What's your personal background? What motivated you to start your own company? 

I am currently a college student in Canada, also a UX designer by trade. I always wanted to become an entrepreneur but had no technical suite to get my idea into a something physical. Fortunately, I had a chance to learn some no code tools (ex: Voiceflow) to develop conversational AIs during my internship, which encouraged me to expand my skills and try learning Bubble. The plan worked out well and after taking a brief bootcamp offered by the latter, I felt super prepared to publish a service on a tangible problem space before graduation. Hence began StudyDate.

What no code tools did you use to build StudyDate and what purpose did each play in the final product?

I primarily used Bubble to build my product. I was able to use the tool to build out a robust first iteration with features ranging from user search, virtual rooms, voice chats, and even messaging. 

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What were the initial costs to get StudyDate off the ground? 

Pretty much none! I could use Bubble’s key features and plugins for free or at very fair price. I did upgrade to a professional account to expand the server post-launch but even that was just around $100 per month which is affordable considering the number of users it can carry. 

What was the process of building your product from idea to launching?

I actually began my journey by first building a mentorship platform on Bubble before StudyDate. It helped me to improve my comprehension on the tool’s architecture, and I also got to practice building various key features, including complicated ones like a time reservation system. This laid the foundation for my current startup. When I felt confident about my capabilities to launch, I spent about a week on designing my idea, and went directly into development in my parent’s home. In just about a month, I had a pretty high-quality MVP. I know “quality” MVP might sound weird, but Bubble’s new responsive engine and convenient canvas meant that I didn’t have to compromise on aesthetics. From 5^th week, I invited my friends to try it out and ran several QA tests for another 4 weeks. By week 8 I was ready to launch with significantly lowered number of bugs and critical errors. In early January of this year, the beta service went live in campus as a webapp. 

How do you attract customers?

For the first iteration, I promoted the service solely towards peers in my campus. I remember promoting my app on various class discord channels and partnered with a popular campus social media channel to spread the news. I was able to gather up approximately 150 active users during one month of testing – pretty decent for idea validation purposes. As the service continued to grow, it also caught attention from school newspaper and a respectable local VC. 

What are the biggest challenges you've overcome building StudyDate?

• First, just the capability to build out a digital service for production was a huge challenge that I was able to overcome through the advancement of nocode tools like Bubble. 
• Second would be security. I wanted to make sure that user information privacy would be as robust as possible. Fortunately, Bubble had superb password security system and foundation in AWS. As such, I could concentrate more on concreting security on the client side, with additional help from consultants at nocodenohack.com.

How much money is StudyDate making per month? 

Currently, StudyDate is in a very early stage and now it’s gearing up for second stage development outside of just my school. There is no income yet as such but we will definitely look forward to it as time goes by. 

What's your advice for non-technical people who want to start a company? 

No code tools are great, but it is important to understand the underlying fundamental mechanism to lower the learning curve significantly. There are also a wide range of no code tools available nowadays so make sure you know which one is the most suitable for your service. If web, Bubble is great. If a native app, AppGyver has been catching my attention for some time now. 

What are your future plans for StudyDate?

Currently, I’ve gathered up some teammates. I also decided to narrow down on the subject introduced for users to engage with from “studying” to something more practical and unrestricted to campus environment. We are working hard now to hopefully launch a beta native app by September this year. 

How do you think the rise of no code tools will impact entrepreneurship?

It’s a definite game changer. Before, I would never have imagined being able to build a product by myself, let alone an MVP. Now, even none-programmers can develop a respectable, oftentimes even impressive digital service in just matter of weeks or months. 

Is there anything else you'd like to add?

Services like No Code MBA seems to be a great idea. I look forward to the new generation of founders the platform can create.