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… furiously writing code to make a no-code platform, Airtable, actually do its job. He complained of having no version control, of manually copying and pasting code from his editor, and of AI assistants that barely understood the platform's unique scripting environment…

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I’m often considered a nutty thinker. This is no exception. The people I’ve run this idea by have smirked, rolled their eyes, and some have even busted out laughing.

I get it. The very premise of no-code is the vast benefits of not writing code. But the new disruptor on the horizon doesn’t require you to write code, either.

It’s hard to imagine that…

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I classified this article under No-Code Ec…

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No-codeists1 are the opposites of the best software developers. This is a pattern I’ve observed. I’m sure there are exceptions. However, there’s a pervasive bias in the no-code community—a common belief that if something is possible in a no-code tool, it must be good.

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No-code is doing precisely this.

TLDR;

• Excessively high per-seat SaaS costs are on the chopping block

• No-code is to blame

• A single no-code seat license can displace multiple vertical SaaS seats

• Vertical SaaS apps are not positioned to embrace workflow agility, AI or automation agility

Vertical SaaS platforms were built with the best intentions of providing extremely focused solutions. But they come with costly software engineering and support costs, e.g., a relatively high seat price. They became the new, modern way to expand performance and reduce IT reliance while compressing the DevOps cost. Ten years ago, this made a lot of sense, given the alternatives.

But this movement also drug along one element of the legacy, old-school history - high per-seat prices. It’s not uncommon for vertical SaaS platforms to charge $5k per year for a single user.

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Duplicitous No-code

With no/low-code platforms, there’s a multi-whammy economic effect that begins to chip away at the status quo for SaaS apps — a seat license can displace multiple vertical SaaS solutions, and no/low-code platforms are increasingly adept at shapeshifting to meet as good, or sometimes better performance than the vertical SaaS apps they mimic.

SmartSuite, for example, can provide CRM and compliance functionality, but the per-seat cost isn’t doubled when two critical apps run on the same SmartSuite license. The economy of scale is more cost-effective if an enterprise can replace two or more vertical apps.

No-code Shortcomings Don’t Matter

We often find many cases where no/low-code solutions fall short as compared to their vertically designed SaaS cousins. Most no-code apps, however, are good enough to get the job done. Many of the features in a vertically optimized SaaS offering are not used. To say that a no-code solution reaches only 80% of the product it is designed to replace is irrelevant when the 80% threshold represents 95% of the most essential features workers use daily.

Often, no-code shortcomings are actually advantages. A good example is workflow agility. Vertically aligned SaaS solutions tend to offer rigid assumptions about workflows in a specific field. No-code breaks in favor of a green-field re-evaluation of the workflow and opportunities for automating parts of the flows. Vertical SaaS products often constrain the ability to shape the solution in granular ways.

Critically, most no/low-code platforms are platformative, SmartSuite especially, but Airtable is no slouch when combined with some of the aftermarket tools. This speaks volumes to using no-code to displace multiple enterprise SaaS solutions. If you believe you’re in the “platform” business, this is probably one of the most useful and reflective software development rants I’ve seen in a long while. It’s long and deep, but it’s worth reading if you care about building applications that survive more than a few months.

Tech Windshear

There are forces in the SaaS apps realm that are racing in opposite directions.

Corporate leaders are pushing hard to suppress OpEx because interest rates are high, funding for expansion is non-existent, and we’re smack in the middle of an era where you earn, or you die.

In the opposite direction, business leaders have identified AI as a potential pathway to lower headcount, improve worker output, and lower software development costs. By inherent shape-shifting capabilities, today’s crop of no/low-code platforms are positioned to take advantage of generative AI today - not in a year or two when vertical SaaS apps can be re-engineered to embrace it.

Takeaway

Here are my three key takeaways from these observations:

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It means that…

• You can connect form-like UIs with Zapier Tables

• You can perform FREE automations between Interfaces and Tables

• You can build simple no-code solutions inside Zapier

• You can chain tables and interfaces as integral components with six thousand other apps.

Let that sink in.

I like where this is heading not because I ascribe to the idea that no-code systems should be deeply dependent on any integration layer but because I have been trying to educate no-code enthusiasts to begin designing their solutions from the center, where the router of the solution typically exists.

Vastly, no-codeists naturally begin with the database, like SmartSuite, and then work their way out to what amounts to the integration and workflow layer that extends the no-code database platform. One of the slides Bryce Vernon showed in the video interview shows Zapier at the center of the design process alongside the typical approach most no-code developers approach projects.

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• You’re an aftermarket developer and consultant for a no-code database platform.

• You have an idea that requires generative AI; the idea could open a new opportunity for the no-code platform to provide solutions not possible before the advent of integrated AI.

• You begin to frame a prototype and eventually start building and testing AI prompts. You know prompts will be a big challenge, but you believe they can meet or exceed the requirements and produce deterministic results.

• Through your extensive R&D process, you blow through a month’s worth of AI credits in half a day, and you still have many days of prompt development and testing ahead of you.

• You must buy multiple inference credit upgrades. The financial investment rises, and you still aren’t confident your clever approach will work, let alone be profitable.

Unbounded generative AI costs create a disincentive that most developers will feel as LLM costs rise during application development phases.

GitHub Copilot has reportedly been costing Microsoft up to $80 per user per month in some cases as the company struggles to make its AI assistant turn a profit.

According to a Wall Street Journal report, the figures reportedly come from an unnamed individual familiar with the company, who noted that the Microsoft-owned platform was losing an average of $20 per user per month in the first few months of 2023.

There are many indications that GPUs are very scarce, and demand is increasing at rates that put a lot of pressure to secure LLM access.

I keep asking myself:

Ironically, non-believers first claimed hallucinations or crappy outputs would cap AI adoption. AI costs may be the limiter that puts a sizable dent in the adoption trajectory.

One thing is sure in this little cesspool of AI development uncertainty - aftermarket developers and consultants may not discover that next great AI-centric feature that causes users to want to pay future AI fees—UNLESS disincentives to AI solution development are removed.

This hastily prepared diagram shows three layers of AI costs burdened by after-market developers and enterprise builders. Given the intensity needed to push a generative AI solution into production, these are not insignificant layers. As you build AI solutions that include inference costs during development and testing, such costs serve as a tax on innovation. This is a challenge if your goal is broad adoption of the platform and its AI features that depend on builders to shape the tool to meet specific fitness objectives.

I [personally] have many exciting ideas and possible use cases that depend on various platform AI features. Still, if I must pay for the platform and, [additionally], the hyper-consumption of inferences required to create something far beyond usual and customary volumes of AI use, I won’t use that platform to do it. I’ll seek another path that probably won’t include the platform that charges retail prices for using LLMs in an R&D process.

Platform providers must demonstrate why AI adoption and upgrades are in the customer’s best interest if they want their users to pay a premium for AI inferences. The value proposition pre-AI was easy to communicate. Now you have a tiger by the tail … and that tiger has teeth.

This new breed of developers and aftermarket providers could be described as hyper-partners - entities skilled in your product AND generative AI working as an extension of your development team. The future of generative AI has fractured the very essence of a development team. No internal team can cover all AI possibilities; this new horizon of opportunities must be distributed and scalable. And compensation may be required to sustain attraction.

But that requires a slightly different engineering and financial model that places incentives in a context that attracts scarce external resources to create abundant solutions and templates.

This is not a well-understood or broadly discussed trend, but I personally have been invited to work for three no-code platform companies in the past ten days. All of them are desperate to shore up their AI templates, approaches, and documentation, all while adding additional requirements guidance to their engineering teams.

But there’s also an equally risky element to no-code saturation in your professional endeavors. It can be addictive. You begin to see the world through a no-code lens that can manifest delusional ideas and confirmation biases you may regret long after a solution is produced.

No-code is like a beautiful tropical beach, the ideal vacation that you never want to end. It helps you forget about your fast-paced lifestyle if for only a few days. It simplifies the day’s decisions and generally insulates you from all your actual worries. This is where you go to sustain a brief abstraction from everyday life.

The new and popularized no-code movement is much like that ideal vacation. Software engineering challenges melt away in the warm glow of your monitor configured for night use because you stay up late basking in the success of a new democratized information system that your team will cherish.

This is fun. It makes software development seem easy. Unlike before, you feel in control; you are the master of your data management destiny. Sure, there’s some loneliness because the engineering team is no longer there with you, hashing out requirements that might become actual software in days, weeks, or months. But you’d rather be lonely than endlessly waiting for developers to build something that’s wrong and then many more days patiently waiting for them to get it right.

You are finally a domain expert who has been set free to build software solutions exactly the way you want them and your users expect.

But are you truly free? Or is your no-code preoccupation a different kind of constrained work model? Are there some downsides?

If everything you build requires no additional code, you have built nothing that defines the basis for any intellectual property. Try to copyright or patent a no-code solution. I can’t recall a single instance where this has happened. It is a gray area and one that is complex. For example, your favorite no-code platform is copyrighted by the company that created it. It may include libraries that have copyright or licensing restrictions. Your no-code solution is a derivative work and may also be your copyright, albeit with strings attached to the platform itself. VCs are reluctant to fund startups unless they have a clear title to the solution as a copyrighted work.

The business logic of no/low-code apps comprises collections of fragmented formulas, workflows, and automations, some residing outside your no-code platform of choice. This atomization of the logical elements that make your no-code solution valuable adds another layer of risk because your secret sauce is scattered across other platforms where you are a guest. These dependencies are often difficult to sustain and create new security attack surfaces for your prized business logic.

At the heart of your no-code endeavor is the desire to create value. For a startup that needs funding or a business that wants to create competitive advantages, no-code solutions may present a few downsides that are not easy to mitigate. But the big one is defensibility.

Setting aside these potential downsides, a deep admiration for no-code and a commitment to avoid coding changes you.

The Hidden Side of No-Code

In the rapidly evolving world of technology, the no-code movement has emerged as a game-changer, empowering individuals and businesses to create digital products without extensive coding knowledge. However, a hidden side to this no-code revolution often goes unnoticed - the phenomenon of no-code addiction.

No-code addiction refers to the over-reliance on no-code tools and platforms, often at the expense of understanding underlying system principles. This can lead to a decrease in value as a consultant, as it limits your ability to manipulate digital products to achieve outcomes far beyond mediocre success2.

The following thread, involving many prominent no-code consultants, demonstrates how myopic your innovation skills may become when wearing no-code blinders.

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Where two dist…

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• Airtable customers are bristling at the new pricing policies and API limitations.

• No-code portal platforms are gaining momentum and increasingly shaping services to work with any back-end database.

• Integration and automation workflow middleware have begun to embrace low-code capabilities.

• Users expect informatio…

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Based on the current sales, the recent massive layoffs (27% of the workers), the economy, and its inability to manifest significant enterprise traction this year, the company's value is now less than the total investment (~$1.4b).

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These were the first no-code tools, and like modern no-code platforms, they transformed domain e…

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This is the promise of no-code apps. We ca…

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In my many trips to Singapore before this engagement, the harbor was typically saturated with tankers and freighters q…

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Note: This is the first article I’ve penned specifically about the hidden side of no/low-code economics. I’m an armchair economist and self-anointed No-Code Economist. I hope you like it and the many stories I’ve got queueing up for this new category in my Substack. If there are specific stories you’d like me to explore, drop a note in the comments or reach out anytime (bill.french@gmail.com).

Square Peg, Round Hole

There’s no shortage of new messages on the Airtable Community pages like this one.

I've been trying to get an answer on the support email for almost 2 weeks now, all I get is an automated response, and that's about it.

Others are ready to jump ship.

This lack of support has not been made clear ANYWHERE in the documentation we've received. Since AirTable has foisted their support for non-1000+ user businesses off onto their "community," we'll be looking for something else.

Airtable has boldly stated that Enterprise matters most. Airtable has clarified that support for SMB1, especially those in the small business category, matters less than least. They don’t want the annoyance of a soccer mom managing the pee-wee league playoff game data for Sitka, Alaska, even if that soccer mom is a regional Sales VP for Exxon Mobil.

Setting aside a class of users who do not represent your core target audience is not unusual. They may be free users and all they care about is their really small business data sheet for basic functionalities. But they offer a Teams version for a fee and it comes with no support at all. As Scott Rose, founder of TableForms suggests, this is a new economic behavior.

I also cannot recall a single product that charges for access and provides zero customer support. You apparently can’t even get an Airtable employee to help you with account matters. This Reddit appears to confirm zero support for [paid] Teams accounts the new norm, but I invite Airtable to set the record straight by leaving a comment.

Airtable’s support policy is a bit off-putting for an enterprise platform. Even the largest platforms tend to listen to all customers concerning usability issues because, often, the smaller companies find some of the greatest opportunities, the biggest bugs, and the most egregious security shortcomings. And more often, this constituency of users discovers very important gaps that may lead to key innovations. With Airtable’s latest policy changes, it has fundamentally rejected customer relationships that tend to make companies great and keep them great.

This policy could have a serious economic impact on the future of Airtable.

History of Support at Airtable

To understand how we got here, we must reflect and rewind the clock to December 2022, a point in time when Airtable made a key decision to disband its only successful support resource.

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Application sustainability is critical for developers, especially those with no/low-code technology solutions. One factor that can significantly compromise the sustainability of cloud service platforms is the absence of point-in-time production snapshots.

Let’s explore the importance of point-in-time production snapshots and how the…

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TLDR

• No-code integration adhesives are the ideal dependency moat that locks in customers

• AI may decimate the moat currently enjoyed by the glue factories and eliminate switching costs

• AWS AppFabric offers a smart and seemingly free way to connect SaaS applications

No-code and low-code application builders who have unwittingly become glue-sniffing addicts of code-less integration face massive switching costs. Moving from Zapier to Make or custom integrations is a lot of work. AI removes the switching cost friction - soon, it won’t matter.

In this brief missive, I postulate that big tech doesn’t need a moat and that solution builders may ultimately benefit from this emerging pattern. You might also want to take in this event (Automation brew EST ed - inspirations, integrations & some sips of coffee) led by folks who understand no-code integrations far better than me.

Amazon’s AWS AppFabric is designed to compete with Make and Zapier and perhaps a dozen other services I have long considered “glue factories” useful to a point, but ultimately risky for many reasons.

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