How Philip and His NoCode Dream Team Are Launching the Next EdTech Startup

the the biggest thing that stood out to me about Bubble was the Simplicity of it and also just the range of capabilities the community aspect just kind of was the icing on top and that was something that I started to figure out more as we got involved and then we heard about Bubble con and we were like oh my God this is awesome um so we were really really confident and happy with that decision by then but it was really just range of capabilities being able to kind of get um into the platform build whatever

we wanted to I was like okay this is probably a platform that we want to innovate within and that's where we started to really jump into that and and um you know take full advantage of it my name is Philip Tucan I'm the founder of ecopreneur and at Tech platform we help schools and students manage track and fulfill volunteer hours I came across bubble uh through really just uh looking for a solution for us to build what we have as our platform now which is an adtech platform and really wanted to make sure that we

were not only looking for a lowcost solution but something that was going to allow us the flexibility to build um a whole range of different applications within you know the overall application that we have Integrations things like that so was really excited to come across that platform when we were in that Discovery phase a couple years ago for someone who might not know what is edtech yeah edtech so education technology is really shortened as attech um it's really just technology that's usually rolled out for the education space so schools that are maybe lacking systems that

don't have upto-date um processes typically companies like us would come in and kind of revolutionize and build around those manual processes that have been happening for decades and decades so that's really what at Tech's all about it's really just Innovation within the education space sure yeah so I'm the founder of ecopreneur we're a volunteer platform we help schools and students manage track and fulfill volunteer hours the coolest thing about that was um we came across that through a bunch of different pivots we started off completely different we were a media company when we started and

we were in environmental sustainability um video content um and that's where kind of my media background comes from but then pandemic hit we ended up pivoting a couple of times and listening to our audience uh the biggest thing that they were asking about was how can we build um a platform that was oriented around action rather than just another educational outlet and that's where we got into going down the path of edtech we weren't edtech yet we were thinking about different areas of the market such as working with brands in volunteerism working with nonprofits but

then ultimately we found you know deeper Solutions around that and seeing that the the biggest problem was with within education itself um administrators having to waste a lot of time and money trying to track community service that students were doing and we knew that that was our market and that's how we ended up getting into that did you start looking for a code tool right then and there pretty much yeah so we were already familiar at that point with bubble.io it was more so finding the team and and that's where the community aspect really came

into play when it came to bubble.io it allowed for us to quickly find developers that one aligned with what we were trying to build but two allowed for us to find that talent that we could really execute on to be able to build the best platform that we could for our audience and and the users that we're looking to bring on as well you know we came across a couple of other competitors of course that were in the low code no code kind of space the the biggest thing that stood out to me about Bubble

was the Simplicity of it and also just the range of capabilities the community aspect just kind of was the icing on top and that was something that I started to figure out more as we got involved and then we heard about Bubble con and we were like oh my God this is awesome um so we were really really confident and happy with that decision by then but it was really just of capabilities being able to kind of get um into the platform build whatever we wanted to what intrigued me was um past tutorials that I

came across so like build your clone of Tinder build your clone of Facebook like I thought that was really cool and I was like okay this is probably a platform that we want to innovate within and that's where we started to really jump into that and and um you know take full advantage of it and um from there we were able to then get the right developers to come into place you know we have two amazing developers from Lithuania who are part of the uh top 1% bubblers in the community and they helped us build

our platform so that's been really exciting to work with them and get their experience and knowledge on the team too um I would say the efficiency um just being able to roll out in such a quick manner I recently had a call with one of our advisers with my co-founder and um a few other team members as well and one of the biggest things that he had mentioned that was shocking him was how fast we were able to roll out our MVP we just launched about a month ago so we're really excited with um you

know the what we've built over the past year we were able to do that so quickly and he was shocked because he was saying oh he thought it was going to take at least like two years for us to finally get to a point where we were going to you know have this fully built out and and ready to go into the market um we were able to do that within four to 6 months so it really just cut that time tremendously and the reason why it took us up to years is because because we

were doing a lot of market research trying to understand the problems in the market before we actually built and designed um but that was the biggest thing for us it was making sure that we understood that but then once we got into development phase it was pretty seamless and and really quick so it was really exciting a lot um it's it's a whole laundry list of things but if I could sum it up it's um when it comes to building and you know a tech platform in general there's this uh kind of myth that you're

going to raise money so quickly and you're going to be able to get all this hype around you and you're going to have all this money flowing in it's not true at all especially for the the ones that really want to build value um you know the founders that really want to build a valuable platform you're going to have to know that it's going to take sacrifice it's going to take time it's going to take a lot of iteration a lot of pivoting a lot of trying to figure out you know what your Market truly

values and wants and then from there you have to kind of meet them Halfway by just starting and building and that's going to maybe take some money under your pocket it's going to take um you know time that you put in that you otherwise you know wouldn't have to um but that's just part of the game and that's the sacrifice that you take as you're growing and as you're building and as you're really just listening to your audience is understanding that um you know it's it's it's a patient game but it's also kind of doing

the things that essentially don't scale but then that's going to allow you to scale just doing those actions um so it's a it's a long game it's not a it's not a quick turnaround of money yeah so when it comes to you know even just like um things like messaging and figuring that out as far as like our platform specifically one example that I point to is last year when I F when I joined the first bubble con um it was really cool because there was a conversation I had with I I think one of

your members Carly and she had mentioned um they were trying to run surveys and things like that after the event to try to understand like what's the messaging that bubble needs to orient themselves around and what resonates the most with the community and I love that like we jumped on a zoom call and and did the whole nine yards that inspired us to figure those things out as well on our end so for ecopreneur we are in the process of trying to figure out our messaging as we speak because we just launched our MVP we're

doing sales right now so that inspiration from last year when I had that conversation with her um we ended up now taking that into account and building our own version of that and now we're just trying to really understand and our Market our messaging what we're looking to bring as value propositions to our audience and then U being able to then you know build off that really um kind of hit that home all the way with them and uh allowing for us to then kind of generate sales as we go to um so that that's

kind of like a big example I I pick up from there yeah I would say the biggest surprise for me so far is how far we've come there were many times where where I wanted to give up and kind of just like throw in the towel and say I don't know because we've been in this for 5 years now I started the platform 5 years ago so we went through so many different pivots and trying to figure it out it was inspirational to hear Emanuel talk about this yesterday in the bootstrapping where he said they

went through it for seven years I was like okay I didn't hit Seven Years yet so that's a good thing um so for me it was just the shock of knowing how long we've and how far we've come as a platform and what we've been been able to accomplish over the years um even when we were a media platform we produced a documentary and we got worldwide recognition and that kind of catapulted us into getting a lot of you know um followers on online and that really believed in what we were up to as a

mission as a company the biggest thing I would say is uh for us being able to build what we've done with the team specifically and the culture that we've you know been able to integrate into our startup that has always resonated with uh the rest of the team and and um that's something that we want to keep at the Forefront so I think with the length of um you know the company so far as well as the culture that we've been building in that's what's been keeping us going is the inspiration behind the mission the

cause everything that we're looking to do and incorporate um as far as what we're looking to accomplish um 10 years 20 years down the road I wish I had done research more when I you know fig when I wanted to build something I wanted to I had this naive notion of you know just trying to change the world and save the world but I really wish I had actually done the research more so try to figure out and market and then just hone in on that I think it's important that you have to take a

step back and kind of put your ego aside and say what am I trying to solve what are the problems in a particular Market that I can affiliate myself with and understand and then from there what kind of solutions can I build around that and that's really just having convers Sation understanding your audience um really just getting to know um what are the different aspects and the value propositions that I can bring to the table that's going to allow for them to feel like okay this is something I can pay for this is worth paying

for um so I would say that's my biggest regret if we had um you know done it sooner I don't know that we would have been able to be more successful because at the same time there's also that market aspect where maybe we were too early at the time to try to bring that solution pre pandemic because schools weren't ready for what we had to offer as far as revolutionizing their technology and in you know building that um so you know it's it's kind of an up in the air thing but I would say that's

probably my biggest deal I would say go for it um Bubble I I've already been suggesting bubble to so many new Founders that I've come across over the past few years young Founders that are looking to build Solutions and they've figured out problem s and they end up going to a traditional kind of development agency or developers in general and they're getting quoted half a million dollars to build a solution I say well you can do that with 5K on bubble and it's really as simple as that I always kind of suggests that because one

you want to build an MVP that's going to um be lean mean and really just hit the ground running so to do that bubble offers that you know solution to iterate quickly build something quickly and then be able to even scale as you grow and as you go um so I would say 100% bubble is is something I would suggest to any Founders that are looking to uh really just build a solution to any problem that they're looking to solve I would say you're not really going to know for certain um you can build really

as much as you can but at the end of the day it's just kind of taking that leap of faith and just being confident with what you have built and being able to then take that to the market it's really just a mixture of like kind of understanding your market research the conversations that you've had with your audience understanding those core features and you know products and and things that you need to build once you feel like you've gotten it to a point where it's functional it doesn't have to look the prettiest but as long

as it's functional then I would say you you pretty much have the green light it's it's better to launch earlier than later because if you launch too late what that looks like is launching too late as in going to the market and saying hey we've built this beautiful platform with all these extra features and this and that it's like well why didn't you just launch it a year ago when you had the core features and it wasn't the prettiest but this is what was essential and what was going to excite your audience to truly use

the product so it it's kind of a fine balance that you have to find between the two you know the the thought process is really just starting with kind of a brainstorming session um that's at least what I've done with my team we sit down we try to think through what are the things that we need to focus on what are what are the essentials what are the nice haves and then what are the things that we can focus on later on and and just trying to bucket that in three different buckets and then once

we kind of get to the end of the list and we close out the discussion on that then we just focus on like really just the mus haves like what is essential what is needed we focus on that we build around that the nice to haves are more so just kind of like our guidance Next Step potential things that we can roll out but we really want to let our our data and our our audience let us know specifically uh what they're looking for and what they want so it always starts with that brainstorming session

I would say and then leading to um having a larger discussion outside of just the dev team like okay what does that look like um from a sales perspective from a marketing perspective what do we need to start kind of building messaging around um what does that look like from a design perspective like what does uxui team have to do as far as um building those wireframes and prototypes and figma and things like that for example um so I would say it always starts with kind of just that sit down and discussion um so we

have a mixture of experts in bubble um you know people that are completely new to it and you know just getting familiar with it but all around across the board everyone's loved bubble it's been amazing it it's it's honestly been really cool to see everyone kind of come together and understand the platform and be able to iterate in it um even our design team they weren't familiar with bubble beforehand but they really see the value of what that comes into place when for example figma they are notorious for being in figma 247 they'll design in

there and then being able to then go into Dev mode and being able to then kind of have that transition of figma to Bubble makes a world of a difference and it really just makes everyone smile and happy um so I would say you know there's overall just understanding um and willing to adapt just because it's such an easy to ous platform so yeah I I do a lot of um relying on the others I I tried to um dabble in it myself it it wasn't hard to do I in the early years when we

were just starting to kind of build our Tech platform I I was familiarizing myself and I I know enough to be dangerous and to be able to speak to things and have the you know the technical lingo right but if I was in there doing it myself as a CEO and co-founder it would have been slowing everyone else down in the team um so I needed to kind of take a step back and get the right experts around us to really just hone in on it and figure it out um that have more of a

technical kind of knowhow than I do um and and that's really what we uh have been leveraging on our end is filling the gaps and and trying to find that technical expertise and experience um to then come into a bubble and say okay oh this this is like super simple easy to use I understand how to navigate and um learn this and then allowing for them to do what they need to do as long as they have the bigger vision and strategy from our end from our end meaning me and my co-founder and um other

members on our team then it allows for us to build and and iterate quickly oh yeah yeah so many times so funny example I um as I mentioned we just launched our MVP um months prior to that we were integrating a bunch of apis because that's what's helping power our solution we uh partnered with this really cool organization called volunteer match um they have an API where it funnels into our platform and we're able to power our platform with projects from them they're essentially kind of an aggregated database of volunteer projects across the country and

uh when we were building that API in there were a lot of aha moments for our team because they had not previously had too much experience building apis into bubble and that was honestly a really um a a huge learning curve on our end but it was so simple to be able to figure things out and say oh we can put it here we can figure this out we built a lot of kind of custom integration with that as well and it was exciting because um Not only was it a learning curve for U myself

and much of the other team but also um just for them to be able to figure out like okay this is now how I can do it even if I'm going to consult to work with other companies in the future I'm able to kind of understand how to do that within bubble.io so it's really cool that we were able to have that EP Epiphany moment together as a team I would say no code really is a simplified version of being able to build any technical solution that you're looking to build um in a nutshell when

it comes to kind of the no code low code atmosphere it's not that you can't code and that's completely eradicated you can still bring in custom code and do what you need to do in the back end but the low code no code solution allows for you to build things at a faster rate and a more efficient rate you know just because of the way that it's set up and the way that it's built as a platform um so it's really just kind of like coders Heaven if you will as simple as that coming from

New [Music] Jersey um I don't know I'm always a uh San pelo guy so I'll drink a lot of those when I'm when I'll uh get into the mode ooh um well now I have to say the native app Feature that that looks so badass yeah it was cool yeah o oo biggest thing in my career so far um and I've heard from time and time again from Founders mentors advisers don't give up I mean it's as simple as that just stay at it if you know you set your mind to something and you want

to accomplish it you want to achieve it um the biggest thing you can do is not give up um because the moment you do give up you're you're Throwing It All [Music] Away thousands at this point they've done a lot of work [Music] if I had to describe bubble in one word it would be innovation [Music]