How a Bootstrapped SaaS Hit $240K Without Paid Ads

Omer (00:10.080)
Welcome to another episode of the SaaS Podcast.
I'm your host, Omer Khan and this is the show where I interview proven founders and industry experts who share their stories, strategies and insights to help you build, launch and grow your SaaS business.
In this episode, I took to Ben Tossel, the founder of MakerPad, a website that teaches you how to build apps and websites without writing a single line of code.
When Ben was working as the community manager at Product Hunt, he came across a lot of products that made it easier to build apps and websites without writing any code.
Being non technical himself, Ben was intrigued by the idea of being able to use these tools to build his own products and he started spending all his spare time tinkering with these tools.
Eventually, he launched a website where he published screencast tutorials and charged people for access.
He promoted it to his email list and signed up some early customers.
And as it started to grow, he kept pushing to add new features and functionality.
But he quickly started to lose focus.
He was trying to do too much for too many different types of customers and it was becoming a mess.
Eventually it got so bad that he decided to shut down the website and go back to the drawing board.
He just finished reading Company of One by Paul Jarvis, and after reading that book, he decided that this time he was going to keep things really simple, focus on a single idea, and do less.
A few months later he relaunched as Make a Pad, a site focused on teaching you how to use no code tools.
In less than a year, MakerPad has generated over $200,000 in sales as a side project while Ben was working as head of platform for Earnest Capital.
And now he's working on MakerPad full time and building a recurring revenue business.
Now, although Make a Pad isn't technically a SaaS product, I invited Ben on the show for two reasons.
Firstly, there are a lot of parallels with Ben's experience of MakerPad and and what new SaaS founders have to go through.
I think there's some valuable lessons to be learned there.
Secondly, I wanted to talk about how the no code movement is helping non technical founders build and launch SaaS products without writing any code.
And we talk exactly about that.
Ben's an extremely down to earth guy and we had a great conversation, so I hope you enjoy it too.
Ben, welcome to the show.

Ben Tossell (02:37.130)
Thanks so much for having me.

Omer (02:38.370)
So I always like to ask my guests what gets them out of bed, what drives or, you know, motivates them to work on their business.
So what is it for you that fires you up to work On Make

Ben Tossell (02:48.360)
a Pad, I think it was just something that I was genuinely just interested in.
Like, I would be doing this if I wasn't getting paid for it.
But luckily I am now running an actual business.
So it's just.
It's been a passion project that the market is all of a sudden pulled into being a business.

Omer (03:04.760)
So for people who aren't familiar, can you just explain what is Make a Pad?
Who's your target customer, and what's the big problem that you're trying to help them with?

Ben Tossell (03:14.380)
So make a lot of things.
So I'll just have the simplest version, which is we teach people how to build tools without code, essentially.
So if you're trying to build an Airbnb app for dog homes, or you're trying to automate a lead generation tool at work, we sort of make tutorials to help you do that.
And on top of that, there's all sorts of layers of community and we've got bootcamps coming out and things like that.
But that's essentially what it is.
Our main customers have predominantly been like, the creators types, the people who want to be entrepreneurs and launch their idea.
But we're actually seeing a lot of B2B interest.
So we've got our own MakerPad for Startups program where we help startups automate processes, empower their team to build their own tools.
So a content marketer could automate a certain process, avoid the backlog, and stop annoying all your developers and all that sort of stuff.

Omer (04:11.910)
Okay, so let's kind of start telling the story from probably before Make a Pad because you were working at Product Hunt for a while as well.
So maybe kind of just tell us about, like, what were you doing before that?
And then how did you sort of end up working on Product Hunt?

Ben Tossell (04:29.650)
Yeah, sometimes I waffle with this one.
So I will try and do the, like, the quicker version.
Okay, so I was, yeah, I was a social media analyst.
There's a company, it's called Sprinkler.
Quite a big social platform.
Now I was at an agency and then we got acquired.
I was essentially just running Promoted tweets and Facebook ads for big companies in the uk, which is as boring as it sounds.
And I just was thinking, one day I'll have my idea.
I'll be this big successful entrepreneur and I'll make loads of money and it'll be great.
So I'll just like that ideas guy for a long, long time.
I maybe tried to learn to code a couple of times, but not very successfully, and just thought, oh, no, I'll be the ideas.
I'll be Steve Jobs or whatever.
So I just started hanging out in like these startup groups and there's some slack groups basically that just came around and this is probably when I first found Product Hunt and just saw all these cool new things getting launched and yeah, ended up in the slack groups and I was just that annoying person who was like, hey, yeah, I'll help out however I can.
And everyone asked, so what skills have you got?
And I'm like, oh no, I'm just the ideas guy.
I love was just a lot of that.
Like I was just trying to build relationships really.
But I had an ulterior motive of one day I'll get one of these developers to help me build something.
But I mean it didn't really happen like that.
So I just sort of became part of these communities and fast forward a little bit.
Then I was noticed by Product Hunt.
Ryan followed me one day and was like, I think we need to have a chat.
Two people on the team had recommended me for a community manager role at Product Hunt and I didn't realize that I'd basically been doing the community manager role without being paid for it before.
So they thought, why not pay them for it?
So I got the job, a product hunt and I was there.
I worked remotely.
So I was just in my, in my little apartment in Cardiff in the UK and yeah, I was working remotely for them, sort of running the community, running the homepage featuring products, getting shouted at.
If products weren't getting as high voted then than others and just, yeah, the joys of that.
But that gave me a great position to see so many amazing companies and startups come through through Product Hunt.
I got to speak with YC founders, people at Slack and people at Google and stuff, helping them launch their products, which was just like insane for me, right where I was just in the uk, sat in my flat and I was all of a sudden thrown into the startup world in quite a meaningful way.
What it felt like at the time,

Omer (07:12.030)
Yeah, I mean if you want to connect with people and kind of what you were starting to do when you joined those slack groups, like Product Hunt was like, you know, an amazing place to do that because like, you know, when you're there, like I guess everybody wanted to talk to you then.

Ben Tossell (07:27.470)
Yeah, exactly.
I was actually the ideas got that people wanted to hear from.
Yeah, I mean I was very, very lucky to get that job and I know now looking back, I sort of mention it as one footnote in my path to where I am now and for some people that would be like the absolute ultimate.
And it was for me at the time, it's just, I guess it's one of those things that when you've gone through it and you look back, it is just one of those footnotes.
But it was an incredible opportunity and I'm so grateful for that.
And the team did awesome things and I was there until we got acquired by Angel List.
But yeah, I mean it was a great, great opportunity.
We got to see so many cool things, especially companies that as an ideas guy helped me realize that I could actually build something or make something without needing to know how to code.
And it sort of feel like an app.
So I could make a website with card, like a one pager.
I could connect it with Zapier and Typeform and then take a payment and then send someone like get password protected web page.
So it felt like, oh, this is like a membership site.

Omer (08:36.829)
Yeah, yeah.
And didn't you kind of start doing something like that?
Like, wasn't there like a, a version of MakerPad kind of before MakerPad?

Ben Tossell (08:46.189)
Yeah, I guess there's a few versions and yeah, I mean, so this is a product and I got to know some of these tools.
We just started launching a bunch of things and I didn't realize it at the time, but I was trying to, trying to put out all these crazy ideas.
I had thinking one of these will be the one that makes me a billionaire and everything else and I'll just put out these ideas and that's where my startup starts.
But I didn't realize at the time that the process of how I was creating these fake sort of web app things was actually going to end up being the thing that I ended up doing.
So I was building all these things without code and I was like just posting them on Twitter.
And I had a bit of a following from Product Hunt because everyone wants to follow you and you work a Product hunt.
And yeah, people just kept on seeing things I was launching saying, how are you doing that?
How did you do that?
Because people were aware that I wasn't a coder.
Yeah.
So people just kept on asking me how I was doing these things.
And one of my many ideas was, I'll build your MVP for you without code.
So I put like a card site, a type form and like zapier in the middle and you can buy that for $500.
And people were signing up for my newsletter, ready for launch.
I launched it and not a single person bought anything.
So I was like, right, okay, this isn't quite the idea taken off like I thought it would.
But then I sort of looked back and thought, how did I get that so wrong when so many people seemed interested and I noticed that it was actually people just asking how I was doing these things.
So I thought, well, I've seen people do screencasting businesses.
I've seen indie hackers where they have so and so from go rails makes 15k a month just posting a tutorial about building with Rails.
So I thought, well, why can't I just do that with no code stuff?
So I built something which was a webflow site, a Typeform and a password protected page.
And I called it new code because I couldn't think of anything else.
And it was just, yeah, I would post tutorials for building without code.
So that does sound very similar to what MakerPad is today.
And that was a year or so ahead of when MakePad was actually launched.

Omer (11:00.560)
Okay, so you sort of started doing these tutorials and you got people signing up eventually and paying for this product?

Ben Tossell (11:09.680)
Yeah, I mean, yeah, call it a product.
I basically emailed the people who had signed up for the newsletter about my, my MVP idea and I had a type form, no website yet, and said, this is what I'm going to do.
I'm going to do tutorials about no code.
If you pay here for $50, you'll get lifetime access.
And like 15 people paid without there being any website.
Just the promise of me doing that thing.
So that was validation for me to go and build this site and get this up.
So that's what I did.
And then I started getting customers, which is awesome.

Omer (11:43.040)
Okay, so how big did that sort of business grow?

Ben Tossell (11:46.990)
So I think I got to maybe 8,9k in revenue some months.
It wasn't a proper, actual recurring revenue business because I was doing everything through Typeform.
So it wasn't really a product, it was just giving people a password to the password protected pages.
But I realized at that time I was sort of still in the mindset of, okay, I'm going to build a business.
It's going to be huge.
I'm going to have hundreds of employees, so we've got to grow 10 each week.
We've got to build a platform, we've got to do this, do that.
So I hired a friend of mine, Mubs, who's a prolific maker and he helped me build this platform.
And like weeks and a few months went by and I just sort of was looking at the product thinking, I don't even recognize what this thing is.
This isn't like really teaching people how to build stuff without code.
I wasn't really doing tutorials anymore.
We were trying to provide some weird experience for people to host things on.
I mean, I can't even explain it now because I actually don't know what it was.
Yeah, it was that bad that it just got out of hand that I didn't know what I was doing and I was the one telling Mubs what to build.
So, I mean, there was no hope.
So I went basically traveling for a couple of months with my girlfriend and I just sort of actually, I read the Paul Jarvis Book Company of one, and it wasn't like profoundly, oh, God, I've just discovered this thing.
It was just more about drilling into you that there's a different way to run a business.
And I've been listening to indie hackers, podcasts and things like that and just thought, well, why don't I just try and build a business that is good for me, that suits my needs, pulls in revenue for me and, like, is simple enough for me to run myself with no code tools?
So I basically made a promise myself.
Say, okay, right, I'm going to start focusing on less.
So MakerPad was born and it was a webflow site and I said, I'm going to start doing tutorials with no code and here's a link to a Typeform and you can go and pay so much like the original product.
That's where it all started again.
This was January 2019.

Omer (14:04.640)
So it kind of sounds like you.
You were kind of doing the same thing again, but just being more focused and trying to do less this time.
What did you do with the people who had already kind of paid for the previous version of what you were doing?
And kind of were people, people okay with that, or did people kind of, kind of get upset?
It was like, wait a minute, I just paid for this and now you're doing something else?
Like, did you have any of those kinds of issues?

Ben Tossell (14:28.890)
Well, because it was basically the same thing.
I just gave them free access to MakePad.
So it was an easy thing if people were really disgruntled.
I don't think there was.
If there's one or two people who really wanted their money back, I just gave the money back, but essentially it was me.
Okay, well, I'm going to do these tutorials again.
Here's the previous tutorials I've already done.
So you can still access those, you can still access some of that stuff, but this is the new brand and the new way of me doing this.
And I sort of said to myself that I'm going to run it the way I want to run it and build it the way I want to build it and not sort of think of it in terms of a.
Was it a rocket ship or whatever startup language is up there now?

Omer (15:13.060)
Yeah.
So basically it was like a webflow membership site.
And you were creating these tutorials, were you writing them?
Were you creating screencasts?
Were you doing both?

Ben Tossell (15:28.660)
So when I did Newco and launched it on product hunt, there was actually feedback from one person.
When I did, I was doing video tutorials and speaking over them and someone put a review that said, this is a great idea, love it, but I can't listen to the guy because he's dreadfully.
Sounds dreadfully dull.
And I was like, oh, wait a not so when trying to do video tutorials.
So actually I just.
I was like, oh, well, I don't want to hassle with that.
And I always find it difficult to find to follow.
Sorry, someone's voice during a video.
I prefer to sort of see the visual and then follow text.
So again, just doing it the way I wanted to do it.
I just did silent movies, basically.
Silent movies and just writing the text to follow along with with the videos.

Omer (16:16.000)
You know, that's a really good listen there because, like, sometimes you can look at other screencasts and, you know, they're really polished and the voice sounds great and they've got these, you know, transitions that happen and all that stuff, and you're like, oh man, I couldn't possibly do that.
And, you know, we kind of go and find something else to do.
But a lot of the times I think it's like if we just recognize these are the things that I'm good at, these are the things I don't do well.
So why don't I just kind of.
Instead of trying to work on my weaknesses, like work, you know, working on my voice, why don't I just do what I think I can do well and I could do easily and something that I find personally useful and then hopefully there'll be other people out there who will find it useful too.
Which is what happened with you.

Ben Tossell (17:08.240)
Yeah.
I mean, it also was like the analysis paralysis as well, where if I thought about, oh, I've got to record this video, I've got to produce it, I've got to have a script and go through it and do all that stuff, it'll be such a big task in my head that I would just never, ever want to get around to doing it.
If I just thought, well, I'll just record my screen from now, I'll try and build something and then I'll just chop up all the bits where I messed it up or I'm trying to figure it out myself.
So it worked really well for me.
And I mean now on the site we've got all those fancy transitions, we've got an intro and we've got people who talk and stuff.
But it's just, I thought for me, me just running this one man show was if someone hates this, there's free tutorials.
They would have seen what they're purchasing.
If they don't like it, they won't purchase.
If people really, really, really want me to speak on these videos, they'll tell me like, I'm in the Slack group.
They got my email, they'll tell me.
And there may have been one or two people said, yeah, maybe you should think about doing audio.
And I just thought, well, not everyone, like, there's not an overwhelming response for me to do audio.
Probably telling me a lesson there.
But I think it was fine and it worked for me.

Omer (18:25.780)
So how did you start growing make a pad?
Like where in terms of revenue right

Ben Tossell (18:30.120)
now we just hit 240k for the service.
Like a year was 240k for 2019.
Yeah.
So we started end of January 2019.
So it's basically been a year up until this point.

Omer (18:45.119)
Wow.
And so a couple of things like.
So number one, when did you start working full time on MakerPad?
Because for a big chunk of last year, as I understand, you were doing this part time.

Ben Tossell (18:56.330)
Yeah, this, this was just a side project for me.
It was fun.
Like I said, this is like one of those things that I would do if like just I was building these things.
Anyway, I was trying to figure out how to build like a marketplace app.
Anyway, it just so happened that these were being recorded.
So it was a side project from January up until about September when I was working part time at Ernest Capital.
So I was helping on the platform side, helping founders who Earnest had invested in just like anything they needed in terms of we need help with our sales funnel.
We need to figure out this thing.
Can we get deals for this?
So I was doing that.
And yeah, Make Power was just a side project.

Omer (19:39.370)
Don't you just love how things kind of fall into place?
You know, when you look back?
Like, you know when you're kind of looking forward and trying to figure things out, like, it's so overwhelming and what's the right path to take?
For me personally, or the business or whatever.
And then just for what you've already just told us so far, trying to connect with people and people asking you, well, what skills do you have?
And it's like, well, I'm the ideas guy to your kind of joining Product Hunt.
And then Earnest, where you're now kind of head of platform.
Right.
Would you have ever imagined when you were kind of thinking of stuff for the ideas guy, that you'd be kind of helping Tyler and kind of all the Earnest Capital companies kind of as head of platform?

Ben Tossell (20:27.130)
No, probably not at that point.
But I knew, I think when I was leaving Product Hunt, like, head of platform role at a investment company was sort of my dream thing.
It was like, I can be the ideas guy again.
I could, like, help other founders with their things.
I can just be that generalist, which is what I would call myself, and I can help them with all sorts of problems.
So, I mean, Tyler reached out, I think, when it was still Muco, and I think he was reaching out deal flow.
But he might say otherwise if it's not true.
And he was saying, oh, I'm raising this fund, I'm doing this thing.
And I just sort of saw it and thought, well, I want to be involved.
Like, I definitely just want to be involved with this fund.
Like, I'd love to help build the community or whatever it was.
So, yeah, it sort of really aligned itself.

Omer (21:16.280)
So let's talk about how you've grown over the last year.
I kind of want to talk about, like, you know, how did you find customers?
You know, there's a lot of people who have, you know, ideas and, you know, they'll kind of build stuff, but not many of them can say, oh, Yeah, I made $240,000 or more in, in the last year.
And, oh, by the way, a big chunk of that was kind of working part time as a side project.
So while you were creating these tutorials, what were you also doing to find customers and grow this business?

Ben Tossell (21:52.140)
Well, that was the beauty of it.
I just wasn't.
I wasn't trying to grow.
I wasn't trying to force anything down anyone.
So it wasn't a push mechanism.
It was just a pull.
Like the market started taking notice of what no code, like, what the possibilities were.
And I had unknowingly built up this brand as a no code guy.
And people just found me on Twitter and just saw I did like an airbnb clone in webflow, which was a very basic version.
Now, I could build a different one today, but it was a Very basic one, but it's something that no one had ever seen before.
And it, like, it got like 30, 000 views, had people like Mark Andreessen follow me and all sorts from.
From that one tweet.
And I was like, holy, what's.
What's happening here?
But it was just.
I wasn't like, trying to do stuff.
I was just like, oh, this is cool.
Look, I managed to build something that looks like Airbnb.
And because I had a job, and this was just a side thing, I wasn't worried about if it made no money or if it was making quite a bit of money.
I was just thinking, oh, that's great.
That's like just an extra thing that I can spend on going away or whatever it was.
So that pressure really, or the lack of pressure really helped me.
And just posting shit on Twitter, which is what I usually do, is just seemed to be the place where it got shared a lot and got lots of eyeballs.

Omer (23:15.550)
So what were you doing?
You were just kind of sharing links to the videos that you were creating?

Ben Tossell (23:20.750)
Yeah, I was just doing, like, I'd make like, a small gif or a small video of a walkthrough of what I built and do it on Twitter.
Some of them would link to the actual tutorial, I guess.
So I probably was like, I was trying to get people to look at the tutorial and it'd be a bonus if people signed up.
But that was.
That was what I was doing.
But at the time, it was actually a.
It was a lifetime membership.
There wasn't any monthly or yearly options.
It was just lifetime.
Because back then I thought, oh, well, it's a side project.
For me, it's cool to just have people pay for this stuff.
And, like, who needs another monthly subscription?
So it's a bit different now because I do offer that, but I think then, no pressure, but I think obviously that doesn't make sense in terms of running a business, so that's why we've changed some of that stuff.
But it was great.
People loved it.
The word of mouth spread.
You get yourself a ton of evangelists who are like, yeah, I got this for free forever.
Like, look at all this cool shit that's been made without code.
Just sharing the tweets, sharing tutorials.
So I think a lot of word of mouth helped as well.

Omer (24:29.700)
And how are you kind of figuring out, like, what you were going to share publicly as kind of like, free content and what was going to be kind of membership only?

Ben Tossell (24:41.160)
I completely made it up.
I just thought, oh, Airbnb clone.
Like, surely people are going to really want to know how to build that sort of thing.
I'll just put that behind the paywall.
If I built like a really simple air table for like a sales CRM or something, I'll just make that free.
So I was just making it up as I went along.

Omer (25:02.440)
And how much were you charging at the time?

Ben Tossell (25:04.360)
I think it was $169 at that time.

Omer (25:09.000)
One time payment?

Ben Tossell (25:10.600)
Yeah.

Omer (25:11.640)
And what was the growth sort of trajectory like?
Like, so after like the first three, four months, I guess into April, May, kind of.
Where were you at that time?

Ben Tossell (25:24.440)
Yeah, so around, sort of, I think February was $7,000.
March 17, April 30, May 20, June 28.
So it was a lot as a side project.
I was thinking, this is great.
And it's just, it wasn't recurring and it was one, one time.
But at that point we'd started bringing on companies, so they were paying us to be part of MakePad for us to build tutorials for them with them, collaborate and really show off what their tools could do too.
So it was like a two pronged thing there.

Omer (26:02.910)
So that's like crazy growth in just a couple of months of a side project to start generating revenue like that.
Especially where, I mean, I wouldn't say you were like doing no marketing because you were kind of being pretty thoughtful about the kinds of stuff you were going to put up on Twitter and kind of educating people out there as well.
And.
And what you were going to share is free versus kind of behind a paywall.
But that's kind of still pretty crazy growth.
How much when you were working part time on this, like, how much time were you spending?
Because, like, you know, before we started recording, I told you, like every time I kind of got a, you know, make a pattern or come across something you were doing, I was like, how can you be doing this part time?
Like, you know, like, how much time were you spending?

Ben Tossell (26:54.300)
I really don't know.
I mean, I was probably spending a lot more time than I even think on it.
Whether it's just thinking about what I'm going to do or planning it or recording things.
I tried to have some sort of structure there, but I really, I can't even remember now.
Is that that long ago?
But it was, I mean, I was part.
I was basically half time on, on Earnest and half time on this, but I probably spent more time on MakerPad.
But the thing is, with no code is that if I think, oh, I'm going to try and build this thing.
And I sort of vaguely, I mean, I know what tools are the right tools to use for building that thing.
So I would just be able to dive in and build it pretty quickly.
So that's like one of the big pluses of the no code movement, which is you can build stuff really, really quickly.
So if I couldn't do that for myself, then I don't know what, I shouldn't have been doing it, basically.

Omer (27:49.100)
And I think the other thing I, the takeaway I get is like, you really enjoy doing this stuff.
So when you have that sort of natural interest or passion about something and the curiosity to sort of see, hey, I wonder if I could build this or do that, then it doesn't kind of really feel like work, does it?

Ben Tossell (28:10.060)
No.
And I know like, that's one of those things that people sometimes listen to a podcast and roll their eyes thinking, oh, well, this person's doing something they really love and they're making the money.
So I don't want to sound like that, but it just genuinely was like, I am very naturally curious in the tech world trying to figure out, I can't code, I want to make this thing work for me.
So a lot of that was just trying to see it was like mini challenges for myself or can I do this thing?
Can I do this and show off that?
Actually you don't need to learn to code to do this thing.
So yeah, I mean, I loved doing that.
And it's paid off.

Omer (28:45.540)
And then beyond sort of Twitter, it was just kind of word of mouth.
And those are the only two things that you're still doing?

Ben Tossell (28:51.700)
Yeah, more or less.
We have online live workshops and things like that, but again, we only put those on Twitter and we've got a mailing list which is pretty engaged and it's about a third 40% open rate on there and almost 10,000 subscribers.
So yeah, so I just say Twitter and the newsletter, really.

Omer (29:14.700)
And I know you said at one point from.
What I just understand is that you wanted to have a one time payment because you felt like it was almost like pressure to charge a subscription and recurring revenue because you'd kind of get back to that maybe that new code type situation where you felt like you were doing too much or had to keep getting stuff out, you know, delivering new stuff every month.
And I guess the approach of a one time payment sort of took some of that pressure off.
But then you switched to a subscription and recurring revenue model.
So what changed your mind and why did you decide to do that eventually?

Ben Tossell (29:53.750)
Well, One was that it was possible.
Member Stack is what I use to basically add a payment layer and hide content on the Webflow site.
So when MemberStack came along, there must have been sort of April time.
I think I was able to actually add a yearly monthly subscription to my site.
So I started using that and I think I just added a yearly one because I thought, again, who needs another, like, monthly cost?
Why can't we just have yearly?
And I basically was just copying the egghead, the developer platform.
They did yearly, as I think Joel said, I'm on a podcast.
Like, yearly is better.
You're not worrying every month about the churn of someone who just wanted to watch one tutorial.
So I just added yearly, I think, and then I'll try to see when I actually did.
But the split was mostly still lifetime pro memberships, as you can probably imagine.

Omer (30:54.690)
So the yearly thing is really interesting because, yeah, I think you get less of an issue in terms of, like, you know, monthly churn.
But in some ways it can also be a little harder to get people to sign up in the first place.
Like if they have to pay, I don't know, 30, $40 a month and kind of making that first month's payment to get in and try out make a pad versus I've got to put in a, you know, spend a few hundred bucks to sort of get in.
Did you kind of find that there was sort of any resistance to that?
And if so, like, how did you deal with it?

Ben Tossell (31:29.600)
Yeah, I think there's always going to be people who are vocal about, oh, why don't you do this, why don't you do that?
And again, it was just a case of like, I don't want the pressure, I don't want to worry about it.
So the customers who I want are the people who will pay the yearly fee and they're going to get value in that year.
And it doesn't mean that every month I'm stressing about someone dropping off.
And I understand there's a different cost element and everything else.
And there was free stuff on the site and sort of skip forward to today.
We do offer monthly pricing, and I think we luckily have other revenue streams.
That means that we just don't worry about the monthly so much.
If someone is paying to come and access one tutorial, we've sort of taken the stance of, okay, well, it'll cost you $40 to come and look at one tutorial for one month and then churn, but it will cost you $200 to come and See God knows how many tutorials in one year and get access to community and everything else.
So it's just a bit of a mindset thing, I think for me and a bit of a, this is sort of how I wanted to do it.
But yeah, when this sort of became a business business, you got to think of other, some other things.
So I do understand that there's like different people with different budgets and everything else.

Omer (32:53.440)
Yeah.
But I love that about what you just said, that by charging annual only, it allowed you to attract more of the types of people that you wanted to have in MakerPad.
And a lot of the times when we, we're kind of building these kind of businesses, we sort of are like, especially in the early days, you're like, you know, I'll take anybody, right?
Any, anybody who wants to come in, right, yeah, that's great.
But if you can be more selective and ultimately I think it puts you in a better place because you attract the right kinds of customers, the people who are going to stick around, the people who are going to get the most value from what you're doing.
And a lot of the times those are also the people who are able to give you a lot of the feedback to, you know, make the product even better.

Ben Tossell (33:47.830)
Yeah.
And I mean, it's not for everyone and I understand that.
And it's like I don't know any more than anyone else does.
I'm figuring it out and I'm testing things all the time.
It's just not that like I've done this and this is the right way to do it, but I mean, how many stories you read or listen to about people saying, oh yeah, this $5 a month customer was the one who gives you the most support tickets, the one who bugs you the most, that uses the product like in the most annoying ways or whatever it is, it always seems to be like that lower customer.
So I mean, yeah, if you've got the luxury of being able to pick your customers by doing things like this, then it's great.
But like you said, if, if it's early days, you're trying to validate and everything else, then I'm not going to pretend that not taking money is an easy option.

Omer (34:37.660)
Now you also said that you had a B2B kind of offering with make a pad and you're working with companies who, who kind of want to do more or kind of get their teams up and running.
What's different, when they get in, like they presumably get access to all the same tutorials that, you know, I would if I was signed up in MakerPad.
But what else do they get?

Ben Tossell (34:59.800)
Yeah, so teams is, I mean we've got a few B2B offerings.
So one is working with Webflow and Glide and things like that.
So that's a different, a different thing where we collaborate on content.
But our B2B offering is more about, okay, say you run your company and you have webflow, you've got Airtable and Zapier running some things.
You've got your developer team as well.
You want your team to like, if you're hiring anyone, you want them to know how Zapier works, what Zapier is, how airtable works and how they sort of connect together.
So we, we have this package that is basically us helping your team get trained in these tools.
So it gives multiple team access for pro membership.
There's like a big one on one onboarding where you can sort of say, oh, we're looking for like we want to build this type of CRM in airtable and have it updated on this newsletter.
How do we sort of do that?
And then we've also got like a talent arm where we've got profiles, which is a recent addition to MakePad.
So we get to see all the people who have completed certain tutorials.
We've got all the data to show what the tools are that people are using.
So if a company says to me, okay, great, we've got Airtable and Zapier set up.
Who are the best people, you know, who have done the most things with Airtable and Zapier.
And I can give them three to five examples of oh yeah, these people also these ones are available to hire as a freelancer or this one perhaps is someone you could look at for full time.

Omer (36:35.050)
Got it.
Okay.
So there were two reasons that I really wanted to have you on the show.
One was to share your story with Make a Pad and kind of how you've built that recurring revenue business, even though it's not technically a SaaS business.
The other one was really, I think I wanted to get my listeners to sort of understand a little bit more about what's happening with no code and the sort of the tools that are available out there now.
Because I still often hear people telling me I'm non technical.
I have this idea, like you said, I'm the ideas guy and I really need a technical co founder to build this thing or I need a developer and I can't find a developer or I need money to hire developers or whatever that is.
And I really wanted those people to take another look at some of these tools out there or just to understand what's out there now, because, sure, yeah, I mean, at some point you probably do want to hire that person or bring on a technical co founder or whatever if you're in that situation.
But there are so many tools out there now that you could probably build your MVP and start even charging customers and getting early revenue without having those technical skills.
And, you know, and a great example that I thought of because I just saw a message from him this morning is a guy called Kenton who's in our SaaS club plus membership.
And he, you know, when he kind of, I first met him, he had this idea and he'd been trying to kind of get this SaaS product launched for a long time and really was kind of getting to the point where he was giving up.
And then at the time, I think there weren't that many things around, but it was about a year ago, like, he started looking at Bubble and, you know, he kind of found some those tutorials and kind of worked his way through and built the entire product himself, got, you know, the subscription piece, set up the back end and found customers, and he's generating revenue.
And it's just a great example of, you know, you don't have to be a developer to build that kind of product or certainly an mvp.
So kind of with that in mind, like, what are like, some of your favorite tools?
And if we were kind of thinking about, you know, just.
Just kind of like the core elements of an mvp.
Right.
If we're thinking about even the Airbnb clone as an example.
Right.
What are some of the tools, your favorite tools out there, that people should be sort of taking a look at or thinking about in helping them build their MVP or product?

Ben Tossell (39:30.670)
Yeah.
So before I answer that, I want to say that, like, there's so many use cases out there of people and examples of what people have built without code.
And Lambda School, which is a coding boot camp, have raised $30 million in venture fundraising and have had 3,000 concurrent students.
There's a story about them on our site.
We did an interview, and they built most of their internal tools without code, like they're a coding bootcamp.
And they just thought, well, we don't need to spend lots of developer time and money on building this thing from scratch.
If Airtable and Typeform and something else will actually do the same job that we want this thing to do.
And they're starting to build their own internal tools now because they've pushed like airtable to its 50,000 row limit or whatever it is.
I mean, they've really pushed some of these tools as far as they'll go.
But I mean, if you're worried about.
I mean, I don't like saying these no code things get you to mvp.
I think it just gets you a validation.
But there's no reason why you can't continue to go further with some of these no code tools.
I think that there's tons of examples out there and people taking money and they don't know any different on what your thing is built on.
They just want to pay for the solution.
So yeah, there's so many examples out there and we need to do a better job of showing them and sort of shouting loud and proud about what is possible.

Omer (40:59.000)
That's a really good example with Lambda School though.
But I had no idea that their backend had been kind of big no code given the fact that it's a really successful business now that's helping people get careers to learn to become developers.

Ben Tossell (41:18.030)
Yeah, I know, it's my favorite example because it makes people think twice straight away.
So yeah, I mean Mitchell is one of their growth guys and he's been part of MakerPad for a while and it's been great to just see the stuff that he's been building and he's done some tutorials for us and things.
So yeah, shout out to him for, for all that.
But yeah, back to the tools that I recommend.
I mean we do partner with a bunch of tools so I'll probably end up mentioning those by accident.
But I'll just say what we are built with because makepad is built fully with no code.
So we've got webflow as our website, still use airtable as our database.
Zapier pulls things back and forth.
We've got member stack for our memberships, but I'd like to think that people who come and sign up for MakerPad don't even realize that it's built without code.
We sort of see ourselves as not quite to this extent, but we see ourselves as GitHub of no code.
You can have a profile, you can go to a tool page and click I use this tool and that gets added to your profile.
You can go to a tutorial page and click mark as completed and that will add to your profile.
Like all these things that almost feel like software, but it actually is just a bunch of button links to a zap, links to an airtable, links to a zap to then link back to webflow and makes it feel real.
I Mean, it is real, but I mean, you know what I mean.

Omer (42:52.810)
Yeah.
So how does webflow integrate with airtable?
Is that.
Does Zapier get the data in and out of airtable?

Ben Tossell (43:01.600)
Yeah, so there's.
It's basically zapier pulls through some data, but there's some really cool tricks that you can do with zapier.
Webflow Member Stack airtable that seems to be like the stack to know, to be able to do a bunch of stuff.
I know a friend of mine, Connor, he built a freelancer marketplace with just those tools.
So you can go and hire a social media marketing person in New Zealand and everything is built through that.

Omer (43:31.570)
So what about like Bubble versus webflow?
Where do you think?
Like, like how would you advise people to think about that?
Like when, when would one make sense over the other?

Ben Tossell (43:41.010)
So I think they look very different.
Webflow I used initially because I'm a point and click person who just likes messing things up.
And I think that if any designer looked at my webflow site, they'd want to kill me because it's just like div block 506 instead of everything being named properly and I just move things around and do it so that it works for me.
And Bubble is a bit more technically minded, I think.
So there's certain layers of what you need to build in terms of like if this, then that type stuff.
But Bubble lets you do a lot more currently with sort of.
You can build, like you said, you can build a SaaS product, you can build something that is more software than webflow.
So webflow at the moment has like the website side of things and they've got some E commerce from which I think they launched last year.
And I'm sure that they're going to have more and more things to help you build actual software with webflow.
But at the moment it's more like the, that's the front end thing.
But when there's people like me who are just trying to think, well it's built in webflow, I'm going to try and make it work like software.
I then end up linking zapier, Airtable and whatever else to make it work the way I want it to.

Omer (44:59.640)
Got it.
Okay, so there's kind of like two.
If you're thinking about sort of an MVP or product, there's like two sort of possible ways you could go.
One is with kind of bubble type thing, which is kind of really a no code, but it's.
You're really sort of building software because I think they give you the sort of a database is sort of more integrated into that and all the authentication and all that stuff is kind of built in.
So it's kind of like one tool.
But you know, from what you've said, like, hey, you might, you might go there and you might find that actually it's, you know, maybe it's kind of intuitive for you or maybe it's not.
The other way is using something like webflow, which is, you know, basically a website builder, and then using Airtable.
Can you use any other databases on the back end?

Ben Tossell (45:46.520)
You can use Google Sheets if you wanted to.
I like Airtable and use it for a lot of things now.
And there's so many different tools for so many different things.
We could have done the whole podcast on just tools.
And we're trying to show ways on MakerPad.
So we've got MakerPad Co Explore and there's basically, you can just filter by what's the best for memberships and it'll show you the tools, tutorials and stories all related to that.
So you could do mobile apps and it will show you Glide, which is a simple, like super simple way to set up really powerful mobile apps, which is just based off a Google Sheet.
Like you can build an Instagram clone or an Airbnb clone.
So that sort of functionality is out of the box with just a Google Sheet.

Omer (46:35.730)
Now all the developers listening in on this will be thinking, yeah, but can like webflow and Airtable and Zapier, is that kind of a scalable way, especially as you start to grow the business and, you know, is that kind of the best place to store the data?
Is that responsive enough in terms of, you know, like queries and all that sort of stuff?
But it sounds like it's still working pretty well for you.

Ben Tossell (46:59.490)
Yeah, I mean, we've got 950 paying members.
We get 5 to 10,000 a week coming to the site and using things.
And some things break like they do in software.
So when something happens and Zapier doesn't fire for some reason, I'll go in and fix it like you would a bug.
So it's very similar in.
I don't want to insult any developers listening, but I think it's very similar in how you look at building products.
And also it's not no code or code in my eyes.
It's not like a one versus the other.
And I'm not saying one over the other.
Obviously, no code worked for me.
And I think that seems to be what works for a lot of people who just cannot get on with coding, which I think should be acceptable.
I did a podcast previously with Sahil from Gumroad, which is the code versus no code debate, which you'll be disappointed by if you're actually looking for like a fight.
It's just both just sort of agreeing that, yeah, it is a different path to the same goal.
You want to build software.
So no code for me is like programming, but for everyone.

Omer (48:07.710)
Yeah, no, I mean, the way I think about it is like, you know, maybe showing my age.
Right.
But, you know, 20 years ago you needed to hire a developer to publish a blog, right.
And today it's kind of like.
And then, you know, it was like, oh, no, you can do it yourself and it's going to be as easy as printing a document.
Well, bloggers and content creators doing well and developers are doing well and, you know, new things come on and we evolve and.
And there are new opportunities.
I think that's the way to think about it, right.
In terms of.
It's not one is going to kill the other, but it's more about, you know, it's empowering different types of people to take whatever they're doing to the next level and make that easier for them.

Ben Tossell (48:45.250)
Yeah, it's just another abstraction, Right.
It's not like you don't code in zeros and ones anymore.
There's languages and things on top of that.
So this is another layer of abstraction for the people who can't work with curly brackets and colons.

Omer (48:58.860)
Yeah, exactly.

Ben Tossell (48:59.980)
Yeah.

Omer (49:00.940)
And then in terms of like the membership piece, you said you use Member Stack, but you could be using kind of, you know, you know, other products as well, like Member Space as well.
And, you know, I had like Ryan and Ward on the founders of Member Space on the show a while back.
It was episode 232.
And you know those guys as well, right?
Because they're part of the Earnest family.
So.

Ben Tossell (49:22.380)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Omer (49:23.220)
There's a lot of good products out there that it's really pretty amazing once you.
So I would just encourage people, like, go to make a pad, check out the tutorials, try it out, get into the membership and if you're serious about, you know, building these types of products, you know, there's some great resources there.
So we should wrap up because, you know, as we kind of get into this and we started talking about the tools and stuff, I was like, we, we could talk all day about this stuff, right?
There's so many different things, but we should wrap up.
So I'm going to kind of go on to the Lightning round and going to ask you seven quick fire questions.
All right, so you ready to go?

Ben Tossell (50:01.810)
Yeah.

Omer (50:02.370)
Okay.
So what's the best piece of business advice you've ever received?

Ben Tossell (50:06.130)
I don't know if I received this, but I took it away from that book, which was just focus on doing less.

Omer (50:11.010)
What book would you recommend to our audience and why?

Ben Tossell (50:13.650)
I like Creativity Inc.
It's just a really interesting book about how Pixar created their culture.

Omer (50:20.300)
Is that the one with the red cover?

Ben Tossell (50:21.980)
Yeah.
I love it.

Omer (50:23.180)
Yeah, that's how I remember that book.
What's one attribute or characteristic in your mind of a successful founder?

Ben Tossell (50:29.820)
Ignorance of not knowing when to give up.
Love it.

Omer (50:33.100)
What's your favorite personal productivity tool or habit?

Ben Tossell (50:36.140)
Probably changing your productivity or habits all the time because when you get stuck in one, it changes.
So change.
Just keep changing them, I guess.

Omer (50:45.830)
What's a new or crazy business idea you'd love to pursue if you had the extra time?

Ben Tossell (50:50.230)
I'd love to see something where someone was, like, giving me therapy, but based on mental models.

Omer (50:58.310)
Tell me more.
I know it's the lightning round, but.

Ben Tossell (51:03.750)
Yeah, I know.

Omer (51:04.550)
I'm curious.

Ben Tossell (51:05.910)
This is a slow roll round.
So basically I'd love to go and speak to a therapist or whatever and talk about stuff, but then I'd want to say I want them to sort of teach me, like, the mental model framework of.
Okay, you need to think about this.
Like, I read books about mental models and they all sound great, but I need, like, someone teaching me.
Maybe it needs to be a therapist.
Maybe it's just like a mental models coach on demand.
There we are.

Omer (51:33.840)
I like that.
Actually.
What's an interesting or fun fact about you that most people don't know?

Ben Tossell (51:40.030)
Some of my colleagues from product will love this, that I used to.
I lived in China for six months, went to university there.

Omer (51:46.190)
Wow, I didn't know that.

Ben Tossell (51:48.110)
Well, that's who you are, right?

Omer (51:49.550)
There you go.
Yeah.
Well, I didn't know you grew up in Wales either.
Like, that was.
And what's one of your most important passions outside of your work?

Ben Tossell (51:59.710)
I like traveling, but that's like a boring thing that everyone says.
I recently started getting back into tennis, so maybe that counts.

Omer (52:06.710)
There you go.

Ben Tossell (52:07.510)
All right, cool.

Omer (52:08.950)
So, Ben, thanks for joining me.
It's been.
It's been a real pleasure talking, sharing your story, which has kind of been amazing over the last year, what you've.
You've managed to do and sort of the community that you've built and.
Yeah, just, you know, thanks for sharing your.
Your expertise and hopefully it's opened people's eyes in terms of, you know, if you kind of feel like stuck right now building a product because you don't have the technical expertise, take a look at make a pad, try out some of these tools, check other tutorials, and, you know, you might be surprised that you can get your MVP or your product built sooner than maybe you realized and maybe do it all by yourself.
So I think that's.
That's something I would really encourage everybody to sort of think more about.
And, yeah, thanks for being part of the show.

Ben Tossell (52:58.790)
Yeah, well, I agree with you that obviously.
And yeah, feel free to, like, ping me with any questions about no code stuff too.
But, yeah, thanks so much for having me on the show.

Omer (53:07.350)
So MakerPad, they can go to MakerPad co. And if folks want to get in touch with you, what's the best way for them to do that?

Ben Tossell (53:15.110)
Twitter is entossle, which is T O double S E double cool.

Omer (53:19.750)
I'll include the link in the show notes to that as well.
Great.
Cheers, Ben.
Thank you.
Sorry for running a little late and I know you probably got better things to do with your evening, so I appreciate you making the time.
Cheers.

Ben Tossell (53:31.670)
No, that's all.
Cheers.