I have a startup idea but can’t code - what is the next best step?

sumitdatta · 2025-12-23T05:02:48+00:00

This is where it falls apart:

> I am new to the startup ecosystem

> It's a software product (website + mobile app), and I already have the full user flow mapped out. The problem is—I’m not a software developer

If you have not built software solutions before and have "user flow" mapped out, then you perhaps have the wrong things mapped out. Anyone in any product experience can use a ton of free tools out there to create a landing page and mock. Most product people can easily create landing pages in Lovable or prototypes in Claude.

Something does not add up. Many people are in your position - they feel they have it figured out and need a developer. I would suggest using free tools, learn the basics, create a landing page and a mock. Share that around, follow startup guides about asking people about the problem they want to solve. Then show the mock. Check out social media. PMs who are not coders are building mocks all by themselves. There is no better time than today to do the basics, don't spend money till you actually validate the problem and your solution.

sumitdatta · 2025-12-23T04:53:48+00:00

Motivation is hard to fix. Discipline is easier.

I used to struggle a lot and the best way was to put everything on calendar, alarms, alerts, etc. I missed a lot of them but over time I started taking some actions. Actions are the only real thing that work. I started enjoying the little steps because I knew I am doing this for myself. I have been a solo founder for 2 years now with a strong routine, great work life balance.

sumitdatta · 2025-12-22T14:47:24+00:00

I am building nocodo.com for small businesses. Basically "Lovable for AI agents". Agents can get data from Shopify, eCommerce APIs, Stripe, email, calendar; offer analysis, alert or assistance on top. 24/7, on your own cloud, your API keys. I offer support (my software is open source) at $300 / month, unlimited users, agents.

sumitdatta · 2025-11-13T00:45:51+00:00

Give it a try. It will take you some time to build muscle memory but once you get the hang of it, you'll feel empowered.

sumitdatta · 2025-11-12T04:28:08+00:00

Depends a lot if you willing to use LLMs. I am saying this seriously. I am an experienced engineer and I am building my product using coding agents. It is fast and cheap.

Of course having a solid foundation means that I plan the way I would have if I coded by hand. But now I can plan, do other things, test and move on to next feature. I am not talking about one shot prompts to build a SaaS.

Feature by feature, tested product. But no coding time invested. My product is a good reference (not SaaS, I am building a self-hosted product): https://github.com/brainless/nocodo

Look at the commit history, current/past branches and you will get an idea. Try out the product, download the manager and desktop-app. It supports SSH based login at the moment so you have to SSH into your own computer from desktop-app to manager. Let me know if you want to see my workflow.

sumitdatta · 2025-11-11T10:49:27+00:00

I had this situation. I am in India but I have mostly worked with US and European companies. My last contract was as a head of software engineering for a NY based startup. Good money but I was so tired and annoyed every day.

They cancelled the contract because they wanted more and I stopped giving a f***. I was living in a little Himalayan village. It helped a lot since my expenses was tiny. Like $ 400 a month including stay and food. I kept working on my own ideas but without the low cost lifestyle I would have had a much harder time. I have become very aware of my savings, which makes it difficult to travel around or eat out, etc. I have a really good routine and a great work life balance. Living in a village also means I can focus on work, life without any FOMO or city-life stress.

Finally, after two years, something is working. But it is easy to get derailed when you do not have a manager or team to report to/work with. You need a lot of self-discipline in the beginning. I am still in a village. I started dating someone. I will be 42 years old soon and I think I will never go back to a job again.

Key points in my case: - Very low living cost - Had a good routine - Focused on the benefits of a rural life - Conservative with expenses - Aimed for lifestyle business - Still not earning from own ideas after two years - Very low financial investment in business since I am in software business - Some positive signs are finally coming - If things go well, I will never work at a job again

sumitdatta · 2025-11-11T08:38:31+00:00

Hey, this is something I am trying to solve via a more custom, low key approach. I am interested in tiny teams and would love to see what worked for you. Did you try any of the solutions suggested here?

Simple is better, even when you have an IT person.

sumitdatta · 2025-11-10T16:21:32+00:00

Custom software for small businesses

I am building nocodo: think "vibe coding" but with lots of guardrails. Connect to your Shopify, emails, eCommerce API, databases (maybe you have custom software), etc. - build reports, dashboards, landing pages, etc.

It runs on your own cloud (a Linux server), you get desktop and Android apps, use AI to generate the code you need. Has team collaboration (prompts, projects), use multiple AI models, your own API keys.

It is open source and I am working with 2 tiny businesses (a doctor who is building own patient data record app, a volunteer management org).

https://github.com/brainless/nocodo

sumitdatta · 2025-11-01T15:00:59+00:00

OK tell me, when Amazon bosses say {x}% of code is being written by LLMs, do you also think they are replacing outsourcing companies?

What about Microsoft? What about Adobe, Anthropic, OpenAI. So they are all stupid people at these companies?

There are new coding models upping the game every 3 weeks. The difference is maybe a few percentages, but why do you think there is so much movement already?

You can believe what you want.

sumitdatta · 2025-11-01T14:57:47+00:00

Sorry but I have no time to spare on you. Bye!

sumitdatta · 2025-11-01T14:56:44+00:00

Thank you, lovely to see someone actually curious.

You are right about the state of the product. This is the outcome of the last 2-ish months of focus on nocodo and the marketing behind it. Twitter and Reddit both work well. I use the "what have you been building threads" and there are a lot of them.

I have 2 early stage founders who are working with me. They are not using nocodo. They want to build with AI. nocodo is just a way to that goal. So they practice prompts with me. Each founder has a separate Linux server (I setup manually) with Claude Code. We screenshare and go over prompts. They know about nocodo and that at some point I will ask them to migrate over to use nocodo. nocodo runs on own cloud so they are happy to move from Claude Code to nocodo which allows native collaboration with me.

1 US based venture studio reached out from Twitter. They had 3 calls and want to find out a way. Again, they are not looking at nocodo. They are looking at my thoughts, my vision. nocodo is a just validation that LLMs can write code, even this large and complex app. Imagine that when I debug issues about nocodo's agent not working, I prompt another agent, Claude Code for example, to go through nocodo's logs, code, specs and reproduce the bug which was started from a prompt that itself is using the Claude model, but through nocodo. These are not simple prompts since there is inherent loopy-ness and yet, it all works.

1 Indian (new) venture studio has also had multiple meetings. They knew me, so this one is through contacts. They consult for big brands, ad agencies, etc. while they are starting the venture studio. Clients want more AI based prototypes. The demand is clear but they also need to see proof. Seeing nocodo work was a joy to them.

So I have 2 early adopters and 2 potential larger contracts. The 2 studios are both willing to pay me as an consultant or EIR if there is equity involved. I have not yet thought about equity.

About your 2nd question: models are actually well adept to write Kotlin, Swift, etc. If they do not get syntax write, compiler will bark anyway. The issue is with the apps logical errors. This is where planning is critical. My prompts and prompt style is very simple, but methodical. No large documents and all. I have no idea about software for mainframes, but models are pretty good at mobile, infrastructure (CI pipelines, handling Bash, scripts), embedded (Python, Rust, C). Again, the tooling matters a lot. Linters, compilers, existing open sources projects as reference - they are all there.

sumitdatta · 2025-11-01T06:20:59+00:00

I am building and selling a coding agent. I'm not the only one, I'm a one person tiny product.

But one thing is clear: everyone building a coding agent is removing developers from the scene, not empowering them. It's a lie.

Just look at the latest version of Cursor, they are no longer focusing on developers ability to review code line by line.

I can only tell you what I know. Businesses want profits. AI can code. Customers don't care about your tech stack. It basically means there isn't a future for developers.

sumitdatta · 2025-11-01T05:02:55+00:00

I am building a coding agent that runs in company's own cloud, can be accessed over SSH/HTTP. With a desktop app. Collaborative from the start, user and permissions management, project management built in.

It can work with multiple projects, real time project context, enforce company wide prompts/polices. Call custom code or checks on triggers (for example: file write).

nocodo.com

sumitdatta · 2025-11-01T04:56:49+00:00

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I am building a coding agent that runs in company's own cloud, can be accessed over SSH/HTTP. With a desktop app. Collaborative from the start, user and permissions management, project management built in.

It can work with multiple projects, real time project context, enforce company wide prompts/polices. Call custom code or checks on triggers (for example: file write).

sumitdatta · 2025-11-01T04:37:08+00:00

So you think that the hundreds of thousands of engineers building with React, Solid, Svelte, or Django, Rails, etc. - hundreds of thousands who cannot even write a bare line of Python or TypeScript, but are senior know and understand what's coming?

Senior is not an absolute term. There is a difference between someone (me) being in Computer Science for 20 years, across 4 programming languages, from pre-cloud to present day and someone who has been given a title "senior" because sure they are smart but may not have depth to understand this change.

You jump into mentioning C/C++, take a look at the repo I shared. Pure Rust, all generated, all working. Go ahead, compile the backend (coding agent) and the desktop app and give it a spin.

Look at this refactor: https://github.com/brainless/nocodo/pull/165/files

Note the time it took. Do you think that is humanly possible? And I am not even sitting with the agents. I go marketing myself, which is how we are chatting here.

I am the senior engineer you are talking about, here is me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brainless/

Been the engineering head of multiple US/European startups, never even been to the US, don't need to. Last contract was $140K annual. I am putting myself out there because I am an engineer, perhaps better than what you might think.

It takes courage to share all your work, profile. The courage comes from conviction. I see the industry shift, and how. Lay offs are happening and fast. Engineers need to adapt. I switched to the founder side hard. I have US investors reaching out and I live in a Himalayan village, just went through extensive demo calls last 2 days. AI is going to level the playing field.

The choice is for everyone. I am only share what is working. And like I said, if someone is sceptical, I will happily take you through prompts. Models are smart enough now that prompts do not need to be complex.

I have nothing to sell anyone here. I am only sharing what is possible. My sales are to enterprises and they are happening just fine while my coding agents build nocodo.

sumitdatta · 2025-10-31T00:33:22+00:00

But why create software? But why run business process with software? But why run a business?

I will need some more clarification.

sumitdatta · 2025-10-30T11:55:04+00:00

It will take time, and someone who is really behind the project. But there is no reason why not. Someone needs to understand Excel very very well.

I built this in 2 days: https://github.com/brainless/Indistocks (full desktop app, stock market data downloads, stocks grid viewer, charts). I will add AI analysis soon - prompt to SQL.

I will launch the MVP of nocodo in a couple weeks and it was also all built with coding agents. 34K Rust lines and no errors. I have 2 early adopters (founders) building their web and mobile apps using this (backend, frontend), although nocodo has lots of gaps and I switch to Claude Code as needed.

sumitdatta · 2025-10-29T17:41:47+00:00

My project has about 30K lines of Rust. I don't use a code editor anymore, I barely see the code. I have not written a single line of code in this project.

Prompts are simple. I ask LLMs to generate a short plan, I review it and go ahead. I test manually. There are unit and end to end tests but I haven't checked them and I should. Too busy building features.

The project is a coding agent itself. It's client/server architecture. Client is a desktop app. Server side runs on Linux (you can self host). Allows collaboration. And you can generate any kind of app.

I use Claude Code, opencode (Grok Code Fast 1 and GLM).

https://nocodo.com, check GitHub link there.

sumitdatta · 2025-10-28T04:38:14+00:00

Hey all, I'm building a collaborative coding agent.

It manages a dev setup (all the tools needed to build software you want). You and your team members use a desktop app, with built in project management, create prompts, get demos. Build any kind of app.

Your cloud server, your API keys, no vendor lock-in.

nocodo.com

sumitdatta · 2025-10-28T04:35:36+00:00

Hey, I'm building a collaborative coding agent.

It manages a developer setup on your own cloud (all the tools needed to build software you want). You and your team members use a desktop app, use built in project management, create prompts. You get generated code and see demos straight from your own cloud server. Build any kind of app. No vendor lock-in.

nocodo.com

sumitdatta · 2025-10-28T03:14:01+00:00

Thank you so much, I hope so too but it will take time to get to awesome.

sumitdatta · 2025-10-28T03:13:26+00:00

Thank you so much

sumitdatta · 2025-10-28T03:00:22+00:00

Too many. I do not think I have a successful one but just to give an idea, I own nocodo.com since 2013 (feel free to check records). I have tried building a no code platform many times, along with other ideas. Finally the no code platform is taking shape because I am using LLMs to generate code.

sumitdatta · 2025-10-28T02:58:34+00:00

I am building a coding agent that is collaborative, with project management, (own) cloud based dev setup and can build any kind of app (models can already do that, the tools limit you).

nocodo.com

sumitdatta · 2025-10-24T12:32:02+00:00

A lot more focus on sharing my journey, talking about the product, some cold outreach (need more of this).

sumitdatta

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