of becomes the advocate amongst groups and organizations, and they

effectively evangelize the tool for them.

It's not something that resonates with the masses out of the

well, and it's also, those are the people who gain power from

the tool and they're like, Hey, I want you all to use this because that

way you'll be centered in my world.

Yes.

It validates the work they did, and it puts them in a position where

all of a sudden they've, they've promoted themselves to administrator.

assign you a task.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Again, we're gonna talk about vaporware, even though it's not vapor,

but what's been so excited about sharing what we're doing now with the small

audience, and we can talk about this without sharing what it is because it

still matters and the point matters for this podcast is that people within about

seven minutes say, oh, I could use this.

I can make use of this pretty fast.

I think, okay, so let's get to a point that isn't absolutely

agonizing for someone who doesn't, doesn't have access to the software.

Um, nobody cares about low code.

Really?

That's like a marketing tool that people use to an exact

corporate power upon each other.

Yeah.

People, nobody, you can tell that story all you want.

And we did.

And we did.

And we did.

And the people who care about it are people who are kind of like engineering

adjacent or already project managers.

They use other tools and they're like, all right, that one looks.

okay.

That's right.

Nobody is in, I don't think people are very excited about the idea

of organizing their own, organizing their own data, except for people

who like to organize their own data.

That's right.

And the other promise that we don't, we haven't talked about is that

low-code and no-code supposedly saves money, saves companies money.

I don't have to hire as many engineers.

The weird plot twist there is that you still end up hiring those engineers.

You end up hiring actually low-code experts who are certified in whatever tool

Well, also, let's talk, when we did research for this, when we

started talking to people, we talked to potential enterprise customers and so on.

You know what they would tell us over and over?

Yeah.

We do that in a Google spreadsheet.

It has 5,000 rows

We did hear

everybody shares the Google spreadsheet.

Spreadsheet is the ultimate tool.

And they're like, that's plenty of data for us.

I mean, this looks nice because I could track all the people, uh, who are

working on something instead of trying to intuit it from a Google sheet sell.

Like they, like, basically when we would show people aboard, they would think

to themselves, oh, this is like Google Sheets, but I know everyone involved.

That's right,

Yeah.

tld R.

It's tempting to make it for yourself, make it for the world, and I think

that's, that was a key moment for us when we went out with this change

and saw that people connected to it.

Well that sounds nice, but what we actually did was stand up

with an enterprise product and say, we think we have something really good.

And people are like, yeah, it seems pretty good.

And then go, actually, we're gonna risk way more failure.

Like you, you, you, that advice made it sound like we, we've absolutely

found the goal that we figured it all.

We have no.

We know how to sell the enterprises really

We had a low, we had a low risk strategy, and now

we have an extremely high risk

strategy.

That's true.

But it feels, it feels a lot better.

It does feel a

it's a better product.

I like this product more than the old one.

And that's, that's a big deal.

That's what I care about.

Yeah.

Keep up with us.

I swear to you Paul Ford, we're gonna show this software.

I think we, the day

want to tell the audience, I'm like, it's too soon for a podcast.

Nope.

We gotta get out there.

Gotta get out there.

Oh, not rich.

Come on

look, man, it'll, it'll happen.

And the day we, we talk about the actual software, it'll be a u2.

Let's make a commitment to the

this company is gonna be so successful that they're gonna

take this podcast away from us.

That's my prediction.

That's, I'm okay with that.

I'm utterly okay with it.

Uh, keep up with us.

This is the ABOARD podcast.

I'm Rich Citi.

Follow us on Twitter at aboard and send us an email hello@aboard.com.

We'll talk to you soon.