Albert Santalo is the founder of 8base, and is joined by their Product Manager Sebastian Scholl.

8base allows you to connect your enterprise data sources and expose them through a unified GraphQL API.

In this episode, Ben, Albert and Sebastian discuss...

• The back end of low-code and no-code
• Developers in the no-code space
• Micro-SAAS and Digital Agencies in no-code/low-code

‍

Albert & Sebastien - 8base - Spotlight Podcast

Tue, 8/25 9:50AM • 39:41

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

code, people, companies, build, base, tools, product, software, platform, business, capabilities, big,

developer, albert, vcs, api, talking, important, analysts, world

SPEAKERS

Albert, Ben Tossell, Sebastien

Ben Tossell 00:00

Everybody, Ben here, founder of makerpad, a platform teaching individuals and companies how to build

custom software workflows and tools without writing code. This show explores the people behind the

noco tools and the stories of folks using them to automate work and launch companies. Okay, today on

the show, we have our answer dashon from a base, welcome.

00:22

Hey, Ben, it's good to be here.

Ben Tossell 00:25

Awesome. How are you? Um, why don't you give us a brief intro on your background or a basis and

sort of tell our listeners what, what you've been building?

Albert 00:36

Yeah, sure. So if Sebastian if it's okay, I'll just take the lead on that. So I'm Albert. I started my career

as an engineer a long time ago. I have worked in let's call it enterprise software and high growth SaaS

companies for all my career. My last two companies, the first one started in 2001. Later exited. And

then the second one in 2009 company called carecloud, which has since exited as well, both of those

were complex multi tenant SaaS companies, specifically for healthcare, although healthcare is not

uniquely my background, but we built, you know, some of the most complex SAS products in the world.

And out of that experience, I felt like much of the work that my engineering teams were doing on any

given day could be abstracted away into a platform. It was especially frustrating after raising so much

venture capital. And after a few years in those companies that you would say, you know, if you talk to

the engineering team, and 80% of the work was on what we call non unique systems. And so in 2016, I

left the day to day and started looking at the space realized that it was called low code development

platform by the analysts. I was familiar with many of the platforms that exists there. And if you look at

the platforms at the time, they were more what I would call the legacy players but We could see that the

growth in the space was going to be enormous. And so that really led me to just jump in with both feet,

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raise capital and get the company going. And I'll, I'll stop there and let Sebastian introduce himself.

Hey,

Sebastien 02:16

my name is fashion. And so Albert and I actually met about three or four years ago when I moved back

to Miami to start my own company at the time, which was a virtual roleplay simulation training

technology company. So we're using virtual reality to train salespeople and let them go on virtual sales

calls to gain experience. And so he was on the board of that company gave me some great advice. I

was always a product engineer, I was always an engineer, so more deeply technical, build a fantastic

product, but not a fantastic sales organization. So after about three years of burning through all my

fundraising, I decided that maybe it's time to go learn another set of skills before I take the next whack

at it and Albert was generous enough to say we can use you already base so it's been a really fun time.

A little almost almost a over a year now, um, since since I joined joined on but um, it's been a really

cool product, you know, to work on and whatnot so excited to be here.

Ben Tossell 03:08

Awesome. Well, yeah, it's funny that we, I'm chatting with two technical technical people have technical

background, which isn't isn't usually the case or it's more about talking about the point and click people.

But I think this is a good opportunity for us to talk about how like no code isn't isn't no code like that's

not not quite the right thing. And yeah, you said that you getting into the space and 2016 with the low

code was what it was sort of cooled down on a suppose there is like a mix of that now. And that's pretty

early on in in in Nokia terms. I guess the thing the Nokia movement only really happened last 1218

months or so I think what have you What have you seen is like the some of the biggest changes from

people taking some time from low code and whacking under no code to or is it still quite different? Do

you think?

Albert 04:05

Yeah, it's interesting, man, because you know, I have I have perspective on this that dates back

probably longer than most people. You know, people have been talking about fourth generation

languages and things like that from the 1980s. And admittedly, I was a working developer in the late

80s. So, so I've seen a lot. I think that things I had probably been thinking about low code, no code for

at least 15 years. But it didn't have the name. But I recognized a long time ago that the work that I was

doing, either as an engineer or managing engineers was repetitive, and a lot of it was wasteful. And it

may have been new to a developer, but it wasn't new to me. It's like, Well, why do we have to rebuild

things every single time? And then computing architectures were changing. You know, I saw

mainframe. I saw client server I saw web and web itself has changed. But I felt that with the advent of

modern cloud, which really, if you if you look at when was that it's really 2006 when AWS first came out,

and AWS was a much back then. But you could see that part of what the possibility of building a

platform on top of that computing infrastructure became possible. The analysts, I think, have done us a

little bit of a disservice in the sense that they've grouped low code, no code as if they're synonymous

terms, and into this one big category. And when you really look at it, there are a lot of different tools that

are intended for many different purposes. There isn't one tool that's going to be a winner takes all that

that is highly unlikely, because there are so many different categories of software to be built. And no

tool is really going to solve all

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Ben Tossell 05:54

now. I mean, I even talked about that with you think of any productivity tools. There's companies who

try and do everything database documentation wiki, like everything else can ban boards. But it's, it's all

good and well doing that. But I think people still have their own preferences of how something works or

how something looks, the UI, UX, whatever it is. There's always some differences. I don't think, I think I

just don't think they'll ever be a one tool does everything, which, Yeah, sounds to like, like you said,

there's lots of things which have similar structure on the back end of setting up these things over and

over again. And I think the one thing maybe a lot of people overlook in no code low code is we'll all try

to just build software. And we're trying to democratize building software. And if you're a developer or if

you're not a developer, people still don't want to do the repetitive stuff, like creating that framework and

all those sorts of things. So what does what does a base actually do? haven't realized I haven't asked

you like to introduce a bass as a product and and tell us a bit about what it does.

Albert 07:07

Yeah, well, what I would tell you is what a bass does is a moving target. So I'll tell you what it does

today. Yeah. And our focus in terms of low code, because again, there's so many things you can

choose to do. We decided to go down the what I would call the less popular path of trying to really pour

cement around the back end of things. Many of the companies have gravitated towards visual UI

builders. Those are great. But a lot of times what you end up with is that the back ends fall apart under

scale. So our intention was let's try to create this incredibly powerful back end that we can also

democratize. So in other words, even though it's incredibly powerful, it doesn't mean you have to have

a huge amount of money. A lot of technical capability to use it, you can use it easily get it up and

running. But when you scale, you're not going to have to replace it. And so what is a back end? a back

end. And it's most sort of basic form is database, object storage and computing power. We've layered a

bunch of services around that to augment the definition of a back end. And also provision it in a way

that is incredibly unique, and incredibly powerful. The provisioning that I'm talking about is primarily the

graph qL API that we lay on top of it. So you can easily define your back end your data model. It's a

relational data model primarily. You can attach no SQL databases and things to it. You can define roles

and rights, which complex software requires that type of thing. You You can permission down To the

field level, you can add capabilities like serverless computing. So if you need to create back end

functions, you can run those in a base, a base will hyper scale to meet demand, and then it will come

down, you pay for what you use. But the graph qL API is reverse engineered from the definition of that

back end. So you're never having to do real API development or mostly not, in a front end developer or

a front end tool can immediately grab that and begin, you know, writing front ends without ever having

to worry about the back end.

Ben Tossell 09:35

Awesome. So do you think there's ever you said as a moving target, I think lots of companies are. What

do you think you'll ever go down that drag and drop style? Is that ever a future like, I'm trying to think of

me as a real no coder to use something that's more you have to understand code fits together? Is that

Do you think there's going to be a, like a crossing over of that? At some point?

Albert 10:06

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I don't rule it out. But what I would, what I would tell you is that there's, there's the unspoken in all of

this. Okay? And here's, here's what I mean by that. If If a person especially a citizen developer has all

these tools in front of them, it doesn't necessarily mean they know how to design complex software. So

just because they can drag and drop widgets on the front end, manipulate data models on the back and

easily doesn't mean that the software is well constructed. Yeah, the eight bases mission is really to

continue its roadmap is centered around how do we continue to deliver things that allow you to build

comprehensive software that take care of a lot of the heavy sort of computer science parts away from

that and get to a place point where the effort that is required to stand up software is minimal. So what

do I mean by that? specifically? What's harder to build multi tenancy, or to make your screens look the

way you want them to look? I would say that multi tenancy, and how that all works with complex roles,

permissions, personas, security requirements at the API at the user interface level, that's a much

harder thing for people to grasp. Yeah, most engineers have never done that work. But if you think of

any SaaS company, or what's more important than a SaaS company today is a Microsoft company

because Microsoft is exploding, right? People don't even know they're micro SAS. And but that's what

they are. Yeah, right. We can talk a little bit about what that is. But my point is that type of engineering

is what we're we're wanting a base to bring. Because we believe that the styling of the UI is actually a

thing that millions of people in the world can do well, right. It's very visual, a non technical founder, for

instance. can see what they want, they can demand what they want. And any front end developer can

do that work for them. And what are the parts that are?

Sebastien 12:07

Yeah, that's naturally why the most the tool sets have been developed towards that, you know,

because it's like, Hey, what's the immediate action that the person is trying to take? But a lot of these

things that Albert Albert is mentioning right now, kind of boil back to something that you mentioned in

the beginning, which is you went over quickly, I think is really important to the idea that non unique

systems know, which is the idea that when someone someone says, I have an idea for an app, right

with what they're usually thinking of is I see an interface in my head. And I know what data I want on

that interface. That that is that is the app idea of the 21st century for the most part. Now. Everything

that enables that in the background, is what we kind of termed a non unique system, right? There's

many unique ways that you could develop those systems, but to the core idea, which is what you're

trying to bring in the market, whether or not you employ this strategy or that strategy isn't necessarily

changed. customer's relationship to the product or service that you're bringing, right? And so the less

time that you spent kind of reinventing those systems or re engineering those systems, and the more

time that you spend getting to work on that interface, which the person is actually gonna be interacting

with, or being more thoughtful about, how are you collecting your business data, visualizing it reporting

and whatnot, that's where you're really going to drive value for the organization. And so we're

constantly looking at Hey, what are the things that in the abstract are just completely, you know, non

specific to the projects that I'm that people are kicking off? Because that's the way that we can drive the

most efficiency on on development timelines. So

Ben Tossell 13:41

yeah, what about like, so in that vein of, I've got an app idea a lot of people when I hear that, it actually

can be broken down to like, are you looking at you thinking of a marketplace, it's a marketplace style,

you want to like have something as a platform as a service and as a seller.

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14:00

But

Ben Tossell 14:02

even if you say that so bluntly to someone and say, Okay, well, this is sort of what you want is you want

a page that does this a page that does that, and a page that does this other thing. This still always

seems to be Oh, no, but I want it slightly differently, or I want this thing to be slightly different with all

these, like tiny, like nuanced pieces of what people think they want or need for this platform to be

successful. How does that relate to, like, the actual building blocks that you're you're providing, does

that need to be baked in or is it easier than that? So,

Sebastien 14:37

analogy I like to use sometimes is, like, if someone wanted to make a masterpiece of art, right, there's

no way they can use paint by numbers. Right? Like it like that. That is That won't work, but they could

use a pre stretch canvas. Right? So it's like there's elements of, of bringing that to where you can use

something that's existing and then at what level Do you overlay your vision? Right? And so that's kind

of one of the ways I delineate on the UI builders is because most of UI builders is more of a paint by

numbers experience to where that flexibility is usually restricting you, you have to literally break the tool

to really go B go beyond. Yeah, versus where we're sitting, which is like, you know, at the data layer

backwards right now, most of that nuance happens in the visual interface, which then you go ahead,

and you can use any tool, whether that's a UI Builder, like a retweet, which is super cool. And we have

just published an awesome tutorial on that. Or you're building a custom JavaScript application and you

can do whatever, you know, whatever JavaScript will allow you to do. Yeah. Or or, or combination,

Sebastian, right.

Albert 15:49

So it's like, because you could like you could use retool is marketed as a as a tool for internal company

development. So you could think of using resources To build the insight of the company's capabilities,

while having a custom JavaScript, you know, web or mobile app or whatever it might be, that is the

customer facing part. But the point is, you know, there are different requirements based on different

personas and different types of software, different types of products.

Ben Tossell 16:18

So what are some of these? You give an example then what are some other examples of what you've

seen people build with the database.

Albert 16:27

We to us, we tried to build a platform that was going to be suitable for what we thought was what most

no low code or no code products we're not solving for, which is digital products. It's things that would be

externally facing. Because for instance, if you're building internal applications for employees, Apex is

great for that. But there might be no code tools that you can use because the UI might not be as

important for that. But if you're if you're looking at things that are externally facing where you need full

customization You need hyper scaling, because, you know, you, you know, think of something that

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requires, you know, massive scaling or seasonal scaling requirements. You don't want to have all this

server capacity that you're that you're allocating, and you need a product that can handle it. And you

need an expensive user accounts, because some of these look code products are like, you know, 90

bucks per user per month. And that's not gonna work in a b2c towards sort of sort of setting. So what

we what we have, you know, we have two flavors of customers, we have customers that use the

platform themselves. They're building all sorts of stuff, and some of them are building internal tools. So

it really varies. And then there's projects where we bring our service as well. Most of the time we've

done either in those cases, we've done full blown SAS solutions, where we've taken the lead on design

and development on top of our platform, and marketplaces as well. Like multi persona, you know, to

two sided marketplaces with admin capabilities as well.

18:04

Do you think Yeah, do you think there's like a?

Ben Tossell 18:07

I feel like there's this passionate economy rising up and there's like individual businesses or individual

SAS companies, one person businesses, do you think the rise of this is helping power some of these

things and thinking, like these micro SAS niche businesses, I mean, I'm part of his capital are one of

our investors who invest in these kinds of businesses. And we're just seeing more and more individuals

raising funds to invest in these types of companies to and just seeing that so many more people are

doing things that you never think about, and they just like, have their own their own SAS thing.

Albert 18:44

100%. So I, I'll tell you how I think about this. If you ask me, what's the most successful low code, no

code company in existence? You might be surprised by my answer. And I'll tell you What that is, I

would say it's Shopify. Okay. So you never see them talking about low code, no code, they're not

covered in the analysts reports. You now saw the big commerce had a big, you know, IPO super

successful. My belief is that where the economy is headed, and then the reason those companies have

done well is because there's been a lot of people that said, I'm going to be, you know, solo employees

solo entrepreneur, and I'm going to create a storefront and I'm going to sell products. Well, I think the

analog to that is the person who doesn't have a product to sell other than their service. And they're

trying to technology enable that. And so what you're going to see is the emergence of the solopreneur,

or the small entrepreneur, that standing up a micro SAS around what they're doing. And so, in order to

do that our goal is to facilitate full stack development of those things. Including the front end. But the

concept of headless is incredibly important in all of that. So if you if you borrow a page out of the big

commerce playbook, a big part of what they've been able to do, and part of the reason they've swim

upstream is because they have this headless e commerce back end, right? And so what we're saying is

that same site type of concept is what's going to be required required to win the day. Because if you're,

if you're looking to rule out what a low code or no code platform can do for you, the more things it has,

or the more chances of you ruling it out, right, that it doesn't fit, where if it has flexibility, especially

flexibility at the API level. Now you're talking about a whole different type of fit. Your product can

actually handle many, many use cases. Yeah, that makes sense.

Ben Tossell 20:51

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Yeah, yeah, definitely. I think that, I think, yeah, you'd be spot on with. Shopify is one of those things

and this is one of those That you said, I think the start you've been in interested in no code low code for

1516 years or so. People forget that. Like, it's actually been a thing. It just wasn't called no code, but

lots of things would call no code for a long time. And yeah, I don't think that's like, that's the focus piece

that people are focusing on now. But I don't think that's, that's less than the bigger movement actually

is. It's more about how far can like one person a small team go and How big can they be? Just as like,

it's like the resurgence of the mom and pop shops, but on the internet, like, I think you see so many

people or there's always someone, even like out of my family who are not in tech at all or anything, but

there's someone that they know who's got like their own little business online somewhere doing

something. It's just more and more popular, and I think it's just gonna get way more popular. So it's

Yeah, seems like you're trying to build almost that Shopify layer for these micro SAS entrepreneurs

who were coming out

Sebastien 22:10

what's also very important to realize about the Shopify example, especially when talking about low

code, no code, because of the negative rep that kind of gets amongst the technical community is that

these are not only productivity tools for people without the skills to do them. Yeah. Like, you know, for

example, I can't think of a talented developer right now. That I know, that wouldn't tell you if you said

I'm thinking of doing an online e commerce store that wouldn't say go use Shopify. Yeah. You know,

and, and very similar, you know, I actually found this fascinating when we were, you know, we exploring

the maker pad partnership to where, you know, you introduce yourself as saying, like, you know, I was

never technical, so I had to do this, but a large percentage of your guys community is all engineers.

You know, so people that are fully technical, you know, fully capable of building software, but they

recognize the the productivity benefit of bringing pre built components to any project. Um, you know,

and so in this kind of Microsoft's economy where, you know, maybe your idea doesn't justify a big

development budget, or a year development to timeline, eat, whether or not you are capable of

embarking on that.

Albert 23:31

Or, by the way, a slug of venture capital, because that's the other thing that happens to these Microsoft

companies.

Sebastien 23:36

Absolutely. No, um, it's really, really cool that we're seeing people actually adopting these tools for

purely the efficiency benefit of knowing that, hey, I can accomplish what I'm looking to accomplish using

this service for whatever, it's a free thing or a 25 $50 monthly subscription, whatever it might be. But,

um, but yeah, you know, you know, kind of improved Improve your your career and financial future in a

meaningful way on expedited timeline. So,

Ben Tossell 24:06

yeah, no, I think that's so important just to like, reiterate that fact of it is, we're all on the same team. It's

not one versus the other. And it's not the it's not because my paths better than your path or anything.

It's just, we're trying to get to something. But realistically, who doesn't want to get there the quickest

way with the least, like the path of least resistance? And yeah, I think a lot of people think, what people

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are trying to push no code for the sake of it being no code, and some of it is just like, Oh, I built this

Airbnb style clone in webflow. Because I just wanted to see if I could like as a test, I know that it's not

going to be like a scalable thing like Airbnb, like, that wasn't the point at all. It's just to see where you

can push these things. Be I think people forget that, that sometimes that sometimes it is learning but

other times it's like, yeah, we have 12% are the Developers on megapath. And they're like, yeah, I hate

writing this. I hate it. There's developers at companies. And you're like, Oh, can we just get the

developers to build a really small tool? It'll take them like, five minutes, I'm sure. Like, they won't mind

just to like build this thing or give me an alert when this thing happens. That is the last thing that the

developers ever want to do. They were just like, Well, can you just figure out or do it yourself? And this

whole movement helps push that forward? I think definitely. Yeah.

Sebastien 25:30

No, it's true. It's just it's just, it's a progression of abstraction to because like, yeah, you know, the first

time the first time I ever looked at a no code, solution, I kind of got a little persnickety about it, you

know, because I thought of it as threatening, but then I was looking, I was like, Well, you know, it's like,

the first thing I ever do when I'm writing, you know, a script, or whatever is, look, if there's an NPM

package, installed this so I can just import it, find the function or the method on that and then get it

done. And then Saturday. The code, you know, yeah. And so it's just taking that to, you know, to the

next level. But yeah, it's cool. It's cool how it all kind of stacked on top of each other?

Ben Tossell 26:09

Yeah, for sure. I'll bet you mentioned about the VC side of things. How do you think this whole

movement around micro sass and individuales and everything else? How is that gonna go downstream

upstream? how's that gonna change the ecosystem? Do you think?

Albert 26:28

Yeah, so I think that, by definition, a lot of these micro sass companies are not venture bankable.

Beyond seed funding, just because you know, VCs are looking for a large enough addressable market,

large enough market opportunity, where they can get a unicorn out of these companies, right. And so

most of these companies are not something you can form around that thesis, but at the same time, they

can provide a really nice lifestyle business for for people but The concept of building a SaaS product to

convert your service to a subscription, in its simplest form, has been out of reach for most people

because of the capital requirements, the technical knowledge that you required, but that is now

changing. So I think that again, in the same in the same spirit of solopreneur wants to have a product

that they want to sell or they want to have a service that they want to sell those services will begin

becoming Microsoft's opportunities. And there might be funding vehicles that will they will support

those. One of the ones that you know, I'm really excited about is these these lenders that can lend

based on your recurring revenue we, we have a we have a client that does that it's called Bigfoot

capital. They're based in Colorado. We help them with the software development and they, you know,

our ape base helps them you know, connect your stripe Connect plaid Connect zero and QuickBooks

do run an algorithm do an analysis and based on what we see of your financial profile, we can give you

a lending limit, you know right away and then lend against your recurring revenue. It's a great way to

finance these companies. So they can grow without the the Microsoft's owners, you know, giving away

the store in terms of equity and having to report to VCs and board meetings and all this fun stuff.

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Ben Tossell 28:22

Yeah, I think I looked at a startup pipe that did that does the same sort of thing. It converts MRR to like

your arr. Right now something sells that asset. Which is Yeah, I think we need just I think there's loads

of I mean, there's these rolling funds. Now. I don't know if you've seen them through Angel list, where

I'm raising one for the no code and no code. Like that side of things. There's yeah more individuals who

are in a certain space. It like no such thing like more of a founder operator. Then, like, allowing to like

they can actually talk about them publicly. They can raise continuously, they can be a quarter

subscription, basically, that helps you then invest in these companies, I think things like that. Things like

the earnest model, which is more of a shared in agreement, and things like big capital, these really

huge, like, seemingly small but huge, huge improvements for this whole like, movement, which I think is

all very interlinked. Definitely.

Albert 29:32

Yeah. 100% It's great to see the the financial side of things, sort of evolving to match the need.

Ben Tossell 29:43

Yeah, and I think it's, it's necessary because if, if all these no code things were happening, and there's

someone who built something without a big team, and it's like doing okay, but can't quite take the leap

to do it full time for a year or something. It stops that He like stops in his tracks where that should just

should not be that the barrier and the alternative is trying to convince yourself mostly and VCs that

you're going to be a billion dollar company one day when you might be a 21 year old, just out of college

or whatever that is just trying to do this. But you did say lifestyle business and so many people do have

a negative connotation with like, lifestyle businesses, and I think it's very broad. But

Sebastien 30:31

I actually think a lifestyle driven culture like all pop culture this day is all about lifestyle how you project

yourself onto like a handsome like that. It's like what sounds better than a lifestyle business. Like, any

salary and running your own thing, you know?

Albert 30:45

Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Look, it's I like to use the example Ben actually not of the 21 year old. I like to use

the example of the 35 to 40 year old who's been gainfully employed. Floyd has a great sales skill set

has contacts, has some money in their pocket, but wants to sort of leave corporate America or

corporate whatever, and create their own thing, right. And so their own thing could be, you know, what

they do, what they're trained out what they're an expert out what they're best in the world that the

technological instantiation of that, but they don't really have technical skills. And so that is a great

example of a Microsoft that comes out and they might have a very successful run with it, be able to be

able to sell more business than they could handle. If they were doing it on a consulting basis. Try and

make those into subscriptions. And do very, very well with it without having to take external investor

money or, or maybe bring in investor money, but not the kind of money that's expecting you to grow

into a unicorn.

Ben Tossell 31:56

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Yeah, no, definitely what's on the horizon. on the horizon freight base and where, what else he really

excited about in this like growing space and what you guys are building.

Albert 32:08

So we've got we've got a pretty aggressive roadmap that we're that we're tackling right now. We're

getting ready to release what we would call some, we're already using it internally, but we're going to

release it to the outside world, some continuous integration capabilities. So we can have, you know,

sort of dev test production, which is something that a lot of the low code no code tools lacked truthfully,

but it's like professional sort of ci CD capabilities into the product. We're also getting ready to release a

product for for digital agencies. So right now he bases a call at work per workspace price. We're going

to release the concept of an organization where they can have multiple workspaces, multiple

development teams, all sharing in a shared environment have workspaces of different types, and be

able to monetize that work as well. So sort of sell a basis, their own infrastructure, right, and be able to

mark it up, provide managed services on top of it, and have all the capabilities inside the product to do

all that.

Ben Tossell 33:18

Yeah, I actually just talked about a couple of companies webflow does this with like, I think that's how

it's helped them. Yeah, speaking to a company trying to do Chrome extension, no code builder. And I

was like, some of the interesting pieces that other companies have done my web flow, is allow

someone to build a business using web flow is there like, isn't it and then just run that agency is using

all that stuff? So yeah, interesting. It'd be interesting to see this when this comes out. Sure. Yeah, the

Albert 33:48

agencies we and you know, just so you know, like we have we have a number of agencies that use the

product. They started out with maybe one project, and then next thing you know, they're like, I want to

For everything I've got, say base, I'm training my people on a base. They're blogging about a base,

they're doing meetups, were showing stuff about a base. And we also have IBM Global Services as a

customer that uses the US as a base for some pretty complex stuff that they've done in Europe. So the

value to an agency is enormous, especially a smaller one, because it's like, you can you can build

super comprehensive digital products without back end developers to a large extent, right. So your front

end developers can do a lot of whatever minimum back end work might be needed. It's DevOps free,

so you don't need AWS architects or DevOps folks. You don't mostly need a back end developers. So

digital agency with more of a thin staff, mostly front end focus, can get full stack work done really, really

well. Yeah.

Sebastien 34:58

And then in For me, most importantly, then the maintainability over time of that back end application is

extremely manageable and then updated on our on our and, you know, so you hear about all the time

to where an agency stood something up, you know, a little note app on Heroku, or something like that.

And then three years down the road. Yeah, that's no one's cracking that code, you know. And so it just

kind of removes that element of the equation, twist, you know, shared infrastructure across all these

were shared architecture across all these projects, each one with their own infrastructure, but that being

managed over time, it's always up to date. You can count on it, so yep. Awesome.

11

Ben Tossell 35:38

Well, yeah, we're really, really excited to show off some some more tutorials and things and show what

API's can do in the crossover between no code and low code and try to inject some of that in there

without this would be well off, I suppose. But we, I mean, yeah, it's all part of why we are so happy to

have you on as partners is showing that this is not like, pick sides. It's this whole movement around

democratizing software development that we're all rowing in the same in the same boat. So, yeah, if

you've got any closing thoughts about the space or what you're up to, and anything else,

Sebastien 36:17

no, a little while ago, it's funny. We wrote an article, instead of calling it low code, it's way better to call it

less code. Because every developer, every developer is totally fine with me like, Oh, yeah, like, I

minimize the amount of code like I condensed it and like that, and like, that's all you hate, just write less

code when you're building projects. And so like, so friendlier term, I guess. But, you know, any closing

thoughts?

Albert 36:38

Yeah, look, I think there's, again, I think the most important thing is that there are a lot of different low

code, no code companies, many of which, you know, some of the household names are not necessarily

part of the maker community because it's not appropriate. We're talking about Alex systems and

mendix and even Salesforce Comm. These are all much more effective. prize these sort of solutions,

and many of them much more, you know, antiquated than the people then your roster for instance. But

you know the analysts, if you take a look at what Gartner says about this, they say that by 2024, you

know, a very large percentage, something like 65% of all software written in the world will be used will

be done using these platforms, and that the average company will have at least four of these products,

which should inform people that this is not a winner takes all that this is about picking the best product

for the use case that you have. But it's about working smart. It's it's the way to win in the new world is to

not draw an early conclusion that none of these tools can help you. It is to research the tools and start

disqualifying them for what reasons but start there. It is a low code first approach approach to

technology. And that is what I think the big mind mind mind shift has to be. Because there's especially

engineering teams in general. They just start from the premise they got to build it from scratch. And

that's a flawed assumption.

Ben Tossell 38:14

Yeah, I think you summed it up perfectly. There was like, that's the mindset to be to be taking on what

more and more people should be doing. I think that is a stepping spilling out into more circles. Now you

definitely see it across different spaces and everything else and different job functions. So yeah, I really

appreciate you both coming on, like I said, really, really, really pumped to have you as partners. And

why don't you just tell the folks where they can find you and a base? We call it day.

Albert 38:44

Yeah, Ben, thank you. Thank you so much for having us on. This has been great. We're proud

members of the community and you can you can find us@www.att.com. biz can begin using the

product for free. If there's any questions You can reach us, you know, Gz Albert at a base calm. And

12

we, we'd love to, you know, stay tuned for many of the collaboration type tutorials that we're going to be

producing. The first one's going to be how to use a base and retool together. But we're gonna we're

gonna continue working with you guys on some of these other ones. Yeah.

39:22

Awesome. great talking to you guys, James.

Ben Tossell 39:26

Thanks so much for listening. You can find us online at maker pad.co or on Twitter at maker pad. We'd

love to hear if you enjoyed this episode and what we should do next.