Comnoco: The Game-Changing Platform for Supercharging APIs without Coding

So today I'm joined by Stuart, he's the founder of Comnoco and we're going to open a mini series of videos with this video, which is going to be just a bit about how he's arrived at this point, what Comnoco is, what he's building, why we believe it is going to become and is an essential NoCo tool. And yeah, just a bit of background about being a software founder in 2024. So Stuart, would you mind introducing yourself and just saying a little bit, what we've actually met back a few weeks ago at NoCode UK in London. It was an amazing conference. So Stuart, would you mind introducing yourself please?

Yes. Hi. So I am Stuart. I'm the founder of Comnoco. I came up with the idea of Comnoco quite a few years ago when really low code was being talked about and no code hadn't quite developed as a full phrase. And it came from my background. So I've been working for many years in large enterprises implementing frankly what was a no code tool. Just no one called it that. It was an enterprise connectivity tool and a tool to create documents and run customer communications. And I looked at it and I just thought this would just be absolutely fantastic if more of the world had access to it. And I also looked at it and thought it's quite archaic. It's not a SaaS product. That's how people obviously want software these days. So I thought I know I'm going to build this. So I was fortunate enough to be running a software company at the time. And so I sold my share of that software company and embarked on the journey of Comnoco. And that brought us to today where Comnoco is ready and available for everyone. And it's a fantastic no code tool. I can't wait to show everyone.

Yeah, we will be certainly doing some video demos. There are some particular points that Stuart and I have been talking about over the last few weeks of where you hit a limitation with Bubble and Comnoco is a great solution to swoop in and fill that gap. So how many years have you been working on this?

Well it started out as sort of a bit of a hobby. But really about sort of three years of full effort developing the product and getting it to market. But a little bit of hobby coding before that. So quite a while I would say. I think that will certainly resonate with a lot of people who find their way onto the Plant No Code channel.

What would you say have been the biggest challenges that you've faced? So have I got this right? So you will probably come from a more technical background than people who are searching for no code solutions on YouTube. So with that background, with your experience of actually being in software on a technical level, what challenges have you faced over those three years?

I mean the challenges to get it going are keeping mentally strong, not giving up actually. It takes a lot of motivation and I'm lucky to have had encouraging people around me. Getting the right team. So obviously I wasn't building this in no code, I was building this in code for the no code community. So getting the right team around me to work with me on it. It's always a constant challenge to find the right people that are motivated and share your journey. And it's not worth working with people that aren't because their focus changes, they don't come up with the ideas or put in the extra effort. So yeah, making that happen was definitely probably the hardest part of the journey.

Would you mind sharing a bit about finding that team and surrounding yourself with those people? I think an impression I get from the no code community and what I took away from the conference in London is a lot of people work in isolation. We probably had cross paths on Twitter previously, but it was amazing to meet yourself and to meet so many other people in the flesh. So what was it, what experience did you draw upon that enabled you to bring the right people around you?

Yeah. Well, I mean, I had run a software company before, so I was familiar with recruiting and building a team. So I knew that the different challenge on this one was that it was going to be remote. Remote first, fully remote the whole time. So what I found personally a challenge was recruiting people to work remotely as opposed to what I'd always been used to is recruiting people to work in my office with me. But it was just an awful lot of CVs and awful lot of interviews and awful lot of trial periods actually. So trial periods were really important because you can work out, you can say, look, we'll just get started. We'll have, we'll choose a little bit, see how it goes. If it goes well, we can build from there. So that was really how I filtered out the good and the bad and ended up with a really, really fantastic group around me and team around me in the end.

Can I push a little bit more on that? How did you get those CVs in? Because I can imagine if you, I mean, if someone posts on the Bubble forum, for example, looking for a Bubble developer, your inbox is swamped. How did you have existing networks? Was it job sites, remote work sites? What did you find worked best to meet the right sort of people?

I ended up doing a lot of outbound through LinkedIn actually. So targeting the people who were already working in the right roles. Some through my network, some not through my network and reaching out to them through LinkedIn. Working with recruiters for a small startup, I don't think is a particularly easy journey because of the cost of the recruitment and also frankly, the volume of CVs they send through unless you're paying top notch, which most startups can't for a recruiter, you're not going to get those CVs filtered properly. So yeah, so for me, it was outbound. I think it was almost exclusively through LinkedIn apart from a few friends of people I'd worked with before. And the other thing I would say is the problem is, like you say, if you put something out there on a forum, you get so much sent back to you and you'll get people who will list a whole load of skills. And actually the chances are they might have read a book on it or read an article on it or tried it for 10 minutes or half an hour, but they don't actually have solid skills. So it's finding the references to go with it before you interview people, you know, make sure that they can back what they're saying. And then you know that perhaps they're worth talking to, but if they just say, I can do it and can't provide strong evidence, it's that that's the red flag for me. And yeah, I felt foul of that at the start a few times, but you soon learn to filter it out.

Thanks for sharing that experience.

Yeah, no worries.

Excuse that tangent. I think that there are a lot of people who start out building something on their own and then loneliness being a key factor, but also wanting to build with someone. And yeah, I've had conversations with people and it's our experience too, that it's really hard to sift out hundreds of people who might send in their LinkedIn profile or websites that they've built. So thank you for sharing that.

I wonder again, with the background of the kind of traditional software developments that business side into your own entry into no code, what's kind of the one piece of advice that you'd give thinking about the no code founder? What's the one piece of advice that you'll give them if they're building a SaaS app?

To the no code founder. I think when you hit a barrier, realize it probably isn't a barrier. You can research and you'll find a way around it. There's always a way, a work around, a tool, a method or someone who's done it before. And I think the idea, my advice would be when you hit those, which you will, just reframe it and think it's not a brick wall. I just need to put in that little bit more effort or find someone who's done it before because with what we gifted now, there's always a way basically. So yeah, so I'd say just don't get disheartened when you hit those points.

Okay, thank you. One of those points, just my final question on this interview segment is I think a lot of people, they learn the technical skills, whether that's no code or traditional coding and without knowing it, they have the attitude of if I build it, they will come. And so one of the disheartening, big disheartening steps can be, I think I've built something amazing but no one knows about it. I don't want to be spammy or posting everywhere. I want to get to the right people, my ideal customer profiles, all of that. What was your experience and how did you get your first 10 paid users?

First 10 paid users. So I focused very much on sort of personal relationships and networking. So I worked with some accelerators, startup accelerators, working with the cohorts on those and basically making in-person relationships because that gave me the ability to get the feedback from them, the feedback loop and work in person to understand how people were going to use Comnoco and how it worked. So for me, it was very much, it's that thing doing things that don't scale like that. That's not the business plan, obviously to go and personally hold the hand of everyone, but to get those first customers, that's very much I think what you need to do. And then in terms of marketing, it's absolutely correct. You can build a fantastic system, but no one will know about it unless you can educate them on that front. And we're just beginning our journey really with Comnoco to get it marketed and start letting people know about it. We've very much been in that doing things that don't scale stage up until now. So yeah, so it's still a learning journey for us as well. But I'm excited to go on it.

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