Many people think no-code is limiting and that you can only build simple apps with it.

We’ve even spoken to technical founders who have been hesitant about no-code.

However, there are documented cases where a founder with no technical experience and little financial backing was able to scale their startup to millions of dollars in revenue. Some even received investment worth hundreds of millions from venture capital firms and angel investors.

So if you’re thinking about building a no-code app and you need some inspiration, then read on. Below, we’ve compiled the 10 most impressive examples of no-code startups that scaled to millions of dollars.

1. Comet: Raised $12.8 million in venture capital
2. Dividend Finance: Raised $365 million from investors
3. Plato: Raised $13 million from investors
4. Ensemble19: Helped businesses raise millions during the pandemic
5. Hello Prenup: Featured on Shark Tank
6. NuShift: Uses Bubble for front end development
7. Paytable: Reached 50 monthly customers within two days
8. LifeLegacy: Early adopters pledged over $14.3 million
9. Beelango: Scaled to over 100,000 users
10. (insert your startup here)

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Who are we: We are a software development agency that uses a combination of no-code and full-code to build web and mobile apps for our clients. You can learn more about the pros and cons of switching to no-code by reading this article, or you can book a call with us if you’re looking for a development team to build out your app.

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1. Comet: Raised $12.8 million in venture capital

The first no-code startup we want to discuss is Comet, a marketplace for IT talent to find freelancing jobs. We like to think of Comet’s founder, Charles Thomas as the Godfather of no-code startup development because he built Comet in 2017 when Bubble wasn't as advanced as it is today.

Charles didn't have any coding experience, so he had to rely on Bubble’s no-code features and a few tutorials he found online.

What set Comet apart from competitors like Fiverr and Upwork was that Charles would interview freelancers and put them through a rigorous vetting process. So unlike Fiverr, where anyone could join, employers had peace of mind knowing that all the freelancers on Comet were qualified.

Charles built out this app using Bubble within weeks and quickly released an MVP to the market. 

After a couple of months, Comet was generating over $800,000 in MRR. This attracted the attention of venture capital firms like Otium Capital, which invested $2 million. And remember, this was in 2017 when Bubble wasn't as advanced as it is today. It had scalability problems and only a fraction of the features it currently offers.

A year later, in 2018, Charles raised an additional $12.8 million in funding from other venture capital firms.

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2. Dividend Finance: Raised $365 million from investors

The second no-code startup we want to feature is Dividend Finance simply because of the sheer amount of capital they raised. Dividend Finance raised over $365 million from investors since 2013 and processed over $1 billion in sales.

Dividend Finance is a solar and home improvement company that provides homeowners with financing options to install solar panels and other renewable energy sources.

The founders used Bubble to build out their onboarding portal so it offers an easier sign up process for new customers. This shows that even if you're onboarding tens of thousands of customers and handling millions of dollars, Bubble is still a fast and secure option.

The founders recently signed a deal with Credit Suisse and CitiBank to provide them with financing of an additional $350 million.

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3. Plato: Raised $13 million from investors

Plato is a no-code startup that focuses on connecting engineering companies with freelancers and full-time employees.

After a couple of weeks of Bubble no-code development, the founder, Quang Hoang, launched the first version of his app and soon got accepted into Y-Combinator, one of the most prestigious accelerators investing in early-stage startups. After getting into Y-Combinator, Plato raised $13 million from investors and venture capital firms.

Quang did this without writing a single line of code and built the entire platform using Bubble and a handful of other no-code tools.

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4. Ensemble19: Helped businesses raise millions during the pandemic

Founded by Daniel Abebe and a group of other volunteers, Ensemble19 was a non-profit launched just three days after the lockdown hit the US. Ensemble19 made it possible for small to medium-sized businesses to generate revenue from loyal customers while the lockdown was in effect.

It allowed businesses to "sell" vouchers and coupons to customers, and customers could then spend these vouchers when the lockdown was lifted and businesses reopened. The benefit here was that businesses could stay open, and customers could support their favorite businesses.

After just eight weeks, Ensemble19 raised over $600,000 from a combination of donations and investments. Although it’s not known how much money Ensemble19 helped businesses raise in total, it’s safe to say it’s well over a million dollars.

Ensemble19 is unfortunately no longer around, but its impact on keeping businesses open during the pandemic cannot be understated. They also did all this inside the Bubble interface.

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5. Hello Prenup: Featured on Shark Tank

Julia Rodgers and Sarabeth Jaffe founded Hello Prenup using Bubble and a few other no-code builders. Hello Prenup is a web app that helps couples get prenups easily and without outrageous legal fees. It was featured on Shark Tank in late 2021 and received investments from Kevin O'Leary and Nirav Tolia.

Founder and CTO Sarabeth Jaffe comes from a software development background, so she could've built the web app with full-code if she wanted to. However, she saw the value of no-code (quicker development times and lower costs), so decided to build Hello Prenup with Bubble.

Today, over 5000 couples in 30+ US states use Hello Prenup to simplify the prenup process.

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6. NuShift: Uses Bubble for front end development

NuShift is a software product that uses AI to turn unstructured data into structured data, allowing businesses to convert raw data into useful insight within minutes.

Since NuShift is working with terabytes of customer data every day, you'd think that no-code might be an unsuitable option for them.

However, this isn't the case. Although NuShift developed the back end of their app with full-code and in-house developers, they used Bubble to design the front end of their product. The founders reported that this reduced overall development costs by 5 to 10 percent.

While it's unclear how much investment capital NuShift has raised to date, they are constantly releasing new and expensive features like speech recognition and machine translation, so they are probably backed by venture capital or angel investors.

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7. Paytable: Reached 50 monthly customers within two days

Founded by Joel Rosen, Paytable allows Airtable users to sell curanted Airtable content and conveniently collect payments from customers for this content. It also offers analytics features so users can track customer logins and sales.

Joel built Paytable with Bubble and even documented the entire process, all the way from first building Paytable inside Bubble and then launching it and getting his first customer. So, if you're interested in learning more about how Joel launched an MVP, feel free to watch his interview with Side Project Stack.

In this interview, Joel talks about how he could change his product and add new features within a few hours after talking with his customers. This immediate feedback loop allowed Paytable to pivot more quickly around customer feedback than the competition.

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8. LifeLegacy: Early adopters pledged over $14.3 million

LifeLegacy lets users create a Last Will and Testament, Advance Healthcare Directive, and Financial Power of Attorney for $119 and without leaving the comfort of their homes. The entire process takes less than 15 minutes, so it's much cheaper and faster than hiring a lawyer.

The founders, Spencer, Jordan, and Austin Cassidy created LifeLegacy after their father's passing. They didn't want other families to be unprepared when the inevitable happened.

The only problem was that they didn't have software development experience or the capital to hire an in-house software development team.

So they turned to no-code. They used Bubble to launch an MVP, and once they learned that there was a demand for their product, they started adding more features to the point where early adopters of LifeLegacy pledged over $14.3 million.

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9. Beelango: Scaled to over 100,000 users

Beelango is a language-learning app that makes around $300,000 in revenue per year and has over 100,000 users worldwide. The founder, Jonathan Menashe, was on a budget when he got the idea for Beelango. He did not want to invest too much money into the app because it might not make a return, so he built a cheap MVP with Bubble.

Soon, thousands of users came pouring in, and Jonathan used Bubble to release new features like pre-recorded videos, exercises, and quizzes. This resulted in a more interactive experience for users.

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10. (insert your startup here)

If you're considering launching a new app and selling it for millions, we hope this post showed you that you don't need to write a single line of code. In fact, no-code is better than full-code in many aspects because the development time is quicker, and it doesn't suffer from the limitations it did in the past.

But keep in mind that while it’s very possible to launch a successful no-code startup on your own, your chances of success skyrocket when you partner with a no-code agency that has a proven track record of launching successful apps.

This is because coding isn’t the hardest part of building an app. Most developers can write code on autopilot. The hardest part of building an app is deciding how the workflow should work and making architectural and modeling decisions, which you’ll still have to do when using a no-code platform like Bubble.

At Belighted, we’ve been developing full-code apps since 2008 for companies like PwC, ArcelorMittal, and Bombardier. Recently, we switched to a more hybrid approach where we use a combination of full-code and no-code as it’s cheaper for no-code startups on a budget and allows us to launch MVPs quicker.

So if you’re interested in learning more about our hybrid approach, consider booking a quick call with our founder.

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