Every founder eventually reaches a point where they realise that just because their product exists, it doesn’t mean people will buy it. It’s a tough pill to swallow, but it’s also the best feedback you can get, because it forces you to figure out why.

I recently had a chat with the founder of a fitness planning app that highlighted for me, the gap between what founders think people need and what people are actually willing to pay for.

Here’s how it played out.

The Conversation: Why I Wouldn’t Pay for This App

A founder reached out after I commented on their post about balancing fitness with a busy schedule. They introduced their app as a way to fit movement into unpredictable routines. I am active, and do make sure I spend part of my week exercising. It sounded interesting, but I wasn’t convinced it was something I’d personally pay for.

These were the key points from the conversation:

• Budget and priorities: "I'd put Spotify (for listening at the gym) ahead of your product. Netflix too."

• Existing habits: "I don’t need to plan workouts in an app,I just do it in my head."

• Competition: "You’re up against free alternatives, like calendars and personal organisers."

• Is it a real problem? "It’s a nice-to-have for me, not a must-have. It feels more like a feature, not a standalone product."

The founder explained their app isn’t just a simple reminder app, it adapts to weather conditions, adjusts schedules, and includes gamification to keep users engaged. These are all nice features.

But the problem? None of that was clear to me when I first looked at it.

That back-and-forth led to some key insights about what makes, or breaks a product and its suitability for a particular market.

1. "Nice-to-Have" vs. "Must-Have"

The biggest hurdle for any startup is moving from nice-to-have to must-have status.

• If your product doesn’t solve a painful problem, people won’t pay for it.

• This app aims to make fitness planning easier, but many people (like me) already manage workouts without it.

• The real question to ask is: Is this a problem people are desperate to solve?

2. The Status Quo is a Significant Competitor

A lot of startups assume they’re competing with other apps, but in reality, they’re competing with what people already do today.

• I plan workouts in my head. I check the weather if I am choosing between booking a tennis court or going to the gym. I check with tennis playing friends on Whatsapp about their availability. Others may use Google Calendar, Apple Watch, or a notebook.

• When you are building an app, you should consider: Why would someone switch from what they’re already doing to my app?

• If the answer isn’t obvious, the product isn’t compelling enough yet.

3. Perceived Value Matters More Than Features

Think about where you are making mistake in assuming users will instantly “get it.” If you are wrapped in creating something, you are too close to it. You need to get some perspective. Take a step back. Your assumptions are not my assumptions. And try to frame the way your present the product in those terms.

• I looked at the website on my phone and I thought this was just a workout planner.

• I looked at the desktop version after the founder later explained it does much more, weather-based scheduling, accountability, gamification.

• If that wasn’t clear to me, how many other potential users are bouncing before they even understand the value?

Fix: Messaging needs to be crystal clear. If users don’t see what makes your product different in five seconds, they’re gone. And that’s a shame.

4. You’re Competing for a Slice of the Wallet

Try to remember you are not just competing in your niche. In reality, your’re competing for a share of the customer’s budget.

• I’d rather pay for Spotify (to listen to music while working out) than a fitness planner.

• If this app costs $10/month, I need to know why it’s worth it.

• Many consumer apps fail because they assume people will add them on top of existing subscriptions. In reality, they’re replacing something else. So what’s in it for me? It’s the sort of thing that might be great, as a premium feature on Strava, but as a whole app?

5. First Impressions Make or Break You

Users make snap decisions. That’s it. Instantly.

• On mobile, this app looked like a basic planner. On desktop, I could see there was more to it. I only looked because I wanted to help the founder understand more about my reservations.

• That difference in presentation can mean the difference between someone signing up or walking away.

• Attention spans are short, your landing page and onboarding have to hook people immediately.

What are the lessons for Founders?

Product-market fit isn’t about how great your product is, it’s about how much people feel they need it.

• If your product solves a burning problem, people will pay for it.

• If your product competes with existing habits, it needs a compelling reason for people to switch.

• If your messaging doesn’t communicate the value immediately, you’re losing potential customers before they even try it. It won’t matter who good your distribution is, you will struggle to move the dial.

The key lesson here? PMF isn’t a switch you flip. It’s a process.

Early feedback, even when it’s tough to hear, is gold. It tells you where to refine, what to concentrate on, and what might need to change completely. It will help you understand the market more and help understand where people struggle.

The truth is that people won’t pay for something just because you built it. Even if you have a great marketing plan. They’ll only pay if they believe it solves a problem worth paying for.

Does your product pass that test?

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If you are interest in my work, then head over to Orzo Blue. I am a Certified Bubble Developer and work with clients build products, MVPs and integrating AI and Machine Learning into their business.

AI and the Creative Industries: Resistance, Regulation, or Reinvention?

On February 25th, 2025, over a thousand musicians, including Kate Bush, Damon Albarn, and Annie Lennox, released a silent album titled Is This What We Want? in protest against the UK government's proposal to allow AI companies to use copyrighted work without permission. The album, composed of recordings of empty studios and performance spaces, serves as a stark warning: if AI continues to exploit creative content unchecked, the livelihoods of artists could be erased.

The protest raises a broader question that extends beyond music: how should industries respond to the rapid advancement of AI? Resistance? Regulation? Or adaptation?

The Streaming and Sampling Analogy: Lessons for AI

AI’s disruption of music isn’t new. We've seen similar technological upheavals before:

• Streaming: When Napster and later Spotify emerged (if you’ve not watched the Netflix Series, The Playlist, on the emergence of Spotify, you should), the music industry fought back, but streaming ultimately became the dominant model. Artists had to adapt to a new revenue structure.

• Sampling: The use of pre-recorded music in new songs was initially the Wild West, but it quickly became regulated through licensing agreements and lawsuits, creating a new economic model.

In both cases, resistance was futile. Instead, the industry adapted, leveraging legal and technological solutions to ensure artists were compensated. AI follows the same pattern—initial chaos, followed by regulation and new business models.

Why This Matters Beyond Music: AI’s Impact on Other Industries

Music is just one of many industries facing the AI dilemma. Writers, visual artists, coders, and even sales professionals are seeing AI encroach on their expertise:

• Writers fear AI-generated content reducing demand for their work.

• Designers worry that AI tools like Midjourney and DALL·E will undercut their value.

• Developers see AI writing functional code, raising questions about automation in programming.

• Sales teams are beginning to use AI for lead scoring, objection handling, and real-time coaching.

The same forces that disrupted music will impact other knowledge-based professions. The question isn’t if AI will change these industries, but how professionals can position themselves to retain control over the value AI creates.

The Case for AI Partnerships: What Creatives and Businesses Can Do

Some media organizations, including The Guardian, have signed licensing agreements with AI firms. This might be the future for musicians, writers, and other creatives: licensing work to AI companies rather than fighting them outright.

This approach aligns with a simple truth: technology has made creative work a commodity. Whether creatives like it or not, distribution is now easy for tech companies but hard for individuals. The power imbalance means artists need new models of engagement.

• Instead of outright resistance, creatives and businesses should advocate for structured compensation models—just as sampling led to licensing fees.

• AI companies should be required to cite and compensate original creators when their work is used to train AI models.

• Businesses should explore AI augmentation rather than fear AI replacement—using AI tools to enhance efficiency, rather than replace human expertise.

What This Means for My Work and Clients

I work with startups, sales teams, and entrepreneurs navigating AI’s impact on their industries. The conversation around AI in music mirrors the same conversations I have with my clients—AI is here, and it’s changing the landscape.

• In sales, AI tools like Counterloop can assist SDRs in handling objections, refining pitches, and improving performance, rather than replacing human connection.

• In product development, startups are leveraging AI-powered automation to scale faster, but still need to build differentiated value beyond AI-driven automation.

• In content creation, businesses need to rethink their strategies—integrating AI for efficiency but ensuring human creativity and oversight remain central.

So what’s the key point? The choice isn’t AI vs. humans—it’s about who controls the value AI creates. The companies and individuals who strategically integrate AI into their workflow will win. Those who resist without adaptation risk falling behind.

Final Thoughts

If the past teaches us anything, it’s that technological disruption can’t be stopped—but it can be shaped. Musicians, writers, sales professionals, and business leaders need to engage in the AI conversation not just with resistance, but with strategy.

The AI revolution is happening. The question is: will you work with it or fight against it?

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If you are interest in my work, then head over to Orzo Blue. I am a Certified Bubble Developer and work with clients building MVPs and integrating AI/ML into their business.

As I engage with clients on building their applications, one recurring theme emerges: the importance of retaining intellectual property (IP) including a clear pathway for potential migration away from Bubble. While Bubble offers a powerful platform for quickly developing minimum viable products (MVPs), it raises concerns about the long-term implications of being tied to a no-code solution; especially one with a hosting lock in.

On the one hand start ups need to show revenue to get interest from investors, where as in the short term they need to prove their idea is viable. This doesn’t mean Bubble is not the solution. It just means you need to plan a little more carefully.

The Intellectual Property Concern

The concerns of start ups are they worry that building their application on a no-code platform like Bubble might limit their control over the intellectual property of their software. Business thrives on ideas and execution, but there are situations, such as raising funds, where investors may hold back for fear of vendor lock in.

This fear also relates to the reliance on one platform's infrastructure and tools, which could later change, become unavailable or unviable. It also about having control, managing scalability or pivoting in ways that exceed the perceived capabilities of the no-code platforms.

And likewise investors raise concerns when they feel their investment is not under the full ownership of the start up. That being said, it should not be a case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Bubble as a Front-End Solution

Bubble's strength lies in providing a rapid development environment and the means to iterate ideas quickly. It means you can quickly develop ideas and solutions and get feedback. You can see very early on, before you get to testing it with real users, whether your ideas are valid or not. This helps business raise funds.

It also serves as an effective front-end solution, where the user interface and user experience are paramount. For many startups, this provides space to focus on validating the business model and refining the platform without getting bogged down by technical details.

Learn more Orzo Blue and how we work with No Code platforms to develop applications for our clients.

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Building IP Outside of Bubble

For companies concerned with IP and scalability, the architecture can be designed in such a way Bubble handles only the front-end, while the back-end logic and data management are handled by more traditional, code-based systems. Here’s how this can be structured:

1. Use Bubble for What It Does Best: Leverage Bubble for rapid prototyping and to build out the UI/UX. This means both developer and start up can work together and see how things are shaping up, and feedback quickly and then iterate.

2. Develop Core IP Off-Platform: Building the proprietary algorithms, data processing, and storage components outside of Bubble using traditional development frameworks. This can be done using custom servers or cloud functions that connect to Bubble via APIs.

3. API Integration: Bubble supports integration with external APIs. This enables the application to communicate with back-end services developed in other languages or hosted on other platforms, ensuring that the critical IP components remain secure and proprietary. Doing this using Bubble is easy and very quick.

An Example

This is all very well in theory, but what does it look like in reality?

In a previous post I talked about how AI and Supabase can be combined to strengthen apps developed using Bubble. There we talked about how Supabase can be self-hosted and scaled, whilst being integrated with AI to enhance the features of machine leaning tools like recommendation engines.

In this example my approach was to use the following:

• Supabase: Which is a realtime database you can use with Vectors to store embeddings derived from AI engines. This helps you understand the value of the data you have been collecting and processing.

• Open AI: Connect to their API and pass your data, process it and return the values to your self hosted Supabase database.

• Node JS: Develop your own intellectual property using serverside Javascript. This can be used to orchestrate between Supabase, Open AI and Bubble, passing data in all directions.

• Bubble.io: Use their API connector to drive and co-ordinate business logic and surface the results using a set of webpages developed in Bubble.

It means you can ingest data from outside sources, directly into your database, using Supabase’s API wrapper; send it to Open AI for analysis, save the results and then present them in a dashboard using Bubble.

Benefits of This Hybrid Approach

1. Speed to Market: By using Bubble for the front-end, you can quickly test your ideas and iterate quickly based upon feedback without significant upfront investment in custom software development.

2. Flexibility: You can develop core technology independently of the front-end, giving you ownership, scalability and flexibility to change and scale the back-end without being tied to a specific platform.

3. Cost Efficiency: You have a means to manage your development costs by focusing resources on creating the unique aspects of the application that offer competitive advantages, rather than on routine programming.

4. Proof of Concept and MVP Testing: You can effectively use this setup to validate your market and refine your product offerings. If the concept proves viable, you can assess the future direction at that point and plot a path to migrating away from Bubble.

Conclusion

Bubble is an excellent tool for start ups who want to quickly turn their ideas into functional MVPs, but there are trade-offs to consider.

While this approach offers a range of benefits, it also comes with trade-offs such as the need for more sophisticated architecture planning and potentially higher complexity in managing two separate systems (front-end on Bubble and back-end elsewhere). For many, this approach is worthwhile in having control over intellectual property and scalability.

It is an approach that enables startups to protect their intellectual property and maintain flexibility for future growth and scaling. This can be done by leveraging external services, hosting, APIs, and frameworks like Node JS to separate areas of concern.

It not only mitigates using a no-code platform but also provides a longer term pathway for evolving away from an MVPs to a full-scale enterprise application.

Faced with all the excitement and decision making when starting off a new business idea, choosing the right technology stack can make or break your project. As a Bubble developer, I've seen how leveraging the right tools can influence the outcome. One tool that stands out to me is Supabase.

In this blog post, I will explore why Supabase is something you really should consider using and how it can be used to produce quick, scalable, and resilient results. Especially if you are looking at a business ideas, where you need a reliable way to regularly receive and process large amounts of data.

Why Supabase?

Supabase is an open-source Backend-as-a-Service (BaaS) that provides developers with a powerful set of tools to build and scale applications. It’s built on top of PostgreSQL which, depending upon how you implement it, is a robust and reliable relational database.

So why is Supabase useful?

1. Speed of Development: With Supabase, you can get started really quickly. And you have things built in (eg. an API and Authorisation/Access) that mean you can think about putting your ideas into practice, rather than spending time setting things up.

2. Ease of Use: As a broadly no-code platform, Supabase integrates seamlessly with Bubble, enabling you to create powerful AI and ML applications without needing to write extensive backend code. It means you can receive large datasets, and then send them to Open AI for processing, and the store the results in a searchable and usable way, easily accessible by your No Code app.

3. Scalability and Resilience: Supabase is designed to scale with your business. Whether you’re handling a handful of users or millions, Supabase’s infrastructure can grow with you. Additionally, you can also deploy it in a high availability configurations, which means you have make it resilient (failover and load balanced) even under heavy loads.

4. Real-time Capabilities: Supabase provides real-time database updates, giving you the chance to build interactive applications that respond instantly to user inputs.

Learn how Orzo Blue can help you take your ideas to market using No Code tools and platforms.

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Key Features of Supabase

1. PostgreSQL Database: At its core, Supabase uses PostgreSQL, which depending upon how you use it, is a robust database that supports SQL queries, transactions, and sophisticated data types (like AI embeddings).

2. Realtime: It has built-in real-time capabilities that enable your applications to react to changes in the database instantly. This is really important when you are developing interactive applications. e.g. an AI chatbot

3. Webhooks: You can connect back to your own or any other application to trigger another workflow, when anything in the database changes. So for example, new data is sent to you, you can set of another task to analyse that data using AI.

4. Authentication and Authorisation: Supabase has a comprehensive auth system, which also has support for multiple sign-in methods (email, OAuth, etc.), ensuring secure access to your application.

5. Storage: Secure and scalable file storage solution integrated with your database, making it easy to manage files and media.

6. APIs and SDKs: I think this my favourite feature. You can write your own API; but why not get started with what is already there and fill in and customise where gaps appear. Supabase comes with automatically generated APIs and client libraries that mean we can connect it up to your Bubble app and build the interface and functionality you need.

7. Edge Functions: These are features you can use to deliver content to your users in geo-optimised locations. So for example, static content can be delivered from CDN (caches) nearer your users; reducing latency and responses times.

Hosting Options

Supabase offers flexible hosting options to suit various business needs:

1. Supabase's Managed Hosting: By hosting your application directly on Supabase's infrastructure, you benefit from a fully managed service with automatic updates, scaling, and security patches. This is ideal for businesses that want to focus on development without worrying about server maintenance. But it does come with metered CPU billing.

2. Self-Hosting: If you require more control over your environment, and cost, you can self-host Supabase on your own infrastructure. This can be done on any cloud provider, including DigitalOcean (fixed costs), AWS & Google Cloud (metered costs).

Leveraging AI with Supabase

One of the key features of Supabase is its ability to integrate seamlessly with AI technologies, providing a robust platform for data analysis and machine learning.

1. Data Analysis: Supabase can receive and manage large datasets. Using its API wrapper, you can easily pass this data to AI services like OpenAI for analysis. This enables you to find valuable insights in your data without extensive large and expensive amounts of development time. e.g. for targeted email marketing.

2. Vectors & Embeddings Creation: Supabase’s integration with AI means you can very easily create sets of embeddings and data vectors. When you are using AI and mass amounts of data, to use it effectively, you create a series of vectors to understand the distance between related types of data. This means you can use these differences understand how data relates together and then use it to create features like recommendation engines.

3. Machine Learning: With Supabase, you can continuously feed data into the system, refine it and create a valuable dataset for your app to use (e.g. user preferences and interests). The more data you feed in to the database, the more accurate the outcomes.

Practical Applications

• Customer Insights: Use AI to analyse customer data, gaining insights into behaviour patterns and preferences. This can drive ever more accurate marketing strategies and product development.

• Operational Efficiency: Implement machine learning models to predict maintenance needs, optimise supply chains, or improve inventory management.

• Enhanced User Experience: Real-time capabilities and AI-driven personalisation can create dynamic and engaging user experiences, increasing customer satisfaction and retention.

Conclusion

Supabase offers a powerful, scalable, and resilient platform, ideal for startups building MVPs and beyond. Its combination of rapid deployment capabilities, and a strong feature set make it a good choice to get things going and to create something valuable in as easy way.

But that is not all, you can also configure it for high availability, which means you an put in place failover and load balancing to ensure it will always be there to process your data and feed your app.

As a Bubble developer, I am excited about the potential of Supabase to transform how we build and scale applications for my clients. Whether you choose Supabase's managed hosting for convenience or opt for self-hosting to meet specific requirements, Supabase provides the tools and infrastructure you need to succeed, especially if you’re looking to use of AI and machine learning to drive your business forward.

Over my 25-year journey in technology and development, I have witnessed significant changes in the tools and methodologies we use. As a founder and developer, I have experienced both traditional development and the emerging trend of no-code solutions. Through these experiences, I've learned that no-code platforms are game-changers, especially for early-stage startups.

The no-code revolution

No-code platforms empower business-oriented individuals with technical skills to bring their ideas to life quickly and efficiently. These platforms provide a framework that allows you to focus on what matters most: solving business problems and delivering value to clients and end-users. Unlike traditional development, which requires extensive coding knowledge and long development cycles, no-code platforms offer a more accessible and agile approach.

Why no-code?

1. Shorter development Cycles: With no-code platforms, ideas come to fruition quickly. This rapid development allows for fast assessment and adaptation, enabling businesses to pivot and iterate without the long wait times associated with traditional development.

2. Managed complexity: No-code platforms handle much of the technical overhead, allowing you to concentrate on solving core business problems. This reduces the complexity involved in development and lets you focus on your business goals.

3. Simplified database management: The flexible data models in no-code platforms make it easier to adjust and implement changes. This adaptability is crucial for startups that need to evolve rapidly based on market feedback.

4. Integrated web servers: Starting with no-code means you don't have to deal with the intricacies of server and web server architecture. This lets you focus on developing and deploying features quickly.

5. Streamlined development: With fewer steps and less detailed coding, turning ideas into features is more straightforward and faster, ensuring that you can respond to market needs promptly.

Learn how Orzo Blue can help you take your idea to market, using no-code tools to develop your start up idea.

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Cost and resource efficiency

1. Lower initial costs: No-code development does not require large developer teams or extensive infrastructure, making it a cost-effective option for startups.

2. Reduced overheads: Savings are realized not just in development but also in ongoing maintenance, as no-code platforms typically handle many maintenance tasks automatically.

3. Efficient resource allocation: By focusing on delivering core business value rather than getting bogged down by technical details, no-code development ensures that resources are used efficiently.

Flexibility and customization

1. Rapid prototyping: No-code platforms allow for quick iteration and adaptation based on market feedback. This is particularly valuable in fields like machine learning, where unexpected patterns can emerge and prompt changes in direction.

2. Greater flexibility: Features can be tweaked easily without starting from scratch. The absence of extensive lines of code means there’s no risk of missing outdated code that could introduce bugs during updates.

Traditional development: A comparison

Despite the advantages of no-code, traditional development still has its place, particularly for more complex and customized applications. Here’s how it compares:

1. Speed and efficiency: Traditional development has longer cycles and requires more detailed work, which can delay time-to-market.

2. Team and resource requirements: Larger teams and specialized developers are needed, often leading to higher costs and more extensive project management.

3. Project management: The complexity of managing larger teams and detailed projects can lead to misunderstandings and longer feedback loops, which are less ideal during the initial stages of idea validation.

4. Cost implications: The cost of skilled developers and infrastructure is significantly higher in traditional development.

Conclusion

In my experience, no-code platforms like Bubble provide a cost-effective, flexible, and efficient pathway for development. This approach contrasts with traditional methods, which, while offering deep customization and scalability, come with higher costs and longer development times.

By choosing a no-code solution, startups can benefit from rapid market entry and the ability to adapt quickly to evolving requirements. This strategy is especially aligned with the needs of early-stage startups, where validating ideas and achieving product-market fit are paramount.

No-code is not just a tool; it’s a strategic enabler that allows startups to preserve their budgets while maximizing return on investment. By starting simple and smart, startups can focus on what truly matters—delivering value to clients and users, validating their business model, and scaling as needed.

Technology is always evolving. Slowly but surely over time we see big changes. And n a way we are now seeing a fascinating full-circle moment.

Thirty years ago, organisations were often to compelled to build their own solutions due to the scarcity and high cost of off-the-shelf software. This era saw enterprises customising tools like Excel and Access, crafting macros to automate routine tasks and generate essential reports.

It meant teams could play and manipulate data to generate their own reporting mechanisms and they could be distributed easily within the organisation.

As Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) emerged, the need for in-house development diminished significantly. SaaS offered a range of cost-effective solutions with manageable monthly fees, reducing the burden on businesses to develop and maintain their own systems. This shift democratised access to advanced tools, enabling even small businesses to leverage sophisticated software without substantial upfront investments.

The growth of SaaS has introduced new challenges. Many businesses find themselves juggling multiple subscriptions, each addressing a specific need but collectively adding up to significant costs. This fragmentation often means there is a need to integrate these various platforms, through a patchwork of APIs and intermediate solutions reminiscent of an enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems.

Interestingly, the software industry is now returning to its roots, thanks to the advent of no-code platforms. These tools make it easier for businesses to regain control over their processes and information architecture without requiring extensive technical expertise. Platforms like Make and Zapier mean analysts with in existing teams can join up all the different systems, enabling businesses to "glue" their SaaS tools together efficiently.

Taking it a step further, businesses can utilise no-code platforms like Bubble or Noodl to develop comprehensive in-house solutions. These platforms empower companies to build bespoke ERPs or workflow systems tailored precisely to their needs, combining the best of both worlds: the customisation of in-house solutions and the efficiency of modern development tools.

How can businesses strategically navigate and balance between SaaS solutions and in-house development to optimise their operations and maintain control over their technology stack.

We thought we’d look at how this can benefit business. How could you create an advantage for your business?

Learn how Orzo Blue can help you get started developing in house tools to build tools to model your business’s workflow.

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1. Customization:

   • Tailored to Specific Needs: In-house tools can be designed to meet the actual requirements of the business. If the team is fully involved, specific workflows and processes can be taken in to account.

   • Flexible Features: Where things don’t fit, you can easily modify and adapt without being constrained by the limitations of a generic SaaS product.

2. Integration with Existing Systems:

   • Seamless Integration: Custom tools can be seamlessly integrated and synchronised with your existing systems and databases, giving you a consistent flow of data across all platforms.

   • API Control: With in-house tools, you have full control over API integrations, providing you with a reliable and secure connections between systems.

3. Data Ownership and Security:

   • Data Control: Building in-house ensures that you have complete control over your data, reducing risks associated with data breaches or loss due to third-party mishandling. You can host the data where you need to and have access to it, easily at all times.

   • Enhanced Security: Custom tools can be designed with your specific security protocols in mind, offering higher levels of protection compared to off-the-shelf solutions. Although, you are reliant upon your team understanding the risks and staying up to date with changes in security methodology.

4. Scalability:

   • Adaptability to Growth: In-house tools can be scaled and adapted as the business grows and evolves, without the constraints often imposed by third party platforms. You don’t need to commit too early. You can grow the tools as your ideas and decision making impact your business.

   • Performance Optimisation: Custom solutions can be optimised for the needs of the business.

5. Cost Efficiency:

   • Avoiding Vendor Lock-In: Building in-house eliminates dependency on a third-party vendor, which can help avoid potential issues with price increases, service downtimes, or discontinued services.

   • Less Recurring Fees: There will of course be the cost for hosting the solution in-house and there will be support costs for staff to manage the resources. But these might be similar or overlap with the staff that also develop the system.

   • Scalability: Custom solutions can be designed to scale with your business, avoiding costly upgrades or pricing tiers often associated with SaaS products.

6. Competitive Advantage:

   • Proprietary Technology: Developing unique tools can provide a competitive edge, because they have features not available in standard off the shelf SaaS solutions.

   • Innovation: In-house development enables innovation and experimentation, which will help teams identify opportunities because they have a greater understanding of the information the business holds. Your team can easily work with your developers to generate what-if scenarios to test out ideas.

   • True Understanding: Using your own team to develop your internal workflow means you have the business knowledge in hand to create what you need with a workflow that suits your team.

7. Ownership and Control:

   • Full Control: Developing in-house gives your business complete control over the tools, including its development roadmap, feature updates, and maintenance schedules. You can reprioritise as you go.

   • Intellectual Property: Owning the software outright can be a valuable intellectual property asset, which can potentially offer a competitive advantage and add value to your own balance sheet; also opening up the potential for licensing and monetisation.

8. User Experience:

   • Enhanced User Experience: Tools can be designed in collaboration with the end-users, who work with the developers to create a greater understanding of the problems they are trying to solve.

   • Faster Adoption: The team will be bought in to the development process and therefore keen to use the tools once they are ready.

9. Support and Maintenance:

   • Dedicated Support: With in-house development, support can be more responsive and aligned with the business's priorities.

   • Continuous Improvement: The business can continuously improve and update the tool based on user feedback and as they go along.

   • Control Over Updates: You can schedule updates and maintenance at times that are least disruptive to your business operations.

Conclusion

The evolution of business technology has come full circle, from early in-house solutions to the SaaS revolution, and now back to customised platforms. No-code and low-code tools have democratised software development. This means businesses can create tailored solutions that align with their own objectives.

Building in-house not only gives businesses control over the direction of their platforms but also enables them to own valuable intellectual property. Bespoke solutions can precisely match team workflows, meaning higher productivity and hopefully a competitive edge.

Any business taking this approach would hope for more better decision making, because they have more of the data they need at hand, and geared towards the goals of the business.

Building artificial intelligence and machine learning models can unlock many opportunities for your business. To fully capitalise on this potential, it's essential to engage with your data and develop models that extract value from it.

Bubble.io is a development tool that helps you carry out data analysis and model building by integrating your ideas through the tool with an external AI engine. It enables you to iterate model building without the need for extensive coding

The true value is derived from the data models and the application of business domain knowledge to problem-solving. To do this effectively, you need to be as close to the process as possible.

Before diving deeper, it's important to understand what AI and ML are.

Understanding AI and ML

Articial Intelligence (AI): The overarching concept of machines performing tasks that would require intelligence if done by humans.

Machine Learning (ML): A specific subset of AI that involves the development of algorithms allowing machines to learn from and make decisions based on data.

What Can You Do with AI?

In general, much of what businesses need from AI is actually machine learning (ML). Businesses accumulate vast amounts of data that require thorough analysis. While humans can analyse and organise this data, it often requires substantial knowledge and time to ensure accuracy. ML can significantly speed up this process. By passing data to a model, you can train it to generate outcomes and insights about what the data represents.

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It’s crucial to validate these outcomes to ensure they are applicable and beneficial to your business. You need to build it in a way to also moderate and validate the outcomes and feed those back into the data model. This process may change over time and ideally you need to be in control to create the strongest model.

The trick is to not only doing this identify outlying data and AI hallucinations but also doing it all at scale.

So how can artificial intelligence and machine learning be used?

1. Enhanced User Experience: AI can provide personalised experiences for users. By integrating AI-driven features like chatbots, recommendation systems, and predictive analytics, you can tailor your application to meet individual user needs, resulting in higher engagement and satisfaction.

2. Automation and Efficiency: AI can automate repetitive tasks and processes, reducing manual effort and improving efficiency. This is particularly useful in applications that handle large volumes of data or require frequent user interactions.

3. Advanced Data Insights: ML can analyse vast amounts of data to uncover patterns and insights that would be difficult to identify manually. This can inform decision-making, optimise operations, and provide valuable business intelligence.

4. Competitive Advantage: Incorporating AI into your platform can differentiate your product in the market, offering unique features and capabilities that attract and retain users.

It is important to remember, AI is not the feature; it is the solution. In each of these examples, the feature is the outcome of using AI to solve problems for your business or for your users.

Integrating AI with Bubble.io

While Bubble.io lacks native AI capabilities, you can integrate third-party AI services through APIs. Here’s how:

1. Identify the AI Service: Choose a suitable AI service like Google Cloud AI, IBM Watson, Microsoft Azure AI, or OpenAI.

2. Set Up the API: Sign up for the chosen AI service, obtain API keys, and understand the API documentation.

3. Connect to Bubble.io: Use Bubble.io’s API Connector plugin to integrate the AI service by configuring API calls and mapping inputs and outputs.

4. Design Workflows: Create workflows in Bubble.io that utilize the AI service, such as sending user data for analysis and displaying the results.

5. Test and Optimize: Thoroughly test the integration, and optimize workflows and the user interface for a seamless experience.

So what could these solutions looks like in practical terms? Let’s look at real life business examples that can bring value to your business.

1. Leveraging AI for Marketing and Buying Habits

AI and machine learning can analyse extensive datasets to help businesses understand marketing opportunities and buying habits. Essentially it can produce meaning to data in a way that would be, assuming it was accurate, quicker than human analysis.

For example an auction business, might want to examine auction bidding histories to understand bidder preferences. This includes evaluating what bidders have bid on, items they have added to watchlists, and items they have purchased.

Machine learning can be used to provide personalised recommendations for future auctions, targeting the most likely buyers based on their past behaviour. The data produced through this process can be feed into email marketing and other communications as an effective marketing strategies.

Responses to these campaigns can be feed back into the model for validation, with the aim of creating more accurate future results from the model.

2. Optimising Auction Outcomes

AI can significantly optimise auction outcomes by dynamically adjusting various parameters in real time. Machine learning models can evaluate bidding patterns to determine optimal lot valuations and price dynamics.

During an auction, AI can adjust reserve prices down and adjust bidding increments based on real-time data, to encourage bidding in different ways, and ensuring the best possible auction outcome.

The results of the auction can be compared to the predictions from the data model before the auction and the model can be validated and updated.

3. Enhancing Security and Reliability of Bidders

Machine learning can be instrumental in vetting auction bidders, ensuring security, and enhancing the reliability of participants. Through facial recognition and document verification, AI can be used to confirm bidder identities quickly and accurately.

Behavioural analysis and historical data review help detect fraudulent activities and bidding patterns, while credit checks and comprehensive background checks ensure bidders' financial credibility.

AI can also analyse social media profiles and previous auction history to provide a reputation score for each bidder. Continuous monitoring during the auction process further ensures a trustworthy bidding environment.

These are just some practical examples of how AI can be used. There is so much more that can be done using these tools. The important thing to realise here, is that the value comes from the conjunction of business knowledge and data and the data model you create.

Conclusion

Integrating artificial intelligence and machine learning into your business operations can transform the way you work with data to that generate value.

Tools like Bubble.io simplify this process by enabling you to focus on model development rather than coding.

This is because a no-code approach facilitates rapid experimentation and continuous improvement, ensuring your solutions are always evolving to meet business needs.

One of the challenges for Bubble.io developers is ensuring that they work with the platform rather than against it. This requires a keen awareness of application efficiency and cost management.

Bubble’s platform will optimise performance by caching frequently used searches and maintaining overall app performance. However, as a developer, you also bear the responsibility of optimising your app.

Traditionally, developers focus on optimising CPU, RAM, and disk usage to ensure efficiency. In Bubble, the focus shifts to minimising work units. The fewer work units you use, the more efficient and cost-effective your app will be.

A critical area to optimise is database activity. While the structure of your database is important, how you access and manage that data is equally crucial. One effective strategy is preloading data at the top of the page and then reusing it throughout the page flow. Mastering this technique can significantly enhance your app's performance and long-term sustainability.

How do you use page elements to do this?

You have a couple of options, depending upon whether you want to load a single Thing or a list or group of Things.

1. Using group elements for data preloading

Groups in Bubble can be set to fetch and display data as soon as they are loaded, making them ideal for preloading purposes. In this case it will be expecting to you load just one line item from the database.

Steps:

1. Create a Group: Add a group element to your page.

2. Set Data Source: Bind the group’s data source to a search or database query and return the first item.

3. Display Data: Within the group, add elements (text, images, repeating groups, etc.) that display the preloaded data.

4. Visibility: if you don’t need the data now, set the visibility for the element to off. But do remember to you need to take in to account suitable data security measures to prevent unwanted data being accessed by users.

When the group has loaded the data it is there for use by any other element on the page. And this saves you having to hit the database again. You can then refer back to it further down the page and introduce it to your pages flow.

For example, if you have preloaded an Order in to the page, you can then keep referring to the Order by referencing the group to which you bound it.

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2. Preloading Data in Repeating Groups

Repeating groups are ideal for displaying lists of items and can be preloaded to enhance performance. Remember of course, only get the data you really need for the purpose. Don’t try and get everything from the database, because this will also cause problems.

Steps:

1. Add a Repeating Group: Place a repeating group element on your page.

2. Configure Data Source: Set the repeating group’s data source to a search query.

3. Bind Data to Cells: Add elements inside the repeating group cells to display the data.

When you need the data from the Repeating Group, you can refer directly to later in the flow.

One of the advantages of this approach is the ability to filter this list of Things on the front end using the :filtered operator. Filters, work in a similar way to searches, but occur after the database returns the data from the backend and are execute on the front end. This makes them very efficient when used well, because they do not consume additional work units.

However, be cautious not to retrieve excessive data from the database and rely solely on the front end to manage it for you. This can lead to inefficiencies and for a very poor user experience.

A common use case for this approach is displaying a buyer's orders. You can load all of the buyer's orders into a single Repeating Group and use tabs to filter the data into "Dispatched" and "Not Dispatched" orders. This way, you preload all necessary data once and efficiently filter it on the front end based on the selected tab.

3. Preloading Data with Conditional Visibility

You can also preload data in groups or elements that are conditionally visible. This means you can change the data source for the element when the conditions are met. So for example this may be when you have a set of tabs of filters to execute pagination, or to separate draft products from published products.

These tabs can refer to a preloaded datasource and then filtered according to requirements.

Load once, filter the data to display.

Steps:

1. Add a Group: Place a group element on your page and set its initial visibility to false.

2. Set Data Source: Bind the group’s data source to the relevant search query.

3. Add Conditional Visibility: Use conditional statements to make the group visible when certain conditions are met.

They key here, the data source for the display is going to be a filter of the original preloaded data in the Repeating Group.

It’s very efficient on the front end and it saves you hitting the data base multiple times when the user filter through the data.

Conclusion

Preloading data directly in groups or page elements can significantly boost the performance, user experience and cost of running your Bubble.io applications.

By directly binding data sources to groups, effectively utilising repeating groups, and leveraging conditional visibility, you can manage your contact with the database and provide a smooth user experience.

When you do search the database, optimise your query to only get the data you need. Put in pagination where needed, and use filters to split data up into sensible groups that make sense for the user experience.

Would you like to learn more about Orzo Blue and the work we do with Bubble? Why not get in touch or subscribe to this Substack?

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When I first started developing apps on the Bubble platform, I’d come from a traditional developer background, building with relational databases. One of the things I loved doing was database architecture and optimisations.

I was quickly caught out when I realised how differently Bubble handles its database structure. Underneath the hood, Bubble databases are based upon PostgreSQL. But you may as well forget about that, as none of it matters.

It’s time to unlearn a few old habits.

Here are some of the key things where Bubble’s database structure diverges from the traditional approach, and why these differences matter.

1. The Concept of Primary Keys and Foreign Keys

In traditional databases, primary keys and foreign keys are foundational concepts. A primary key uniquely identifies a record within a table, and foreign keys are used to link records between tables. However, in Bubble, while these concepts exist behind the scenes, they are abstracted away and you need to trust that it will work well.

Bubble's Approach:

• Primary Keys: In Bubble, every data entry, known as a "Thing", is assigned a unique ID. However, unlike traditional databases, you rarely interact with these IDs directly.

• Foreign Keys: Instead of using foreign keys, Bubble allows you to directly reference the actual "Thing". This means you store the entire object (or a reference to it) rather than just an ID.

This abstraction simplifies the development process, allowing you to focus more on the logic and less on the database schema.

2. Minimal Use of IDs

In traditional databases, IDs are frequently used to connect tables and fetch related data. In Bubble, the paradigm shifts significantly.

Bubble's Approach:

• When you need to connect different data types, you don’t save the unique ID of a Thing to another Thing. Instead, you save the entire Thing itself. For example, if you have a User Thing and an Order Thing, you don't store the User's ID in the Order Thing; you store the actual User Thing.

This might sound strange at first, but it streamlines data referencing and reduces the need for complex joins and queries.

Which leads us nicely onto joins.

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3. No Traditional Joins

What do you do if you want to reference data from two tables at the same time?

In a relational databases, you would create a join to combine rows and return rows from more than one table. Bubble handles this differently.

Bubble's Approach:

• Bubble does not support traditional SQL-style joins. Instead, if you need data from multiple tables, you create a structure where a Thing references another Thing.

• By using Things as references across different tables, you essentially create a virtual join. This approach reduces the number of searches and the computational load, optimising performance.

Many new Bubble developers make the mistake of performing multiple searches to get related data, say for example in a Repeating Group. Which is grossly inefficient. Understanding this key principal avoid this mistake and leads to a more efficient application.

4. Managing One to Many Relationships

Well, as we discussed in the previous point, you can’t join tables. So how to you manage one to many relationships? This is again handled differently.

Bubble's Approach:

• Instead of creating a separate join or intermediate table, as you would in a traditional database, you can store a list of Things directly within another Thing. For example, a Project Thing can contain a list of Task Things.

This means you are storing an array of Things within another Thing. This not only simplifies data management but also gives you the structure for querying related data more straightforwardly.

So what does this all mean?

Bubble, as a platform, is designed to abstract away any of the key decisions a developer would traditionally make, meaning the focus can remain largely on ideas, business logic and implementation.

For developer coming from a traditional background, it does require a shift in thinking. And for those of us most interested in ideas, rather than process, it give us and our clients the opportunity to test the market and measure demand.

When you get the point of having an idea you want to take to or test in the market, you, if you are a non-technical founder, you will need to find a technical partner or resource.

Bubble.io is a good way to quickly get your idea to market and is a platform where you can test out your ideas, without getting to involved in running infrastructure. bubble gives you the full stack.

A skilled Bubble.io developer can transform your ideas into a fully functional application that meets your needs. Here are key qualities and skills to consider when hiring a Bubble.io developer:

1. Technical Proficiency

What to Look For: Ensure the developer has a deep understanding of Bubble.io’s features and capabilities. They should be used to using Bubble’s visual programming interface; understand complex workflows, database structures, integrations with other services and data security.

Why It Matters: Technical proficiency ensures your developer can fully leverage Bubble.io’s capabilities to create a robust and scalable application and provide you with what you are looking to achieve.

2. Relevant Experience

What to Look For: Check for a proven track record of successfully completed projects, particularly those similar to your own. Experience in building applications within your industry can be a significant advantage.

Multi-skilled developers will give you a good all round set of skills to work with and will understand typical pitfalls and issues before they arise. They will help you prioritise your ideas, if you budget it tight.

Perhaps check out their LinkedIn profile for their working background. Or their portfolio for examples of their recent work.

Why It Matters: Experience with similar projects and their working background, means the developer is likely to understand your specific requirements and can anticipate potential challenges.

3. Cost Considerations

Factors to Consider:

• Experience: More experienced developers charge more, but they provide good value. They will interpret your ideas quickly and well, and give you a well thought out solution.

• Efficiency: A developer charging $100/hr might work twice as fast as a $50/hr developer. Efficiency can significantly impact your overall project cost. It will also mean you hit your targets within an effective time frame.

• Location: Costs vary globally. Developers in Europe and North America generally charge more due to higher living costs, while those in countries with lower living costs may charge less. Aside from these issues, it will come down to personal preference for you such as time zones, distance and ease of communication.

Billing Models: Developers may bill hourly or offer fixed rates. Fixed rates provide cost predictability, while hourly rates can be flexible for less predictable tasks.

Developers will usually expect 30-50% in advance before they start work. Further billing milestones will be agreed between you to give you both an equitable sense of trust in the process.

4. Agency vs. Freelancer

Types of Developers:

• Freelancers: Often more flexible and cost-effective, but may have limited availability and resources. With a freelancer you will work directly with them rather than a team.

• Agencies: Provide a team of developers, offering more comprehensive services and greater reliability, though usually at a higher cost. You will also be working with a team, and more directly with a project manager.

5. Bubble Forum Activity

What to Look For: Forum activity can be a good indicator of a developer’s experience and engagement with the Bubble community. Look for developers who contribute positively and frequently.

Why It Matters: Active forum participation often correlates with a deep understanding of Bubble.io and a commitment to staying updated with the latest best practices.

6. Technical Interview

What to Look For: Assess the developer’s problem-solving abilities and technical skills. If you lack the technical knowledge, discuss your project idea and see how they approach it.

Why It Matters: A technical interview provides insight into the developer’s thought process and verifies their competence with Bubble.io.

7. Problem-Solving Skills

What to Look For: A good developer should demonstrate strong problem-solving abilities. They should be able to tackle technical challenges, find creative solutions, and optimise workflows to improve performance.

Why It Matters: Technical challenges are inevitable in any development project. A developer who can effectively address these issues will ensure your project stays on track and meets your goals.

Orzo Blue, concentrate on delivering exceptional Bubble.io solutions tailored to meet your unique needs. If you're looking for a dedicated & commercially aware partner to bring your vision to life, let’s connect and explore how we can help you succeed.

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8. Communication

What to Look For: Look for clear and responsive communication skills. The developer should be able to explain technical concepts in plain language and keep you informed about the project’s progress.

Why It Matters: Effective communication ensures smooth collaboration, helps set realistic expectations, and keeps the project on schedule. It also help manage expectations between you.

9. Commercial Awareness

What to Look For: Look for someone who understands business concepts and aligns development with your goals. This means they have an understanding of the application of technology to business and think about the process strategically.

They should be up-to-date on market trends, provide ideas, optimise for cost-efficiency, and prioritise a seamless user experience. Ensure they have a proven track record of delivering applications that provide real value and drive business success.

They will also understand your goals from a user’s perspective, rather than a technical perspective. This means they will make decisions to help you engage the users rather than concentrate on technical flair.

Why It Matters: A commercially aware Bubble developer will ensure your project benefits from technical expertise and business intelligence. They will align the development with your goals, drive revenue and enhance user experience.

They are likely to have a good sense of the wider market and trends, have ideas about functionality and how it might fit into your project.

They will also understand working for cost-efficiency, and be more capable of turning your vision into a profitable reality.

10. Attention to Detail

What to Look For: Seek out developers who exhibit meticulous attention to detail in both design and functionality. They should be thorough in testing and refining the application to ensure it meets the highest standards.

Why It Matters: Precision in design and functionality results in a higher quality product that provides a better user experience and fewer post-launch issues.

11. Client Testimonials

What to Look For: Review testimonials and feedback from previous clients. Positive reviews and recommendations can provide valuable insights into the developer’s reliability, work quality, and professionalism.

Why It Matters: Client testimonials can help you gauge the developer’s reputation and the likelihood of a successful collaboration.

12. Still Unsure?

What if you are still unsure whether they are the developer for you?

Trial Project or Task: Propose a small, paid trial project or task that reflects a part of your larger project. This allows you to see the developer’s skills in action without committing to a long-term contract.

How to Evaluate: Assess the completed trial project based on:

• Quality: Is the work of high quality and free of errors?

• Timeliness: Was the task completed on time?

• Communication: How well did the developer communicate throughout the trial?

Certifications and Training: Check if the developer has completed any relevant certifications or training programs related to Bubble.io or no-code development.

How to Evaluate: Certifications can provide a level of assurance about the developer’s knowledge and commitment to their craft. However, prioritise practical experience and demonstrated skills over certifications alone.

14. Post-Launch Support

What to Look For: Consider developers who offer ongoing support and maintenance after the launch of your application. This can include updates, troubleshooting, and enhancements.

Look for a developer who is interested in seeing you project grown in to a business and who can interpret the usage and traffic on your product.

Why It Matters: Post-launch support ensures that your application remains up-to-date, secure, and functional as your business grows and evolves.

Commercially aware developers will also help you work through ideas and suggestions, help you understand the response to your product and help you decided what is working and what is not.

Conclusion

Choosing the right Bubble.io developer involves more than just technical skills. It requires a combination of experience, problem-solving abilities, effective communication, attention to detail, positive client feedback, and a commitment to ongoing support. By carefully considering these factors, you can find a developer who will help you achieve your project goals and build a successful application.

Orzo Blue, concentrate on delivering exceptional Bubble.io solutions tailored to meet your unique needs. If you're looking for a dedicated & commercially aware partner to bring your vision to life, let’s connect and explore how we can help you succeed.

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Well, it’s always the same isn’t it? You are about to start a new project and you have a range of choices. And let’s be honest, you can’t really make a bad choice. It’s the ideas and the execution that is really going to matter.

But having said that. Why don’t we compare an alternative to Bubble. to help you decide for yourself?

While WordPress has long been a staple for creating websites, Bubble offers a modern, no-code solution that caters to a broader range of needs. We are going to highlight why we think Bubble is the better choice for modern web development.

1. Ease of Use

WordPress: WordPress is user-friendly for creating blogs and basic websites, thanks to its range of themes and plugins. However, more complex customisations often require coding knowledge in HTML, CSS, and PHP, which can be a hurdle for non-technical users.

It can get messy, and development can become a case of bending existing code (themes, plugins) to your will. Which is always risky when it comes future maintenance; such as upgrading the theme or plug in. When you do these upgrades you have to be careful not to lose your own changes.

Bubble: Bubble democratises web development with its intuitive no-code platform and really nice development environment (a web based IDE). The drag-and-drop interface allows anyone, regardless of technical expertise, to create complex web applications. With Bubble, you can build interactive and dynamic applications without writing a single line of code, making it accessible and efficient for all users.

You have a clean slate to begin with. So your ideas can be implemented fresh rather than changing someone else’s idea of how something should work.

2. Customization and Flexibility

WordPress: While WordPress offers extensive customisation through themes and plugins, it comes with limitations. Customising beyond these options often means coding, which can be restrictive and time-consuming for those without development skills.

As we said above, it can get messy. Another developer might come along and not understand your train of thought.

Bubble: Bubble excels in providing real flexibility for customised web applications. You can design unique interfaces and define intricate workflows without any limitations. This level of customisation is perfect for startups and businesses that need tailored solutions that standard CMS platforms cannot provide.

However, having a programmers mindset does help. Whilst you might be getting down to individual lines of code, you do need to be able to hold lots of abstract ideas in your head at any one time, and breakdown the most efficient flow of events in to workflows in the Bubble app.

Whilst you are starting from scratch, you can get something up and running very quickly. And related to Wordpress it will be clean and well organised.

3. Performance and Scalability

WordPress: Performance in WordPress largely depends on your hosting service and the optimisation of your themes and plugins. Scaling a WordPress site to handle high traffic can be challenging and often requires additional tools and skills and services to maintain performance.

It is not impossible though. If you are a DevOps types of person, you can easily handle it.

It can be done though. And you do have control over you do it. But, Wordpress is well known to hackers and they target domains looking for standard backdoors to exploit Wordpress weaknesses. So you do need constant care.

Bubble: Bubble handles performance and scalability seamlessly through its cloud infrastructure, automatically adjusting resources as your application grows. This built-in scalability ensures that your application can handle increased traffic and complexity without the need for additional optimisation or third-party services.

If you get Bubble’s dedicated hosting (which is very expensive) you are able to scale and monitor your usage with some influence. However, the standard hosting does give you this flexibility. But it is not something you control directly. Which can be annoying if you are used to scaling your own apps.

But, the Bubble platform is SOC2/3. And it does have a good data security model, so if you get that right, you will have secure data.

Learn how Orzo Blue can help you build and use technology for the benefit of your business.

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4. E-commerce Capabilities

WordPress: WordPress, with WooCommerce, is a popular choice for e-commerce, providing extensive features and numerous extensions for product management and payment processing. However, it can become cumbersome and complex with too many plugins.

Bubble: While Bubble doesn’t have a dedicated e-commerce plugin like WooCommerce, it allows you to build custom e-commerce solutions tailored to your specific needs. With Bubble, you can integrate payment gateways such as Stripe (as you can with Wordpress) and design unique e-commerce workflows that suit your business perfectly, without the bloat of unnecessary features.

With Bubble, being able to create your own workflow and order of events is s big plu. Especially so if you start integrating directly with payment APIs, rather than using the plugins.

5. Community and Support

WordPress: WordPress benefits from a large, active community with extensive documentation and forums. However, finding specific help can sometimes be overwhelming due to the sheer volume of information and varying quality of third-party plugins and themes.

Bubble: Bubble’s rapidly growing community is highly focused on building web applications, offering targeted support and resources. While its ecosystem is not as vast as WordPress's, the quality and relevance of support from the Bubble community (the forum is really good) and its dedicated team make it easier to find specific solutions to your problems. You can also find communities on Reddit, and whole stack of other places. Bubble themselves have just put all the places you can collaborate together on their own community hub.

6. Cost

WordPress: WordPress itself is free, but costs can add up with premium themes, plugins, and reliable hosting services. These additional costs can become significant, especially as you scale your website’s functionality and performance.

You can keep this within your budget to begin with. but over time you will need DevOps skills or help. You may end up with a lot to think about, and you need to maintain Wordpress to keep it up to date.

Bubble: Bubble’s pricing is largely fixed but does have an element of variable pricing based around usage. Packages include hosting, database, and scalability. The fixed monthly costs are essentially for the tools and infrastructure, and the variable costs are for consumption over and above the amount given to you with your monthly package. This means you can start low cost while you test the market.

While the initial cost may seem higher than basic WordPress hosting, the cost grows with the popularity of your app. And because it covers all services it can be more cost effective in the long run.

The key with Bubble, is about getting ideas together quickly and getting feedback from the market.

You can leave then everything to Bubble an their team to manage infrastructure, meaning you can concentrate on your product and your business.

Conclusion

Why Bubble is the Better Choice:

• No-Code Development: Bubble’s no-code platform empowers anyone to build complex web applications, and it provides, up to a point, non-technical users a tool they can create apps with.

• Unlimited Customisation: With Bubble, you’re not constrained by pre-built themes and plugins. You can create exactly what your business needs, tailored to your unique requirements. You can of course create custom code in Wordpress using PHP. But I think by comparison to Bubble, you can achieve more with custom workflow Bubble, without needing to write actual code.

• Seamless Scalability: Bubble’s cloud infrastructure ensures your application can grow with your business without the headaches of performance tuning and server management.

• Cost-Effective: Bubble’s all-in-one pricing model simplifies budgeting and eliminates the need for multiple third-party services, providing a clear and predictable cost structure.

While WordPress remains a strong choice for content-driven websites, Bubble stands out as the superior platform for modern web development, offering flexibility, ease of use, and scalability.

For entrepreneurs looking to test out ideas and get market feedback, Bubble provides the tools to do so.

The agriculture sector faces a range of challenges that can significantly impact productivity and profitability.

However, technology can be used to help you make the most of the information you have, or give you tools to help you collect data and understand your business in a more efficient way.

As we examine the options, we highlight where established platforms are available. But how do you use the data and adopt it in your business? How do you join up the data to your business needs?

We thought we’d take a look at 6 areas where technology & information can help your business.

1. Supply Chain Management Systems

The Challenge: Agricultural supply chains are complex, involving multiple stakeholders and stages from farm to market. Inefficiencies and lack of transparency can lead to delays, increased costs, and reduced product quality.

The Solution: Custom-built supply chain management systems streamline operations by tracking inventory, managing logistics, and optimizing delivery routes. These platforms provide real-time visibility into the supply chain, ensuring that products move efficiently from farm to consumer.

Alternatively plug into these platforms and use the data provided by these platforms to help you support your decision making.

Benefits:

• Improved Efficiency: Automated tracking and management reduce manual errors and save time.

• Cost Savings: Optimized routes and logistics lower transportation costs.

• Enhanced Quality: Real-time monitoring ensures products reach markets quickly and in optimal condition.

2. Crop Monitoring and Management Tools

The Challenge: Farmers need to monitor crop health, predict yields, and make informed decisions about irrigation, fertilization, and pest control. Traditional methods can be labor-intensive and imprecise.

The Solution: Crop monitoring and management tools utilize real-time data to provide insights into crop health and growth conditions. These tools often incorporate sensors, drones, and satellite imagery to gather accurate data.

Benefits:

• Informed Decision-Making: Access to real-time data allows farmers to make timely and precise interventions.

• Increased Yields: Optimized irrigation and fertilization schedules improve crop health and productivity.

• Sustainability: Targeted pest control and resource use minimize environmental impact.

What tools do you have to help you make sense of these tools? Do you need to integrate them more closely to help your team natural workflows?

3. Marketplaces and Auction Platforms

The Challenge: Farmers often struggle to find fair and profitable markets for their products. Traditional marketplaces can be inefficient, and farmers may not receive the best prices for their goods.

The Solution: Creating robust online marketplaces and auction platforms connects farmers directly with buyers, facilitating fair trade and better pricing. These platforms provide a transparent and competitive environment for selling agricultural products.

Benefits:

• Fair Pricing: Direct connections with buyers eliminate middlemen, ensuring farmers get fair prices.

• Wider Market Reach: Online platforms open up new markets beyond local boundaries.

• Efficiency: Streamlined sales processes reduce the time and effort required to sell products.

We have 10 years of experience helping farmers make new connections with buyers through the use of auction technology. See how else we can help you use technology to drive your business forward.

Learn about Orzo Blue

4. Data Analytics and Reporting

The Challenge: Making strategic business decisions in agriculture requires accurate and comprehensive data. However, collecting and analyzing this data can be challenging for many farmers.

The Solution: Implementing data analytics and reporting tools enables farmers to track performance, forecast trends, and make informed decisions. These tools can analyze data from various sources, providing actionable insights.

How do you use this data now? And how can you extend your own understanding?

Benefits:

• Better Forecasting: Data-driven insights help predict yields, market demand, and pricing trends.

• Strategic Planning: Detailed reports support long-term planning and investment decisions.

• Performance Tracking: Continuous monitoring of key metrics allows for timely adjustments and improvements.

5. Inventory and Resource Management

The Challenge: Efficiently managing resources and inventory is crucial for minimizing waste and ensuring the timely availability of inputs and products. Traditional methods can lead to overstocking or shortages, both of which are costly.

The Solution: Advanced inventory and resource management tools help farmers track and manage their resources efficiently. These tools provide real-time inventory levels, forecast needs, and automate ordering processes.

Do you need in close the gap between your inventory and your accounting systems? Can you create more control over your margins?

Benefits:

• Reduced Waste: Accurate tracking prevents overstocking and reduces spoilage.

• Cost Savings: Optimized inventory levels reduce storage costs and capital tied up in excess stock.

• Timely Availability: Automated ordering ensures that necessary inputs are always available when needed.

6. Digital Marketing for Agriculture

The Challenge: Reaching a broader audience and effectively marketing agricultural products can be difficult, especially for small to medium-sized farms that may lack the resources for traditional marketing methods.

The Solution: Digital marketing offers a cost-effective and far-reaching solution. By utilizing online marketing strategies such as social media, content marketing, email campaigns, and search engine optimization (SEO), farmers can connect with a larger audience and build a strong online presence.

There are many tools that will help you manage your marketing and help you be more organised in the way you manage your contacts. How can you integrate these into business in a way that suits your team?

You need to be careful. Carefully targeted campaigns will take time to delivery results, but they are much more effective than taking a scatter gun approach.

Benefits:

• Increased Visibility: Digital marketing strategies help farmers reach a global audience, increasing brand awareness and market presence.

• Targeted Marketing: Online tools allow for precise targeting of specific demographics and customer segments, ensuring marketing efforts are more effective.

• Cost-Effective: Compared to traditional marketing methods, digital marketing can be more affordable and offer a higher return on investment.

• Engagement and Interaction: Social media platforms and email campaigns enable direct communication with customers, fostering relationships and building loyalty.

An Integrated Approach

Adopting technology is not just about individual tools but about creating a cohesive ecosystem where all these tools work seamlessly together. As a business you need to bridge the gaps between these tools, so you can create a better understanding of the information in your business.

Some approaches you could take:

• Customized Solutions: Develop bespoke applications tailored to the specific needs of your business.

• System Integration: Integrate these systems together, from supply chain management to digital marketing, to create a unified platform.

• Consultative Approach: Work with a consultant to understand your challenges and goals, to create a plan for moving forward.

Conclusion

Agriculture businesses can benefit from integrating technology in to their day to day workflow. By taking a less generic approach you can help your team understand the information you own. And use this to help streamline your operations and make better decisions.

Over the past few months, I have been diving into the world of Bubble.io and exploring its capabilities as a programming platform. Along the way, I have discovered a few things that have really helped the development process.

1. Utilize backend workflows: Although setting up back workflows may seem tricky at first, they are incredibly useful for streamlining your code and ensuring maintainability. There are a couple of configuration steps to get them in place, but once you have done them, you can feed your workflows into them really efficiently. The newbie mistake is not having a termination step. Whatever you do, define that first, even if it is a hard stop. The consequences of not doing so is a runaway thread that executes forever and eats up all your Work Units (WU).

2. Master how to do recursion: This is a bugbear for all Bubble developers. The forum is full of people asking how to do it. There are actually plenty of options. It is a case of finding the right one for the right problem. Backend workflows are one answer and are great, super efficient and (mostly) thread-safe. If you want to send a lot of data to the database then use one of these. For smaller front end problems there are plugins you can use to create small lists of iterations. Check out the Toolbox plugin, it’s got a function that will give you what you need (amongst other handy things).

3. Embrace single page apps: This was something I had not cottoned on to straight away. Coming from a Java background my first thoughts were to ring fence pages using a new template (with reusable elements) on each one. It works of course, but performance is terrible. If you go with the single page approach, you will need to make sure you are organised on the page, but you can achieve a lot very quickly and the user will navigate between pages at lightening speeds. The key is to set up paths and link them with conditions to switch elements on and off as required.

4. Leverage reusable elements: As far as possible make reusable elements rather than repeating code on different pages. There are two reasons for this. 1) it makes code maintenance and code consistency easy 2) When you are using a single page architecture it means you can have a tidier page.

5. Harness the power of themes: The Bubble community is really mature. There is no reason not to be able to create a good looking app, by leveraging the work someone else has done. Do be careful though. You can get caught up in removing and editing parts of the theme you don’t want to use. So what I tend to do, is have the theme installed in a separate app, and then switch tabs to take what I need as I need it.

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6. Explore plugins: As with themes, make as much use of the available plugins as possible. There are free ones and there are subscription or one time payment ones. Some are more supported than others. It is definitely worth looking at the plug in page to see how many times it has been installed, and also to see how well it is supported. The reviews are useful for this. The key to plugins, is that you do not need to reinvent the wheel. Leverage other people’s work and get your ideas flowing and out there quickly.

7. Embrace branching and custom workflows: Workflows can get pretty big and unwieldy once you have more than around 4 steps. Often you are going to be executing those steps from different starting points. So break them down in to what is effectively sub-routines by creating and then calling Custom Workflows. Once you get into Backend Workflows these become even more useful.

8. Master database triggers: There are some real limitations that can be difficult to work around efficiently. One of the most annoying things is there is no real way to join two database tables and play with the data in memory. I’ve found one way to manage this is to create temporary table populated using database triggers. As data is added to the database you also write it to the temporary table (much like say a cache) and then talk to the temporary table to run reports and manipulate data for use on the front end.

9. Custom states are your friend: Custom states are one of the most powerful tools in Bubble. They allow to you store data for repeated use. They can be made up from data objects (things) and lists or they can be single scalar variables. They are most useful as a way to avoid making repeated requests to the database when sending data to the page; most commonly when you are iterating Repeating Groups, refer to your custom states rather than hitting the database for every row.

10. Work with Bubble's Philosophy: Bubble is an opinionated platform, and it is best to align with its approach rather than forcing your own ideas onto it. They are hosting thousands of other sites and they are optimising their platform for everyone. They work hard to cache repeatable queries and regular tasks. If you go along with it, your app will be really fast and useable. If you try to go against it, all you will do it create pain for yourself.

I hope you find these tops useful. I am sure there will be more to come. As I build out other apps and features I am sure I will have more thoughts to write about in the future.

I’ve been doing a fair bit of development work over the last few weeks. Much of this is has been in Bubble. I’ve been curious to see how powerful it is and what can be achieved.

The thing that has been particularly pleasing for me has been the convergence of creativity and productivity. It’s not often you are able to have an idea and just get it down, without a lot of work; several months of work.

I’ve been playing with getting a Saas developed and ready for market. I would say most of it has been done inside 2 months. Which is very satisfying. There is still the marketing side to be done and also splitting down the features into pricing tiers.

Anyway, it got me thinking about database structure and data security, which is one of the key things to get right. Basically if you get it wrong, you have got big time data leakages on your hands. And you are not going to know about it until your client’s data has been harvested by their competitor.

There are several other things to take in to account too. So let’s look at the kinds of things that were going through my mind as I was developing:

1. Data Security: Aside from all of the standard cloud computing precautions like data encryption at rest and in transit you have to think about how the app is going to manage the data for multiple clients all of the time. The risk of data leakage is pretty high. And this is not just across tenants, but within the tenant itself. You need to come up with a rock solid protocol to make sure those who can see the data, are allowed to; and those that should not see the data, do not.

2. Data Isolation: Maintaining strict data isolation between tenants is crucial to ensure that each customer's data is separate and protected. Failure to properly isolate data can lead to data corruption or unauthorized access. And so what this means is, you need to get your strategy right for segmenting the data for each client. But you need to make sure you can allow external users to hop from one tenant to another without knowing they are doing it. The main concern here is session sharing across tenants.

3. Scalability and Performance: If you have lots of data, assumptions you make about performance now, could cause you problems down the road. This means going back to the old client-server approach of only getting only as little amount of data as you need for each request. Get too much, and you are going to be putting request upon request until the whole thing stops. Think about scalability carefully. And if you are using a No Code platform, this is going to mean making sure you understand what the backend data processing features do, so that you can leverage the platform in the way the creators want to you. There are no short cuts. This means careful architectural planning & review and regular performance testing throughout the development cycle.

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4. Customization and Configuration Challenges: You need to balance the need for customization and configuration options while maintaining a shared codebase. And this can be challenging. If you can over the longer term provide flexibility to meet individual customer requirements without compromising stability, then do it. But when you are getting started, think of customer feedback in terms of what it might means for everyone else. Not all ideas are good ideas. In the early days you want something that is easily maintainable and gives you the confidence to feel you have product market fit.

5. Upgrades and Maintenance: Rolling out upgrades or applying maintenance patches to a multi-tenant application requires careful coordination to ensure minimal disruption to all tenants. My worry is always data and backwards compatibility. If you don’t plan carefully or testing you can be in a whole load of trouble.

6. Tenant Onboarding and Offboarding: Managing the onboarding and offboarding process for multiple tenants can be complex. You need to think about the sign up process, providing them with instruction and details on how features work, hand holding them through the early days of using your platform and engaging them with what your platform does. You need to remind them why they signed up in the the first place. But also you need to be able to give them a way out if they need to. You can do this by offering data exports which gives them a real sense of ownership of their data.

7. Regulatory Compliance: Depending on the industry or region, multi-tenant SaaS applications may need to comply with various regulations, such as data privacy laws (e.g., GDPR) or any industry-specific standards. If you get these wrong you may end up regretting it later on.

There were many things from this list that I spent a long time thinking about. Days without coding, or coding then recoding just to get things right. You do need to thoroughly assess and address any risks that come to mind during the design and development phase. And remember mistakes or shortcuts you take now, may come back to haunt you in the longer term.

By the way, I am thinking about changing the name of the blog. I’ve spent a lot time thinking what I want to do over the next few months and I am pretty much settled that I want to do is is write about building businesses with using no code platforms.

This is the second of four 4 posts examining the coffee supply chain. In this part I take a look at how the supply chain works at origin; showing how coffee gets from the field to the port.

In the first post in this series I looked at direct trade as a movement aiming to help farmers receive a more a sustainable income from their coffee production. I thought it would show the realities of such as approach and how complex the coffee supply chain really is.

So this time, let’s look in a bit more detail at what happens at origin as coffee makes its way from the farm and is prepared for export.

Whilst each origin has its own rules and variations, in general there are many common parts and processes that are common across the board.

So let’s take a look at how it works.

Who are coffee producers?

Coffee producers is a broad term covering many different part of the supply chain. In its broadest sense, it means ‘farmers’, but it can also applied to organisations collecting and processing coffee cherries and green coffee beans from a variety of sources who in turn create a product ready for export.

Some producers will be farmers who also own wet and dry mills. And in some cases may also be exporters. Although exporters are not generally involved in the logistics themselves; they will work with agents who organise the transporting of coffee to port.

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Smallholders and cooperatives

Smallholders represent 80% of those who farm coffee. These may include people making a living by working a small patch of land, through to those who manage developed farming operations or farm estates made up of several farms.

Smallholder farmers produce the “cherries” (the fruit containing the bean) and drop them at washing stations where they are processed and prepared for the wet mill. The wet mill may be operated by a co-operative or it may run by a larger coffee producer who puts all the coffee together for processing to create a larger blended lot.

Where a farmer has a more sophisticated operation or is part of a co-op, the coffee will be put together and sold under the banner of the co-op or farm. Quite often this will be considered to be single origin coffee.

The farmer will receive a (cherry) price for what they have produced and this, in many cases is their income for the entire year.

Whilst they are beholden to the market, the cherry price is what matters to them and in some cases these farmers will never drink their own coffee. If the market prices are consistently down they may be tempted to find alternative, more lucrative crops to grow. It is not unknown for them to rip up their coffee plants and replace them with something like chat, in the hope of generating more income.

To prevent this, responsible members of the supply chain, will provide help to improve the outcomes of coffee production for these smallholders.

Coffee preparation & processing

If a farmer owns their own wet mill, they manage the process completely in-house. They may also add in cherries from other small producers, either on contract or as a purchase for their own production output.

Cooperatives will usually have their own wet mills, and account for where each lot comes from, and pay smallholders accordingly. Collaborating with a co-operative benefits smallholders who can’t afford to own their own infrastructure not only in terms of production but as a means of accessing the market.

The way the coffee is processed through the wet mills will determine the profile of the coffee itself. Many commercial coffees tend to be washed or natural coffees. There are also opportunities for further differentiation in the market. There is a also growth in a third options which produces honeyed coffee which is part washed and part natural.

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The greatest amount of innovation comes with the microlot competition style coffees often featured in coffee auctions and barista competitions. These coffees tend to be unique and produced in short in supply and consequently command very high prices. They also server a purpose of discovery and reputation, helping connect them to new buyers in new markets.

Coffee ready for export

Coffee is at this point stored as parchment, which maintains it freshness. When coffee is contracted it will be hulled, bagged and graded according to origin based standards and made ready for export in a dry mill. the exporter will also mark the bags with the importers logo as well as their own.

From this point on the exporter will liaise with logistics agents and organise the forwarding of containers to port.

All of these steps add up to a complex process, involving management and supervision at every step. While one company or organisation can own or operate many parts of the chain, they do rely on each other and on a range of different skills. Each of these adding value but also cost to the production process. And of course everyone involved expects to cover their owns and turn a profit for their efforts.

In the next post we will look at what happens to the coffee once it arrives at it’s destination ready for import and develop our understanding who the value added as the coffee is prepared for sale.

This is a the first of 4 posts examining the coffee supply chain. I wanted to start by examining direct trade. What it is and how it is perceived. In furthers posts I and going to take a closer look at both supply and buy sides of the market to show how it works. In the fourth and final post I will look at how digital market places attempt to close this gap between coffee buyers and sellers.

The coffee supply chain, like many food based supply chains is complex. There are multiple parties involved. It has to be handled with care and many people involved in its cultivation, nurture, process, logistics, roasting and consumption.

From outside looking in, it looks ridiculously complex and needless.

There is a strong movement within The Third Wave of Speciality Coffee to ensure a fair deal for coffee farmers, by concentrating on single origin coffees and using direct trade as a means of passing more of the transaction value back to the farmers. Direct trade is often hailed as the solution to improving the lives of farmers.

How big is the global coffee market?

In 2022, the global coffee market, was valued at $127 billion. The size of the market in green coffee in 2021 was valued at $35.5 billion. From these figures you can see the supply side of the market is worth about 30% of the overall market.

Some argue this is unfair.

Coffee is priced in many different ways. But the overriding factor influencing coffee pricing is the C-Market. It is the commercial coffee price index and it dictates pricing and overall market sentiment. Outside of the C-Market, such as in Speciality Coffee trading, other factors, such as quality and quantity are taken in to account to a much greater degree.

The most recent squeeze on the farmers is the cost of production. The cost of living, inflation and bottlenecks in the supply chain post Covid-19 and the Suez blockage, have all contributed to the rise in these costs. When the C-Market is down, the margins for the farmers are reduced.

Additionally in 2023 trading is also heavily influenced by the inverted market. This occurs when the price of the coffee is up, but due to pressure on the buy side of the supply chain, pricing expectations are down over the longer term. This means coffee is not shifting because the buy side is waiting for the sell side to drop their prices.

One solution, to avoid many of the complexities of trading, is to go direct to a farmer to buy their coffee. The idea is, if (say) a roaster buys coffee direct from a farmer, more of the costs (usually eaten up by the supply chain) can instead, be passed back to the farmer.

If this was the case, how would it look?

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What does direct trade look like?

Coffee is a traditional business and in some ways, innovation is slow. Each country (or origin) has its own set of export rules and customs that have to be followed. And importing countries also have rules and regulations to manage what comes into their country and under what circumstances it may do so.

More often that not a coffee roaster will buy their coffee from an importer. The importer will have choice of coffees to choose from at various price and quality points. The coffee will also be landed in a warehouse and easily accessible for the roaster to make a purchase.

Let’s just say at this stage the buyer decides he wants to stand out from his competitors, and decides they want to buy something unusual or different. They may also feel they can get a better deal by working direct with a farmer.

The roaster may go to trade shows and start building relationships with farmers. They will be able to obtain samples for coffees and get to know the farmers values and their business’s structure. To build confidence on both sides, they may even travel to the farm and see for themselves how the farm operates and cup their range of coffees.

Once he has decided which coffees he wants to buy, what happens next?

How could they buy the coffee?

Let’s say the roaster wants to make all this investment worth while, so he decides to buy a container of coffee. This would be investment of around $150,000. Which for a 20ft container, would be 19,100kg, or around 318 x 60kg bags of green coffee.

The roaster can see he is at the start of something new and exciting and it will relate well in their marketing. He can talk about the farmer, their values, and how he values his relationship with them. And he feel this will give him a competitive edge in maintaining his own existing relationships, and also developing new opportunities in his own market.

There are number of elements in the purchase process he is going to have to manage himself. He will need to think about logistics, contracts, shipping, insurance, finance, quality control and warehousing.

So where does he start?

He first has to decide how he is going to contract for the coffee. There are a range of ways to do this based around the European standard coffee contract. And within this, there are important terms called Incoterms defining the responsibilities of each party involved in the sale. This is an important step and the buyer must fully understand what the terms mean, and the impact it will have on his own costs and responsibilities in executing the contract.

The contract will also set out the payment terms, the cost of the shipping and a description of the coffee being bought and sold by the two parties.

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First and foremost in the mind of the buyer will be any concerns about how he is going to pay the farmer and ensuring the quality of the coffee matches is original expectations.

Samples are sent from the farm to the buyer prior to shipment. These are called pre-shipment samples (PSS). The buyer will cup the PSS and see if they match the samples he received during the sale process. If they do, he goes ahead and proceeds to the next stage. The shipping can go ahead. They will also cup the coffee when it lands to verify what he has bought has been shipped correctly. At either point they can reject the samples and renegotiate (or end) the sale.

The coffee will usually be in a warehouse, in the farm, at this stage. Depending upon the agreed Incoterms, either the roaster or the farmer will need to contract with an exporter to ensure the coffee moves from the farm to a warehouse and processed for export. From there it will need to be moved to the port where the coffee will depart.

The buyer will also need to engage a shipping agent to make a booking for the shipment, manage the entry of the container to the port and be loaded on to the vessel.

If the farmer or exporter is managing the process, as defined in the contract, they are going to include these costs in the sale of the coffee. If the buyer manages these logistics, he will buy the coffee on the main contract and then contract and manage all those extra services themselves.

How do you finance a contract like this?

At some stage the issue of finance is going to be raised. Broadly speaking the farmer will want to be paid before the coffee leaves his farm. At the very least he may want a deposit. In some cases the exporter may pay him and then collect payments from the buyer. In other cases part of the payment will be made before the coffee ships, and the rest will be paid upon landing at port, or within 30 days of doing so.

Our roaster has a problem at this stage. Can they afford to tie up $150,000 in stock before they have sold the coffee to their own customers? They could presell some or all of the coffee. Or they could finance the purchase in advance using trade finance.

It all comes down to their access to working capital.

If the buyer has a good relationship with their bank, they can arrange to fund it through trade finance. If they have a good trading record, they could borrow the funds to finance the purchase.

Alternatively, they can partner with a larger coffee company who can offer them finance for buying the coffee on their behalf. There are a lot advantages to this, including the management of the sale, insurance, storage and payment terms.

When the coffee arrives at the destination port, the buyer will need to arrange for an import agent to liaise with the port authorities for the coffee to be removed and taken to a warehouse. The roaster will also need an import license or EORI to do all of this in their own name.

Once the coffee has been landed it will need to be moved to a permanent place of storage. As a medium size regional roaster, where would this be? The coffee needs to be stored in a cool dry place. So where are they going to put 318 bags of coffee?

They will need to calculate how quickly are you going to roast and sell that coffee? And this will depend upon the size of their client base and any pre-sales they agreed prior to contract?

The pressure is now on to sell the coffee before the trade finance facility matures and interest and other charges start to apply. There are of course services and facilities to manage this and we will examine these in subsequent posts. In any case, these are costs the buyer will need to work in to their business model.

What are your core competencies?

By now it should be apparent the process is complicated. There are many skills required to get the coffee from the farm to the buyer.

How much time would a roaster need to invest in the management of this purchase? And from his own business perspective, does it represent an efficiency benefit to his business? And how much of the value in the sale was actually passed back to the farmer?

If this was going to be the buyer’s strategy for every coffee they buy, is this really where their core skills lie? Would it be better to trust an importer to do this for them?

There comes a point where the buyer has to decide what their core expertise is and where they think success for their business will come from. Perhaps their time is better spent attending to their own core business, and leaving areas of specialism to others? Or perhaps they can see a path to growth by managing the purchases themselves and roasting on a larger scale?

In my next post I will take a look at the role of the importer and other services on the buy side, and explain why they are important parts of the supply chain and how using them can add a lot of value and opportunity to the buyer’s business.

If you are a founder with an idea, and you are wondering whether your idea is good one, how do you go about testing the market to see whether it is a good one?

At this point you may want to invest some capital in the idea. But, sensibly you will be cautious. So how do you get to a point of getting feedback from the market?

Investment in technology and ideas used to be time intensive and expensive. Building an app or platform would be mean high levels of investment, just to get to first base. Often ideas would change along the way, and you’d end up incurring most costs and exceeding your original budget.

There is no point building for true scale, if you don’t have an audience. What you really need to do, is put the idea in front of people and see if it matches their needs.

How can we do it effectively?

Rather than building a full on solution, you can build an prototype of minimum viable product (MVP).

This approach creates the space for testing things out, talking to the market, seeing what features are going to work and how they are going to be received by customers. It can also help provide some early indicators on pricing and what features are going to matter.

The key here, is you are not overcommitting.

Because of the current financial climate, investors are looking more favourably at start ups that are already profitable businesses. This is as opposed to betting in ideas and platforms that might some day promise mass market appeal (unicorns).

Capital is being deployed more cautiously and the numbers (profit) need to add up.

And to be honest as a founder you need to think about how you are going to pay yourself before you even get to a potential funding stage. Unicorns are rare. Even being successful is a challenge & very hard work, and not every company is fundable in that huge (Venture Capital) way.

A Venture Capitalist I spoke to during my own attempt at a raise, asked me whether I realised what impact venture capital will have on my company. Yes it will be like rocket fuel, but it will also mean hitting targets to justify the investment.

Everything with VC funding, is about rapid growth.

And you need to think about that. Sometime bootstrapping is a better approach. And to do that, the same rules apply. You need to justify demand.

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Is No Code an Option?

Having previously been heavily invested in structured development environments, such as Java, Linux, Nginx & MySql, it has been refreshing to come across some really viable No Code options.

It means getting to market, doesn’t need to month of developer and investment. It means fairly quickly you can get an idea and take it from concept to market in a very short period of time.

This approach will help you:

• Learn about your audience. What do they really want, and how they might use your product.

• Understand the most valuable features, and how that might translate to pricing.

• Will give you time to experiment and try out ideas.

• Enable you to experiment, review and adapt.

• Give you time to focus on the viability of the business, understand the business model and route to profitability.

• Learn who the clients really are, and how to find them, and sell to them.

• Talk to real customers and fully understand the problems they are trying to solve.

Going with a no code solution give you breathing space. It means it could be side hustle to start with. You can invest a low amount of capital to test out your idea. It will help you to market quickly and crucially will enable us to start collecting feedback.

Pros & Cons of No Code vs Code

So, is this approach a good one?

Let’s first looks at structured formal application development:

• Reliable - we can tailor the hosting, the app optimisation and performance in house. We know where all the (technical) issues are and can act (reasonably) quickly if we need to with some refactoring and code optimisation.

• Scalable - if we are running the hosting, we can monitor performance and load, identify bottlenecks and take action.

• Ownership - if we create everything ourselves in-house, then we own everything. We can set our own direction. If we outsource we are looking at revision cycles.

• We can do it in-house and have full control over the dev and production environment and set up the team accordingly.

• Tooling - we define how we go about our work, the software we use and we can build on this as we go through the business cycle.

But, what are the things that are going to drag this approach back in the early days?

• Time consuming - coding from the ground up is fun and stimulating, but it takes a loooong time to achieve anything meaningful.

• Expensive - good programmers, developers and product managers are expensive. Saving money on hires will impact on productivity (unless you get very lucky). You might save on monthly outgoings, but everything takes longer. And you don’t necessarily end up with a stable platform.

• Technical Debt it is surprising how quickly you can build up technical debt, from decisions made in the early days. Assumptions you make back early on, can mean constant refactoring or workarounds to make new ideas work. This also presents hidden (stability) risk and a greater requirement for (regression) testing.

• Less flexibility - once decisions are made they tend to be there for the long term. And this can mean pivots weighing heavily around the operational side. You’ve also got to take into account the motivation of the team. If you keep changing direction, the team will feel pretty demotivated. People take pride in their code making it to production.

• A lot of management - you’ve suddenly got layers in the team. Yes you need to delegate and trust people to do things well, but also focus can be lost.

Over the long terms this is probably where you want to get to. And these things will cost and it puts pressure on your budget and the sales and marketing function.

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But,wWhat if you decide validation is the most important part of what you are doing? Then a No Code approach seems to me like a good option.

It gives you the opportunity to run up some demos for potential customers and also build a version 1.0 you can take to market and see how it goes.

You are also giving yourself the best chance of understand your route to revenue earlier in the cycle. And if things go well then you can afford to throw away the No Code solution and write it properly in a structured environment using the original as the blueprint. That would be a good problem to have.

You can also test and adapt very quickly. You could keep things lean and make some progress at the same time.

You can also focus on value and pricing. You can respond to feedback very quickly.

The No Code Landscape

There is plenty out there, and with it a lot support through good docs and community support. No code tools have hit a good level of maturity over the last 4-5 years. Platforms like Bubble have real traction and a good core product, and has been used by a lot of start ups.

You can even use things like Wappler and Noodl which are NoCode development environments, that enable you deploy your app to your own hosting. Which does give you a route to scaling and app, if you generate demand.

If you are looking for quick wins. it means building upon the shoulders of others. Bubble has a good marketplace and there are plenty of plugins to get you started very quickly. And where solutions don’t exist, we can fall back to something like Zapier, or Make.

And how about mobile? Bubble can work for mobile and be a proxy for an app. However it acts as webpage with in an app enclosure. The main drawback in this approach is the need for a constant network connection. Whereas something like Thunkable, which is naturally native, might be a good workaround instead, and connects to APIs very nicely.

The core challenge is working out whether the new idea is going to be viable and understanding where it sits in the marketplace.