Most No-Coders Are Bootstrappers

Bubble recently released their 2020 No-Code Census. The insights within it are taken from 741 responses collected between November 2020 and January 2021. Each insight is pure gold, but this one really stood out for me.

You read that right - 76% of no-code users are bootstrapped or self-funded. How far we’ve come.

Early computers and the early internet were full of promise. “A computer on every desk and in every home” was Bill Gates’ goal when Windows 95 launched. The reality, however, was not each one of those computers could do everything for everyone. For a lot of tasks, programming was required.

Custom software remained the preserve of well funded companies, or well-learned developers. WordPress, for example, didn’t just “take off” because it was free. It took off because it was one of the first open source website builders to offer free plugins, built by developers all over the world.

If you needed something custom, though, you paid big bucks for it.

That’s why the 76% figure above is so exciting to me. It’s not that the bootstrapped founders will all stay bootstrapped forever. Vlad Magdalin of Webflow bootstrapped his way to a successful seed round, but it took nearly a decade to get there. Atlassian was bootstrapped for nearly a decade.

With No-Code, lost decades are a thing of the past. It’s a time innovation, not just a technology innovation. For founders, No-Code accelerates time. Time to MVP. Time to Product-Market fit. Time to success. Time to fail.

In a No-Code world a novice with an idea can - quite literally - turn their ideas into working prototypes in hours or days. Not weeks or years. They can create that prototype themselves, using tools that cost nothing, or next to nothing. On any computer, anywhere. All you need is a browser.

2020 will undoubtedly be remembered for not-so-great reasons. Yet, looking back from the future, it’s likely 2020 will also be remembered as a year when No-Code hit the mass market. An exciting milestone for a crazy year.

Download the full 2020 No-Code Census results at nocodecensus.com and check out this great blog post which summarizes the results.