Taimur Abdaal is the co-founder and CEO of Causal. Causal helps you build financial models effortlessly and share them with interactive, visual dashboards in a way that everyone will understand.

In this episode, Ben and Taimur discuss...

• The main use cases for Causal at startups
• The trend in engineering towards block based building.
• Measuring your economic impact

Taimur - Causal - Spotlight

Tue, 9/22 1:52PM • 34:36

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

causal, people, code, spreadsheets, zapier, bit, company, feels, tools, side hustles, crunching, case, build, data scientist, newsletter, customers, number, product, movement, calculators

SPEAKERS

Taimur, Ben Tossell

Ben Tossell  00:04

All right. Okay, today we have time Oh, who is the CEO and co founder of causal. Welcome to the show. Hey, Ben, very happy to be here. Awesome. When you tell the listeners SAS watches a little bit about you and about what cause it is? Yeah, sure. So I've table in my very brief career. So far, I started off working as a data scientist, I was the first employee at a company called retool. And for just over a year now, I've been working on causal with my co founder, Lucas, we're trying to build a better way to work with numbers. So anything related to doing calculations, visualizing data, and communicating numbers to other people, we want to be a much better way to do that than spreadsheets. And so right now, people are using causal for everything from financial forecasts for their business, to pricing calculators to show their potential customers, and then even personal finance stuff like should I buy a house? Should I buy this car versus that one? That That kind of thing? Awesome. So what would you say? Was the usual calculation with should you rent versus you buy? Yeah, I think it mostly, it mostly comes down to your estimates for how you think the stock market is gonna perform compared to the housing market, I think I think the buyer, I actually think the non quantitative considerations are more important for buying versus renting. For example, if you're like 22, and you want to travel the world and stuff, probably better to rent and not have a house kind of weighing you down. If you're sort of foresee with a couple of kids, the stability of having a house is probably quite nice for you. So I think a lot of people actually discount this sort of non numbers stuff where and I think the emotional side is probably more impulsive than, yeah, I was trying to justify one or the other. But I don't really have any good arguments for that, like whatever it always comes down to or Brenton just money's going out the window. I'm like, oh, there's a good answer here. But it just didn't never no one is succeeding. So yeah, it's not quite as simple as like renting his money down the window. Because typically, the amount you pay in rent for a property, let's say, like a two bed flat in London, will be a bit less than the amount you'd be paying monthly for a mortgage for the same two bed flat. And so you can invest the difference in the stock market. So then it becomes like, you know, should I buy a house and pay down this mortgage and get this asset? Which is my property? Or should I rent and get assets in the form of stocks? And both those are worth something? And it's worth doing a bit of number crunching that for sure. Make sure that's my go to. Awesome. So let's dive into your story and

Taimur  02:46

how to do data science at university. Is that where you started? Yeah, so I studied maths at university. And my course is very sort of theoretical. So we didn't do we didn't learn programming and that kind of stuff. But I've always kind of been tinkering around with tech stuff. I started dabbling with Photoshop when I was like 12. And after a few years, eventually learn how to code and make websites and things like that. And so the sort of math stuff, plus the coding stuff meant data science seemed like a good fit. And so that was kind of my first real job that I had out of university. Awesome. How did you get inside? What do you get in there? What's the story? Ah, yeah. So the original founders, we all just went to university together. We used to do hackathons and things back at university. And yeah, they started, they started retail seems to be going well, I joined them for a bit. I don't think I've really played any role in their success. I think they're all just really, really good that I sort of did a few things here and there for a while. But yeah, and it was great. Also, they birthday founders or were they as that they're actually both American but they came to the UK for undergrad for university. Okay, I was interested in you know, new

Ben Tossell  04:00

length. Was there anything? Is there anything in that sort of stone piece on okay. I like what he started looks like feels like, I want to do my own thing. What was the like motivations kinky. Do causal?

Taimur  04:16

Yeah. So I think I think I, I've always kind of wanted to buy a thing. Like, as a teenager, I was always trying to like, make a quick buck with various online schemes and stuff. I just, I wish I'd spent less time trying to make a quick buck with schemes and bit more time just trying to build something beautiful. But eventually started building more beautiful things. So I've kind of always want to do my own thing. When I was working as a data scientist, that was my first exposure to the kinds of stuff that non technical people are doing with computers. That was the first time I saw how most people using spreadsheets, and it seemed it seemed like there's kind of two two buckets of use cases for spreadsheets, there's like number crunching stuff. And then there's everything else as the company that I was working for a bunch of like financial forecasts and things and spreadsheets. And then they were using it for like project management and, and all of that kind of thing. And I think companies like air table and notion, they're really trying to take over the sort of everything else use cases like project management and having lists of things, managing business processes. But it really struck me that there's got to be a better way to do all the number crunching stuff that people are doing in spreadsheets. And so based on some of the problems that the company I was working for had with their spreadsheet models, we kind of started to think about, okay, what would a better number crunching tool actually look like? And that's kind of what we're trying to build with causal.

Ben Tossell  05:32

Awesome, what are some of the main use case you're using for that? Bradley's in massive trouble, we'll get into a bit as well. But yeah, you know, there's always three or four things I'm trying to do. Mostly, I'm trying to do some sort of pivot table of some sort. But there's something.

Taimur  05:50

Yes, I mean, so far, a lot of the use cases have to do with forecasting. So probably like one of the biggest use cases is financial modeling for early stage companies. And so, for example, some of our customers are CEOs or finance people, like companies like five to 50 people in size, where they need a financial forecast that they can look at every month, and report back to investors and report back to the team. And so they're using causal for that. And then it turns out that basically, in every niche, there are different consulting firms that need to do some form of number crunching. So if you are a marketing agency, then your clients will come to you and they'll say, Hey, you know, this is our budget, how many leads Can you get us via Google ads, and Facebook ads, and so on. And so then you need to build a small forecast to show the client that, hey, this is like the strategy, we'll put this much in Google this much, and Facebook. And we think after six months, we can get you like 100 leads or whatever. And so yeah, there's probably like a slight bias towards finance type stuff, because obviously, there's a lot of numbers involved there. But it seems like everything is kind of trending towards being more quantitative. And so basically, every niche, there's going to be some form of forecasting or number crunching. But but sort of one of the biggest pain points with spreadsheets, that we found is that it's very hard to actually present them in a nice way to other people. So you know, if you have like a financial model for your company, and you want to, you want to sort of be a bit more transparent with your team, you could send a spreadsheet round to everyone in the company and your investors and stuff. But most people's eyes will just kind of glaze over, there'll be a lot of numbers a lot going on. And so one of the things that we're trying to do is have a way to actually present these kinds of things in a nicer way. And so causal automatically turns your model into, like an interactive dashboard, where people can play around with the numbers and see the charts update and that kind of stuff, without getting overwhelmed by just a bunch of spreadsheet cells.

Ben Tossell  07:32

Both of me is going to be like embeddable, you have embeddable things, too, and medical journals and presentations and stuff, too.

Taimur  07:41

Yeah, absolutely. And so like, a lot of our users have actually embedded causal models inside things like blog posts, and landing pages, one of the more interesting use cases that we wouldn't have been able to think of ourselves, to be honest, is that a lot of companies need to show potential customers what the return on their investment would be using their products. And so they often use causal to build like an ROI calculator that they then embed on their landing page. And so then new customers can go on the website and see, okay, if I have this many employees, and based on my sort of custom circumstances, this is what the pricing would be for this product. And this is how much money would save me in the long run, that kind of stuff.

Ben Tossell  08:21

Also, gonna be my follow up, which is those you always want to build like little puppy dog. calculators, so this would be a really good way to do that. If we want to do that on our presentation. I think we'll, we'll look, basically wait for Yeah, from Dante's interested?

Taimur  08:42

Oh, yeah, that'd be awesome.

Ben Tossell  08:43

I love this. I don't suppose we'll begin for now.

Taimur  08:46

It's pretty early days, we've been working on this for just over a year. Now, I'd say since like, January of this year, it's been at a state where people have actually been using it in production for for work stuff. And since like, May, we started charging as well. So we started to get some paying customers, which has been nice.

Ben Tossell  09:05

How have you been getting these customers before? They're more in the inbound stuff? Or?

Taimur  09:13

Yes, I think for us, it's mostly been inbound so far, I think. I think we get a lot from like word of mouth via Twitter and Hacker News and that kind of thing. I think people will really like the the sort of animated GIFs that we put out, sort of demonstrating different product features. So those tend to do quite well on Twitter. So yeah, we get a decent amount of, of inbound. But I think we also need to be a bit more targeted about like specific use cases that we think the product is really good for today, and try and sort of figure out ways to reach those people. And so we're doing some sort of outbound and kind of marketing stuff as well.

Ben Tossell  09:48

Yeah, you know, those OSI, those data gifts, or, I guess, small videos that have sort of the countries or something and the numbers and so the different countries moving up and down.

Taimur  10:00

Yeah, that's automated things. Yeah, there

Ben Tossell  10:02

you go those with causal link that would be like the most random.

Taimur  10:10

Yeah, I mean, it's not a feature right now. But if we have, if we have a potential customer who, for whom that would be like a game changer, we're always happy to build new things, if it makes sense. I said they

Ben Tossell  10:21

always go round, and people love them. And I got How do I create one of these? Yeah, anyone that ever knows how to do it? I mean, that could be that's like a side project marketing. On how can you use that amount? I'm sure.

Taimur  10:34

The hackers would love it.

Ben Tossell  10:37

Plain plain the idea though. And how is it causal fiddling with the no code? Is it? I mean, searches in general seems to be some people talk about being the original programming language. It's like, what are people reading? Think of us like the basically the basic? Yeah. Is it? Is it stem from from that anyway? Is it just more of a one time passcode to use this product? So?

Taimur  11:06

Yeah, yeah. So I think I think she's amazing. Before spreadsheets, normal people can redo anything on a computer. I guess, spreadsheets came along specifically to do like number crunching, like calculations and stuff. And then people sort of figured out what Hey, I can sort of lay things out however I want on this grid. And I can have custom formatting, like colors and things and some basic interactions like drop downs, and all of a sudden, you're actually building software. Right? So I think spreadsheets are great. I think the the Yeah, like I said, I think there's sort of two buckets of ways to use a spreadsheet. The first is for like, number crunching, calculation stuff, which is what we're trying to target. And the second is for things like managing business stuff, and project management and, and all the other kinds of things people are doing with spreadsheets. It feels like, it feels like number crunching is a big enough use case that having a tool that that makes it significantly better would actually be pretty valuable. That's I mean, that's, that's basically the thesis behind our whole company, is to make the number crunching stuff so much better that people would actually switch over from a spreadsheet. But we definitely want to play nicely with the rest of the ecosystem. We were recently part of air tables, blocks competition. And so we actually have a causal air table block. So you can view forecasts and things within your air table view without having to actually need the products. I'd say yeah, in terms of like data integrations, we definitely want to like work very nicely with with the other tools that people are using. Yeah, I think

Ben Tossell  12:37

the Yeah, table blocks, they have like graphs and stuff, which I find quite different. So it's just quite basic and what they can what they can do. Right. So right. Yeah, we should definitely do some sort of tutorial or something about the scripting button. It'll be awesome.

12:52

Yeah, that'd be sweet.

Ben Tossell  12:54

And then, yeah, so we're looking to do things with like Zapier integrations and things like that. So I mean, I'm just against in the scheming, scheming where you can help someone fit in a bunch of stuff do and then they get sent an invoice automatically, to do that sort of thing? Half.

13:14

Yeah, yeah.

Taimur  13:19

Yeah, we're actually we're actually, we're actually talking to a customer who wants to do exactly that right. Now, they basically want to have like a type form on their website, where the customer enters some details, you know, here's how many users I'll have. Here's my like, current usage of this particular thing. And then that type form, basically triggers like a zap, which sends an API request to causal, which creates like a customized version of a pricing calculator for that particular customer. And then Zapier sort of sends that out in an email. And so you go from this like form of filling your details to here's like a custom pricing quotes, where you can actually see the charts and figures.

Ben Tossell  13:54

Yeah, yeah. Natalie's communications, to editorial examples that are on our fire. What is your What's your feeling of this whole notion of movement as a thing? And like, a new thing, and now being close to movement and all that stuff? Could be strong feelings on it?

Taimur  14:17

Yeah, I mean, I'm a big fan. I mean, it feels like I mean, the whole history of software has kind of been about like no code. You create software so that you can do something without the other person having to write code to do themselves, right. And so it's nice that it finally has a name. I think, like spreadsheets have kind of been doing this for a while. Salesforce was basically on the no code movement back in, in the very early days. It's kind of unsexy, because it's the CRM and like a enterprise kind of thing. But they were actually very ahead of the curve in terms of thinking about this stuff. I think like the, the most recent kind of wave of, of no code and kind of the sort of movement. I think, probably like the two main hallmarks that stand out to me is that first, it's kind of about letting people These things they couldn't do before. But then these things are also now much more kind of dynamic rather than static. So for example, Photoshop, you know, 10 years ago, would let you manipulate images without having to know how to do graphics programming. It's not quite no code, though, because it's still very static. Whereas something like figma, let's do the same thing. But now you can have like interactions and sort of prototyping and that kind of stuff. So it's becoming a lot more dynamic. And so it feels like the sort of yet doing things you couldn't do before. And doing them in like a dynamic and interactive way, seems to be like the two main hallmarks of the current movements. And that's, that's kind of what we're trying to do with causal as well. We want people to be able to do more sophisticated number crunching than is possible in spreadsheets. But at the same time, we want them to to present it to other people in an interactive way connected to their data sources so that it's always up to date, all that kind of stuff.

Ben Tossell  15:51

Yes. Do you think that's why there's that's why there's an inflection point now, like now is the point of no code where things like Squarespace, Wix and Weebly and things have been around for a while, but people never call them no code, and still almost don't call them milk. But really do fit into that term. Still, what do you think Doug, has been doing? Is those two things that you just said that has made it be a thing?

Taimur  16:21

Yeah, I think so. I think there's also like a set of critical mass that was probably recently reached, where you now have enough of these things that kind of connect to each other in enough ways that you can actually do really powerful stuff. So I think, I think something like Zapier, like really ties the ecosystem together before something exactly, you have all these tools, which is on their own would be considered kind of no Cody things. But then something like Zapier is like the glue that ties them all together, and lets you sort of take things to the next level. But I think a few products like Zapier probably heralded the movements quite significantly, even if a lot of these tools like Wix and stuff have been around for quite a while.

Ben Tossell  17:01

Yeah, I agree. I spoke to someone inset last, who was a data scientist, they do data analysis, basically. And I was saying the no code movement seems like what the what wasn't called the data science. But it wasn't, there wasn't a wasn't such thing as a data scientist a long while ago, I don't know how he is doing, she was on when it was, all these big companies have recognized the use case for data scientists as a role, then that became a thing. And then there's tools that kind of run down this community that kaggle came in about data centers and pushing forward on other people. And to me, it feels like melkote is sort of in that in that sort of realm where there needs to be some sort of role. I don't know what's gonna be called. But

Taimur  18:01

yeah,

Ben Tossell  18:02

other things. But then there's like these communities that are pushing these things forward. And even the tools themselves and realize necessary don't necessarily realize what is possible with a tool until the community gets their hands on it and says, I'm going to just smoke, I understand what your use case is meant to be for this. So

18:22

you think it feels a bit similar to that? That type of movement?

Taimur  18:27

Yeah, I think the the point about like, naming this role is like they decided, so whatever, that's actually really important. Because I back when I had a real job, there were a couple of people within the company who went architectural, they're like PMS or something. But they happen to be like very good at spreadsheets and very good Zapier. And so they were basically like superpowers within the company of like, these guys can do basically anything. And, yeah, there's no specific role for that. But I think every company probably has a few of these people who are really, really valuable because they have that skill set. And they're probably things like product managers and stuff like that right now. By I think it'd be very interesting if like, we get to a point where every company has a, you know, code specialist who just like sorts out the company's internal workflows, and things like that.

Ben Tossell  19:09

Yeah. Do you think there's something there's something there and make it past us to be? we almost have to will it into existence? I think there's someone who can work with these things and do this type of role. And they could they call them nakoda? or whatever, right? Yeah.

19:26

But yeah,

Ben Tossell  19:28

and there's so much education that needs to happen. First, there's almost the first way you can bet seems to be the creators that want to be makers, the entrepreneurs who are like, Oh, I can do this stuff. needing to have a developer. Yeah, I think we need like it needs to split into the creators like that. Who work companies who are like, oh, there's gonna be a better way to do this for the cheap stuff. Yeah, exactly. I'm waiting to find where it is, rather than just Okay, I'll copy and paste it and we'll send it to the team. Yeah. In whatever country does this for us. Yeah.

20:02

But I think it just needs

Taimur  20:05

to, it just needs a good name. Like I've seen a bunch of sort of no code consultants pop up over the past few few months while we've been digging into the space and where we're sort of talking with some of them about helping them to use causal as part of their like, no code suite of tools. And so there are all kinds of consultants that are offering no code expertise to companies, I think, yeah, it's just a matter of time. It just seems like a killer name for like this role.

Ben Tossell  20:29

That's That's the problem. And we passed a few times. There's like a big debate, what do we call it? No code, what should we what Shouldn't we have on him is like, why do we give a fuck? Like, that's just what people call it just. And the other side is like, I do care because I don't want that roles. Because I know coder. You just don't feel good enough on data scientist. Sounds like a cool. Yeah. Maybe it's because people think I know Cobra is more like a dumbed down version of Aki Khan code. So you do like the more basic steps, you know, yeah, isn't the case. But we Yeah, we need some sort of in between, it makes you sound makes it sound more intelligent, I think.

Taimur  21:16

Yeah, I think I think data scientist probably sounds better than actually is, but no coder sounds a lot worse than it should have been actually.

21:26

Sound Really?

Ben Tossell  21:28

I do wonder when it's gonna be some sort of software developer, I think, developer or engineer seems like, it's just like no good engineer. That's one of the most flexible. So maybe it's,

Taimur  21:45

yeah, it seems like even in terms of like engineering, you know, I've dabbled in engineering stuff over the years. And you're always encouraged not to build stuff from scratch, like there's an existing thing. Or if you can, like tie together a couple of these existing tools. That's almost always a better solution. And now it's stuff like retool, you know, for basically all internal software. If you're writing it from scratch, that's probably not the right, the right way to do it. And so I feel like even engineering is trending more towards sort of no code style stuff, rather than like fully custom code for everything all the time.

Ben Tossell  22:15

Yeah, I think that's why there's weird. There's this weird. Take size argument happening where so when you're on the coast side, on the northern side? Yeah. All the smart developers I know. Like, yeah, look, it's great. You can just build this thing without, I'd have to write the same hundred lines of code for the thing that we're working on. I think there's just people worried about what's gonna happen to like, they didn't even things that was mentioned classes a day about. There's automation, or navall was talking with math. Matt Ridley, he wrote how innovation works. He talks about how they talk about automation, why I'm so scared of it, because they think it's teeming with jobs. But yes, like lorries were invented or came about don't fact check on this. But lotteries came about because the railways were an efficient way to deliver stuff to certain areas. So then it's all and then it's like automating lorry driving is not trying to replace a load drive. It's just making everything more efficient, then, is everything. Jobs become more creative, everyone gets freed up to be more creative. And if automation would get to a point where everything was hoped, we'd all just be relaxing, making videos making phone calls,

23:37

I mean, yeah.

Taimur  23:39

Yeah, living the dream. Exactly. Yeah, I think the the creativity thing is, is really important. It seems like nowadays, the way people are thinking about their careers is also very different to say, like 40 years ago, like the dream 40 years ago, would probably be to join at the bottom have some big established company, work your way up there over the next 40 years. And then you know, when you also come 4050 years old, then you haven't like a good salary live like a comfortable life, it seems like nowadays, I think there's just a lot more sort of uncertainty, people move around a lot more. And everyone's kind of cottoned on to the fact that it's definitely helpful if you aren't completely reliant on an employer for your well being. And so everyone's trying to start like side hustles, and things like that, and basically trying to do their own creative stuff on the side. And I think that's partly why sort of things like web flow and tools that like, let you set up your own shop or your own website, your own blog, all of this kind of stuff has really taken off because there's kind of been a shift in the way people think about sort of work and the rest of their life.

Ben Tossell  24:41

Yeah, in my my dad's generation, it was like, if you started a business, you started some sort of like parguera drawing started something physical and kind of thing with them. Like, I was looking for guidance for the newsletter. And so it was like a shock downer swag, and then I didn't Costs are so low that it was just wasn't a thing. And the thing that you said he went into a company 2018 whatever has been there ever since. And just like work is all things. That's what Yeah. Be I think like this whole pushing farming. I think everyone knows someone who's got some sort of side hustle or learning thing that has meant an income, which then makes it like, real intelligible. away. Yeah. I could definitely do something with this. Yeah, I do. Yeah, I think it's more of the figure now where you can have multiple streams of income and diversify that a bit more. Because, yeah, these like, bilbies really fuck stuff up. When people relying on things, you can't always rely on something built in? This never happens again. in our lifetime, please. Yeah, this is like an issue think is when were to enjoy stuff? And can I do something that causes?

26:00

What? What?

Ben Tossell  26:03

Everyone has a side hustle of some sort? Yeah. Everyone, you know, has a email newsletter. To shift them to?

Taimur  26:13

Yeah, yeah, I'm a big fan of like this sort of passionate economy or whatever you want to call it side hustles. And that kind of thing. Why only worry is that we might go too far in that direction, where everyone feels the need to be sort of monetizing everything all of the time. And I feel like we're already in this weird place where sort of, there's like an underlying narrative generally, that your sort of self self worth, and your sort of value as a human being depends on the amount of economic output that you have. And I think now that like, you can sort of measure these things a lot more like how many YouTube subscribers you have, how many Instagram followers do you have, how much money you making from your newsletter and stuff like that? I think there, we need some like cultural adjustments to change the way we think about like, ourselves and the people around us. Because I think I've definitely felt this myself where it's like, I'm sort of tying my self esteem and self worth to, you know, my economic productivity. And based on stuff I see online, and basically with friends, it feels like a lot of a lot of other people feel that way as well. So I feel like we need some sort of cultural correction while still moving in this direction of more people doing side hustles and things like that.

Ben Tossell  27:23

Yeah, exactly. I wonder what that thing looks like. And I've been diving into barstool sports recently, just because I like seeing the company. And I'll see how it runs. And I'll be watching those logs. And behind the scenes, which I've been following Mountain Sports. So it's just, there's so many different creators within one big company. So it's like, if you subscribe, where you're like, you give money to barstool at some level, you get access to all these personalities or brands. There's so many people now, creating a rolling fund. We're doing one yield It is day one. People like Greg Rosenberg doing a little startup studio, which I think it would be interesting. So it's like, well, you want to invest in some companies, you want to buy some companies, you want to start some companies. We've got a podcast, we've got a video series, we've got a newsletter. Yeah, so it's gonna be more of like these mini studios. Maybe the next when everyone starts little side hustles. And then brands start like getting them. But keep in mind within their own little thing. There's a weird media. Whether it's as good or thick, we might that might be where where it goes to the sun firing season.

Taimur  28:47

Yeah. It definitely seems like there's a bit of sort of unbundling and re bundling going on, where like journalists, for example, instead of being bundled together in like, the economist or the New York Times, they all have like their newsletters, but now people are starting to bundle those together as well. And so yeah, it seems like yeah, maybe like 10 or 15 years from now. We'll just have kind of killed off the old institutions, and we'll just have new ones. And maybe every 50 years or so. That's just how it has to be.

Ben Tossell  29:15

Yeah, they the corrections have to be good. The bundling, or the unbundling seems nothing really slowly. They'll be big platforms happen. And then unbundling happens when there's like a performance of a certain space. Yeah, then that really unravels really quickly. And then everyone just knows. Yeah, also do that. So then it might be that Yeah, aggression is attainable. Now unbundled it again, but in a slightly different way. Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to dominance is net positive or negative for what? A few big things and yeah, thoughts on on an open space. As it relates to causal and hunger, thinking about what's, what's next and what's going forward.

Taimur  30:08

Yeah, so I think like, I'm still, the thing I'm still trying to figure out is like, you hear all this stuff about, like, you hear a bunch of you're saying, like, everyone should learn to code. And then you hear a bunch of people saying, No, you don't need to code anymore, because we have all this, like, no code stuff. And I feel like there's, there's probably like a, a somewhat coding style skill set that it's still useful to have. Maybe no, like sequel or negative JavaScript or something. And it feels like the 8020 solution, or whatever it is that like some some no code tool does, like 80% of it for you. But if you know a little bit of programming, then you can like fill in the gaps yourself. And so I'm curious as to like, what the filling in the gaps will end up being. So certainly, with causal, we've kind of found that, you know, like, just via the UI and the product, you can do like, almost everything you need, but then some people have some like really weird edge case thing that they're trying to do. In a spreadsheet, you'd like hack this with some crazy formulas and things. And cool, you can write a bit of code to do it, does it for them those gaps? And so I feel like, yeah, I probably say that, like, no code can get you most of the way there. But it might still be useful for some people to be able to kind of do the extra bits on top of that to sort of take their stuff to the next level.

Ben Tossell  31:21

Yeah, and that's what I think that with polarizing code versus no code. They're not like complete opposites. What everyone? What we are very much the same bit of we just cantos. I'm definitely guilty of saying, don't live decode as the first step. Don't get them to do the stuff with no code. Because when you get to your your project is 80% of the way there and then you will you know, you understand what a front end is, which is web flow, what a back end is, which is air table, what your databases cause on Zapier, together, you then realize, if I could just do this other thing, then this thing could really be swear or whatever it is. Yeah, it's when you're doing that. You can see the pieces, you know how it works against them. Okay, I'm just gonna tweak this Zapier thing. And then you activate the eyes. And yeah, they start recognizing, okay, we just need a code set. See very, very quick plug into getting technical and clicking things. Yeah. We don't like saying no code so much on the database, because it has offices since

32:40

April.

Ben Tossell  32:41

It wasn't didn't call itself a no code tool body. So yeah, because now it's not a scripting block. Imagine they said, cool, scripted block, used to get up in arms, but it's like, well, you can do most of this stuff. And then if there's like you said an edge case or something very peculiar. You want to try and do then then code my video. We can do it. But we got to that stage was through this nother piece and the first ones. Yeah. So I think yeah, I think the default is don't learn to code. In my opinion, obviously, because yeah. At some point you'll figure out Do I need to Cogan, I don't even know. But you might never need to get one just gonna launch a newsletter on substack. Yes. We're gonna get

33:33

Lisa was it?

Taimur  33:36

Yeah, no, I think I definitely agree with that. Awesome.

Ben Tossell  33:39

Well, it's been so good to have you on the show. We appreciate it. We are proud to have you on from as was our newest partners, and we've gotten to do some more content together, I think got a few workshops and things lined up ones. Yes, calculators and stuff we definitely get on the summer on tutorials and things of that and we can start running some. You see what the community can come up with and super easy stuff to see going on. And what are you just telling people where they can find you and causal and advance?

Taimur  34:10

Yeah, great. Great to chat. Thanks a lot. Yeah, so you can find me at Twitter at Tim, ragdoll. We'll probably leave a link link to it in the show notes. Check out causal at causal dot app. And yeah, stay tuned for some maker pad and causal content. We have webinars coming up and tutorials and things like that.

Ben Tossell  34:28

Awesome. We've had so much.

Taimur  34:29

Oh, thanks, Robin.