How to grow a $10M business with no-code tools, no-code AI is now available
Modern Makers - 05/07/2020
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Hi Makers,
In the agenda this week:
💀 Elliot wanted to revolutionise e-commerce. And then something went wrong
🤖 Focus on Metaranx, a no-code AI platform
💰 The no-code workflows that grew a $10M company
Enjoy!
RIP Elliot. This e-commerce platform will be closed down in a few days. Elliot had managed to generate quite a lot of word-of-mouth around their solution at the beginning of the year. Launched in 2017, Elliot offered a platform that allows the creation of an e-commerce site without the need for coding, as well as the management of payments in 130 countries and administrative details for the delivery of products. The founders were successful in raising more than $5 million for this project.
A note was shared this week to announce the closure of the service. A rather surprising news given that a version 2.0 of Elliot was expected for this year as their website still displays it.
So there are still a few days left for Elliot users to export their data before the final closure of the service on July 15th.
We don't really have details on the reasons for this failure but this news is I think a stinging reminder for project creators. Even if no-code tools are on the rise, it is still very important to evaluate as best as possible the company offering a tool and the data export options if you ever find yourself forced to migrate your applications to another service.
🧰 Product
It is now possible to add a user agreement checkbox for the terms & conditions acceptance on the sign in page of your apps on Glide. This is a very important new feature in the context of the general data protection regulation (the famous GDPR).
Glide has also added this week an option to contact the creator of an application directly within the application.
Metaranx is since this week available in BETA version and has sent the first invitations to users who had previously registered on the waiting list to test the service. Metaranx is a no-code tool that focuses on a brick that is essential in many projects: artificial intelligence or AI. A very complex subject that Metaranx wants to simplify as much as possible, allowing any project creator to create an AI without the need to code.
In this BETA version, Metaranx seems to focus on two first bricks of artificial intelligence: data extraction within text documents and sentiment analysis.
But that's not all since Metaranx also offers a marketplace allowing to sell, buy or offer for free in open source projects around AI.
Discover : Metaranx - Build an AI with no code
It is now possible to create a document with your Airtable data with a single click. Formstack has indeed announced its native integration within Airtable. Note that this is an Airtable Block, and therefore a feature reserved for Airtable PRO accounts.
Thanks to this integration and via Airtable's new Button field, creating a contract, an invoice or a job offer can now be done in just one click!
Read : Airtable Users: There's a New Formstack Documents Integration for You
⌨ Projects
Michael Martocci is an American entrepreneur who created SwagUp, a platform that focuses on derivatives and goodies for businesses.
Not having any technical skills, Michael turned to no-code tools in order to be able to launch his project. In its initial version, the SwagUp stack was as follows:
Wix for the creation of the website
Trello for order management
Typeform to collect order requests via a form
Typeform is now a very important tool for SwagUp, which uses it, for example, to receive applications from people wishing to join their teams. This week Typeform has posted an article on its blog in order to provide more details about this success story and the impact that Typeform has had on the business.
Just a few years after its launch, SwagUp is a huge success with 10 million dollars in turnover, 30 employees and prestigious customer references (Google, Facebook, Coca-Cola, Walmart...).
The other must-have tool for SwagUp is of course Zapier!
Zapier and Typeform organized a webinar where Michael was able to present some of the different Zaps and integrations that he has been able to set up in order to automate his business as well as possible and make SwagUp's activity take off.
Read: How to make $10 million with water bottles, socks, and a typeform
⚒ Tutorials
Do you want to improve your skills on Airtable? If so, you may be interested in attending the webinar organised by Makerpad on Wednesday, July 22nd.
During one hour, David Peterson (in charge of Airtable business development) will present some of the new features and advanced use cases of Airtable. On the menu: the brand new Button field I told you about last week and the scripting blocks.
Learn: Level-up your Airtable skills with David Peterson
🎧 Podcasts
Dylan Field, the co-founder and CEO of Figma, was this week invited on the podcast of Station F, the startup campus in Paris created by Xavier Niel. For those of you who are not yet familiar with Figma, this tool has established itself in recent years as the reference solution for the creation of designs and mockups, all in a collaborative workspace.
Since its launch eight years ago, Figma has raised more than $130 million, including a $50 million Series D a few weeks ago led by the famous American Andreessen Horowitz Fund.
In this 34-minute episode, Dylan looks back in detail on this incredible adventure, on his experiences as an intern at Microsoft and LinkedIn (Figma is his first entrepreneurial adventure) but also on the various fundraising activities of Figma and the impact of Covid on the future of work.
Listen: Interview with Dylan Field, co-founder & CEO of Figma
📦 In other news
Webflow introduces a new Buy Now button to speed up checkout on e-commerce sites
The French Tech will organise the first France nocode hackathon on September 23rd and 24th in Carpentras. Bubble and Adalo are among the official partners of this event
A research shows that emojis in subject lines increase negative sentiment toward an email and do not increase the likelihood of an email being opened 👎
📖 Articles
🇬🇧 Why You Should Create A Prototype For Your Startup App Idea -Forbes
🇬🇧 How an innovative payroll platform streamlines its business with automation - Zapier
That’s all for this week. If you like the content, don't hesitate to share it with your friends or colleagues.
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Have a great week,
Martin,