HN user
Geek, dad, author, noodler. Managing Director of Pocketworks, a bunch of UK app developers, design thinkers and co-founders.
AppFlows is a privacy-first online tool that helps you scope, estimate and visualise app ideas as fast as you can type.
I made AppFlows to help our clients here at Pocketworks. Most app ideas start with boring spreadsheets, and I craved a visual way to scope, estimate and explore ideas without getting bogged down in visual design.
It's a bit rough n' ready, but any feedback would be greatly appreciated.
An online tool for product managers that helps them turn written app specifications into something more interesting and visual.
It doesn't save anything to the cloud. It supports markdown. It currently doesn't using an LLM but I'm sure that will sneak in at some point. One day, I'd like to have it generate wireframes using AI.
I've curated a list of tools below which I update regularly.
I've spoken to a CTO who are using no-code tools, so here are some views:
1. Cost - Will depend on compute power needed, but for internal tools that will be low.
2. You might want to pick something you are familiar with and is actively developed and accepting pull requests. A lot of the low code tools do allow you to write custom code anwyay, which is worth bearing in mind.
3. That's a tough one, some of these tools have a commercial model that runs alongside their open source model, which may help give some security. I remember that Facebook pulled their low-code backend tool many years ago, so just because it's by a big company, doesn't mean it has a long future.
Here's the list:
https://pocketworks.co.uk/blog/open-source-no-code-tools/
To save you a click, here's what's in the list:
NocoDB - Turn any database into a smart spreadsheet Baserow - Create your own online database without technical experience ToolJet - Build & deploy internal tools with minimal engineering effort BudiBase - Build apps for your workplace in minutes AppSmith - Build admin panels, CRUD apps and workflows 10x faster Saltcorn - Point and click database web applications Lowdefy - Build web apps, admin panels and BI dashboards with ease Directus - Wrap your existing SQL database with a GraphQL+REST API and admin panel Frappe Framework - Metadata-driven, full-stack framework in Python and Javascript Basetool - View and manage all your data in one place like a pro Rowy - Manage Firestore data in a spreadsheet-like UI GDevelop - Free, and easy game-making app PocketBase - Backend for your next SaaS and Mobile app in 1 file NocoBase - Build internal tools in minutes
Cheers
T
I run a mobile app agency like you and we do pretty well selling GaSaaS.
I'm a developer but have studied sales quite a lot over the last 10 years. The most important thing I learned is to find clients that fit you really well when it comes to skills, culture and budget.
To do this you have to give a shit and not be afraid to ask potentially off-putting questions. Stuff like:
"Are you sure you want to build this app, your business case doesn't add up so why bother?"
"Can you demonstrate you're in this for the long haul? There's no joy in building an app that fails, which is what happens if you don't budget to iterate your app."
"How come you don't hire freelancers or contractors, it will cost you less?"
Obviously I ask nicer questions too, but these are good "give a shit enough to risk losing the sale" kind of questions.
Interestingly, I've found that tools become less important the more you nail your purpose, culture, communications and processes.
For that, the Traction book would get you off to a very good start in implementing your company "Operating System".
I do understand your interest in tools though, but I spent far too long obsessing over tools in my business. Perhaps it's because I'm a software developer and I wanted to believe that tools could fix the problems, rather than facing up to the more human challenges.
Right now our 15-person business uses Notion, Slack, Google Docs, Figma Jam, Semrush and Productive. These cover all the things you mentioned.
You're right about the downturn, it's impossible to run a team for long without a full order book. That said, I think you'd have this problem for an offshore team too, perhaps with a much longer "sat on hands" cash runway.
I have a friend who's set up an offshore team and he saves 70% on developer salaries from what I can infer.
We employ within Europe and the UK, our average dev salary is around $65,000.
Not at all, we just finished our financial year and it was 14% operating profit.
The previous year was 29%, but last year was lower as I made some expensive decisions during the COVID period. Basically, I grabbed all the revenue opportunities I could without too much concern for profit
I run a small-ish dev shop ($1.5m revenue) and there are a lot of things I wish I knew back in 2012 when I started.
1. Finding clients is hard. Think hard about what an awesome customer looks like and then figure out how to reach them. This is the most important thing IMO. I'm reading Standout of Die, it has good advice on this.
2. First attempt, I started with about $40,000 and blew it all quickly as I didn't have enough sales. Better to get the sales first then grow the rest. You can be transparent about this with potential clients.
3. If your costs are $400,000 a year, and you'll sell 44 weeks of the year allowing for holidays, sickness and wiggle room, then you need to sell $9,000 a week to stay in business. If you want to make 25% profit then you'll need to sell closer to $500,000 a year and $11.3k a week.
4. I'm in the UK, we pay someone to politely chase clients for payment. This was a game changer. Most agreed to pay monthly but never do without a good bit of nudging.
5. As for tips... There are so many good books and courses on building and running a service business, I wish they'd been there when I started. To name a few.
- Jonathan Stark.com - Hourly Billing is Nuts
- Gareth Healey - Standout or Die
- Jason Swenk - Agency Playbook
- Blair Enns - The Win Without Pitching Manifesto
- Blair Enns - Pricing Creativity
- Traction - Gino Wickman
Running a dev shop can be incredibly rewarding and fun, especially if you love the work you're doing. Building a business will be like learning a whole new career, so don't underestimate the learning curve the number of mistakes you can make (if you're like me haha). It's great that you're asking for advice, it will save you some headaches :)
I roughly follow Getting Things Done (GTD) and built a Flutter desktop app for managing the various lists in GTD (I hate flicking between note files).
You can see it on this page. Note that I haven't decided if I'll launch the app yet, so there's not even a domain name. https://qzj2yr24qf8m.umso.co/
GTD also recommends you keep a projects list to remind you of all the open projects you have.
I've been curating a list of open source no-code tools. I'm sure I've missed a few but here they are.
It includes the ones mentioned here - AppSmith, ToolJet, BudiBase and SaltCorn. I'll add NodeRed even though it's a bit more hardware/IoT oriented.
We do this. We're only a small 12-person software agency, we have two Elixir developers right now.
When we hired the 2nd, we looked for someone who had good knowledge of Node, Rails, Laravel or whatever and were excited to learn Elixir/Phoenix. Then they completed a Udemy course and started practicing. It worked out pretty great!
I've got a few things going:
1. A company playbook writing tool that helps you document team and company processes. It gives you a nice online browseable playbook, along with .epub and .mobi download.
2. Adding more advanced features to my https://yuml.me UML tool, including text formatting, UML packages, and a more succinct DSL.
3. A contract e-signing tool that doesn't suck on mobile. For some reason, every digital signature tool I use feels yucky.
4. A tool that lets you write out user stories and converts them into example mobile wireframes by parsing the text. You can also do point estimations for relative sizing.
Thanks for the feedback! Yes, we sometimes create flowcharts ourselves so would be a nice addition.
What diagrams do you see used in dev teams these days?
In our team (non enterprise), there's a lot of visual flow models for UX, and still some class/interaction/activity diagrams for explaining how stuff hangs together.
yUML creator here.
Think I know what you're saying. That said, there are many people using a command line wrapper to generate yUML diagrams as part of an automated workflow.
The paid features are more for people who want better management of diagrams.
Sounds like you're on the right path in that you have a genuine desire to create great looking products. This means you have a respect for design, which is hugely important.
I used to be a back-end guy (I once co-authored a book on an ORM and just love middle tier and db shizzle). I had a huge appreciation for products that looked and felt great, but only had the back-end skills. I had a genuine desire to build skills in design so I could make better products.
If you want to take some short-cuts to build great looking stuff I'd do the following
- Build a mood board of stuff you think looks great. Set your own standards bar.
- Play around with Sketch or similar to learn how to get the look you like (this will make you think about UI design problems). This might take years but you have to start somewhere.
- Read "Design of Everyday Things" and "Don't Make Me Think" and a few other design classics. The principles stand strong.
- Get help from designers to bridge the gap between your skill level and where you want to be. When I started my company, I'd find designers who had a visual style I liked and paid them to help out.
Really cool stuff.
Would look great in http://yuml.me which also has a sketchy look.
I need to rewrite yUML using newer tech, business collaborations welcome :)
http://yuml.me diagrams as an API.
This was scratching and itch, yet get used by 1000s of people every day.
_ ___ ____ ____ _
(_)/ _ \/ ___| | _ \ _____ _____| | ___ _ __ ___ _ __
| | | | \___ \ | | | |/ _ \ \ / / _ \ |/ _ \| '_ \ / _ \ '__|
| | |_| |___) | | |_| | __/\ V / __/ | (_) | |_) | __/ |
|_|\___/|____/ |____/ \___| \_/ \___|_|\___/| .__/ \___|_|
|_|
ABOUT THE JOB
- Up to £45K depending on experience and skill
- Office based job
- Leeds, United Kingdom (UK)
- Flexible working options
- You get to work somewhere that scores 11/12 on the Joel Test
- You'll work with a team that does SCRUM properly
- You always get your birthday off
- You'll enjoy some quality company in our daily team lunches
- We use a lot of swift
- We take UX really seriously
- You have a solid understanding of building iOS apps, whether that’s using Swift or Objective-C.
- You are experienced with native Cocoa Touch frameworks.
- You are comfortable in writing iOS UI animations.
- You have experience with third-party libraries and APIs
- You have experience in working with RESTful web services
- You have experience with CI, OO development and design patterns
- You are comfortable with GIT and GitFlow
- You use TDD and Agile principles
- You experiment with new technologies in your spare time and are interested in more than just mobile
Write to careers@pocketworks.co.uk to get started
Whatever you decide will probably be wrong.
So I'd try and set your sales guy up for success, get him off to a positive start, and be generous with commission. Agree targets that should be achievable.
If he's amazing, you'll want to agree something attractive to both of you. Possibly involving equity. If he can't sell your stuff, then you'll probably want to try someone else. So you'll need the ability to "undo.
Spam wouldn't be spam if it was relevant. Could the forms constrain the types of enquiry to only stuff you're interested in?
In 2002 I accidentally executed
DROP TABLE HOTELS;
whilst working on the Virgin Holidays website. We managed to get it from backup but it made me shart.
Had Apple Watch since summer.
Miss it when I forget to put it on.
Phone stays in my pocket most of the day.
Looking at it during meetings is rude and literally a deal breaker.
Only use it for:
- notifications
- remote controlled camera for group selfies
- asking Siri how far away somewhere is, or simple questions
- quickly responding to messages
Nice, you could also do something to embed http://yuml.me diagrams for converting text into diagrams?
Uber isn't just taking bookings away from taxis, it's taking drivers. It would be interesting to see a study of how cab company fleet sizes change after Uber arrives in town.
Uber raised the bar in terms of user experience, so the industry is scrambling to react. No harm with a little competition. My company (Pocketworks) do a taxi app in the UK that's effectively competing with Uber.
Does anyone know if Ubers long term plan is around disrupting logistics? Having a network of drivers that can move anything on demand would be really powerful.
http://yuml.me can do simple diagrams too
Have you tried working backwards? I mean, thinking about what you might want to be doing in 5 or 10 years? Then taking steps that get you there. It sounds cheesy but if you know where you're heading you'll make better choices in the short term.
Big thanks for that. I'll give it a read.
We've hit problems with ack in the past. So I thought we could add more acks to increase confidence. But it's never 100% certainty. I'm sure this paper will help understand the issues.
Kind of, yup.
That said, one detail I left out is that this transaction is distributed across 4 separate systems, so it's not quite as simple as a database lock. And I wouldn't do a long db lock unless it was some kind of pessimistic offline lock :)
But we're mostly worrying about the mobile app acknowledging the response so the same principle stands - we need the mobile app to ACK :)