How an 8-week no-code Bootcamp led to a 7 figure tech business in less than 2 years

From student to teacher to managing director…bubble brought opportunities that I never imagined!

Pain points of life in a big organization

In August 2020, I was working as a solution architect and data engineer in a job I loved — but like many, the job was unfortunately in a typical beurocratic government department, whose culture I hated.

“Business as usual” consumed 98% of our department’s time. Most of my team were analysts who spent each day repeating the same manual task in Excel on a cyclical schedule (day, week, month, or quarter) to “feed the beast” aka meet the reporting requirements of the state and the exec. But then — Exec want the same data you gave them yesterday, served up 5% different.So then, another day of Excel to make that work and pull those numbers they would say.

The other 2% of our energy was directed towards external consultancy after consultancy, engaged to tell management what their strategy should be (beyond “be more data-driven”), with the results being shelved shortly afterward for one reason or another. Urgh.

Luckily for me, I was able to work on several high-profile, internal projects that performed well. But I’d spend 3 months building an app for 10 internal managers. Five would ignore what I built and keep working from their paper-based systems. The other five had varying degrees of engagement.

I wanted out. I wanted to do something that had a vision, that was making an impact, that was scalable. I wanted to build cool stuff and change the world.

Transition

I decided to take some long service leave at half pay, drawing down on some savings we had put aside from some property projects my wife and I had completed in recent years.

I had already been getting up at 5am most mornings, studying cloud Solutions Architecture with A Cloud Guru and learning Web Development with Angela Yu and Jonas Schmedtmann on Udemy.

I knew there was a big, wide world in tech, and I just had to find a way to get out of my government job. I didn’t want to work in a big organization anymore (at least not full-time) — I just wanted to build cool stuff, work with great people, and eventually enjoy financial freedom and the capacity to do what I wanted with my time.

Enter No-Code

We signed up for Founder Institute, Sydney’s Spring Cohort, a 14-week pre-accelerator program designed to bring Silicon Valley start-up thinking to the world. My wife and I had a vision for a real estate app to democratize the process of buying and selling real estate. But my passion was building digital products, not so much the particular product. I was super motivated by high-level application design, problem-solving, and building usable web applications.

In week 3, Luke another Founder Institute participant said “Have you heard of Bubble?” I quickly googled the landing page and liked what I saw. It was exactly what I was looking for. But I had previous experience with various software tools, and I knew that the limitations of tools often emerge 3 months down the track, after a significant investment of time and energy. So I decided I needed to talk to a real human about it.

No-code bootcamp Experience

I signed up for Mariel Vargas’s 8-week Bubble.io Bootcamp in September 2020, and I did a few 1:1 coaching sessions with Mariel outside of the course. I learned a lot. I got my questions answered quickly. In about 10 weeks of working with Bubble.io 30+ hours per week, I had produced a working (albeit ugly) MVP of our real estate platform.

I had also mastered many of the important concepts of building web apps with Bubble.

Doing the Bubble Bootcamp was valuable because:

• Online training doesn’t explain “why” you should do things one way or another — but live training with a top trainer does.
• I was getting stuck on things for 4hrs that Mariel could answer in 5 minutes.
• It opened doors. For me, it gave me an exit strategy from my job. Mariel said to me “hey you’re picking this up pretty fast, would you consider teaching Bubble bootcamps too?

Working late building apps!

No-code vs Code

The problem with learning to code is that it takes a long time.

Code

You invest time in learning Syntax, Server Environments, CURL commands, and how to configure ports and the like. Rather than building stuff that Users or Customers care about.

Bubble

With Bubble, and the right training, you can become intermediate in 3 months and proficient in 6 months. By proficient, I mean you can build a web application with enough features to be the basis of your business or someone else’s.

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Learning Code: Years
Learning Bubble: Months
Building in Code: Years
Building in Bubble: Months

Opportunity space

Mariel quietly said to me “Will, there is a lot of opportunity in this space right now”. I didn’t really know what she meant, but she gave me some idea of her earnings from her freelancing and teaching. Wow. She was working hard for sure, but she was earning 3–4x what I was in my government job.

On reflection, as much as Mariel taught me lots about Bubble — the biggest thing she gave me was market insights and career mentoring.

I would have never known about the massive opportunity space in no-code, had I not engaged with Mariel in the Bootcamp and 1:1 sessions.

For sure — doing this Bootcamp moved the needle for me and literally opened the doors to what came next. As they say, it’s not just what you know, it’s who you know.

My journey

Following the Bubble Bootcamp, I left my job and started teaching on Bubble Bootcamps in December 2020. I started getting some freelance work and built my own landing page (still available at willericksson.com). My breakthroughs came quickly in 2021 when:

• a friend Greg Attwells got me to build an LMS for his company creatablefuture.com
• one of my Bootcamp students Anebi Agbo referred me to a significant project, sharetalent.co
• a veteran CEO/CTO and mentor at Founder Institute Sydney Chris Clark (from Chasm Digital) asked me to help build a project for one of his clients, letsleapforward.com, and
• I was asked by Mariel Vargas to help teach Bubble on the Bubble Immerse program.

NikkyBest and Will Ericksson on the Immerse landing page!

Scaling up

I started building a small product team of employees and contractors. This grew as we built our experience, and we figured out more about quoting and project management (always a work in progress!), eventually scaling up our business at momentumgroup.tech.

In FY2022 (July 21-June 22), we achieved over $1.3mil revenue in AUD terms (or $1mil in USD terms). I’m not saying that revenue is the best measure of success. Profit is a much better measure, but is harder to measure — because as a bootstrapping business, you invest profit back into growth.

But when we look at fast-growing businesses, achieving this revenue in the first full financial year of operating, while bootstrapping, is pretty cool.

More importantly, we delivered complex projects that have real-world users, and we generated a high amount of referrals from our clients. Even more importantly, I’ve worked and hustled hard, but I’ve had lots of fun doing something that is creative, that I love, and that is making a difference for the people we serve.

So you want to make a change?

Opportunities in the no-code space are different from those in the enterprise space. They suit people who want to move quickly and make an impact in the world, without being tied up in red tape.

This means you are less likely to land ahigh-paying job with no-code (vs traditional code working for enterprise). But there are lots of opportunities to freelance, join an agency, or start a business. Especially if you are quick, excellent at what you do, and can deliver products end to end.

The top freelancers with these capabilities are making multiples of the income of their corporate counterparts. The opportunity is particularly huge for those in lower-income countries who can use no-code tools to sell their skills in higher-income countries.

Actionable steps to build a successful no-code business

• Learn a no-code tool like Bubble. Being an expert in Bubble doesn’t take that long (vs learning to code). My company offers a comprehensive Bubble Bootcamp / Academy Immersive program since Bubble stopped offering Bootcamps in June this year. Details of our upcoming cohorts are here (momentumacademy.tech). There are lots of other great tools as well — if Bubble isn’t for you, choose one that suits you! Take 3 months off work and do it. If you don’t have savings…then save and do it.
• Build your networks. Join a startup pre-accelerator. Network with professionals in this space. View mentoring as not only a place to learn hard skills but a chance to open doors to your future career.
• Get ideas and inspiration. We offer regular live events featuring early adopters who are pushing the boundaries with no-code tools like Bubble and doing exciting things. I had no idea about this space before I jumped in, and gaining perspective will change the way you think about the opportunities in front of you that you cannot see right now (momentumgroup.tech/events).