Natively - the best way to create mobile apps
Andrii: So these were a couple of examples of our clients we worked with recently, to whom we helped launch primarily websites. For example, the loan management application Pads is not only a website; it's also a mobile application. This website is wrapped through a tool called Natively and the same website that works in browsers, wrapped as a mobile application, distributed through Google's Play Market and Apple's App Store, and available on mobile devices. No code, as I mentioned before, has no limits, and with another tool, like Natively, you can achieve the vast scalability of mobile platforms.
Disclaimer: we are also the founders of Natively and developed it internally. Roman is the main idea creator and the leader. Natively, this was his idea, and the baby that he curated internally was based on our experience and clients' requests to distribute their websites through mobile stores.
A great part about working with Sommo is that we not only build products for our clients but also have a decent experience in starting, launching, scaling, and even exiting our own SaaS products. So, we have hands-on experience with what it means to take your idea, make it a working business, scale it, and exit it, which we, of course, help our clients leverage so that they can benefit from it, too. Maybe you can share a little bit more about what Natively does.
Roman: Yeah, I was sitting and waiting for you to ask. Natively, is, my child, which I trust and believe in it. The main idea behind Natively was to simplify people's lives in terms of developing and distributing mobile applications for iOS and Android. With Natively, you can save up to 300 K of dollars just by distributing your website into the app store.
Andrii: 300 K, really? Does it cost that much to build a native mobile application and distribute it through stores?
Roman: Yeah, native code developers are not cheap these days. And some apps can take up to 300 K. For example, if you want to build a simple, sometimes tracker app, it will cost you, around 10 K dollars for each platform (Android and iOS) - it will be 20 K, and it's minimum. So it's not really cheap - building the native applications and here is Natively becomes useful.
Andrii: So how much would it cost if you built it with Natively or distributed it with Natively instead of 20K?
Roman: You wouldn't believe it if I said it.
Andrii: Okay. Say it, then.
Roman: It's just like 50 bucks.
Andrii: 50 bucks instead of 20K?
Roman: Yeah.
Andrii: Is that a full cost for everything, or do you assume you already need to have some work done before?
Roman: Yeah, of course, you need to have the website itself. So basically, what Natively is doing is wrapping your existing website and allowing you to communicate with the native features through our JavaScript bridge. So basically, technically, inside of the app, there will be a similar web application that you can open through Safari or Google Chrome on your phone, but you can utilize native features such as push notifications, in-app purchases, geolocation, and also background geolocation, and there's many more of them.
Andrii: So you're basically saying if I already have, for example, my website that is a blog or online store or customer portal or any other, web solution that I already use for my business, no matter whether it's built with, any stack - no code, low code, traditional code, - I can, with just 50 bucks distribute it instantly through Natively to millions or maybe hundreds of millions of mobile platform users and make it available through App Store and Google Play?
Roman: Yes. That's totally correct.
Andrii: Why didn't you tell me before that, Roman? You also mentioned that you can leverage it. But it's a website; it cannot leverage native features. So you can also have push notifications there and track location. If you are, for example, a logistics company or accept payment, if you're a storefront, etc., is that all correct?
Roman: Yeah. That's correct. We have several clients who are truck-tracking companies with drivers and other types of users. And they have like several, applications for different roles. Some of these users' roles require background location tracking when they close the app. For example, you are driving, and you just like navigating for that map, and at the same time, your native app, with your website, can be in the background of your phone, which will track your current location and send it on the server.
Andrii: Awesome. That sounds amazing. For example, I have a warehouse and to track inventory, and scan them with barcodes, I can also do that through Natively.
Roman: Yes, especially for a warehouse; we have built the QR code slash barcode scanners that you can just start using natively. We don't need to build it. We just have the native screen that's already prebuilt. You're just reading the data, and it's pretty simple and fast to get started.
Andrii: That sounds amazing. And is it true that, by going through native mobile platforms, typically businesses increase their sales by 20 to 50%? I saw stats, from Shopify and comparable users. Do you see the same statistic from Natively clients who increase their sales?
Roman: Yeah, of course. For example, Shopify stores can utilize the push notifications feature, which allows them to reach their customers at any time. So, for example, if you have a native app installed on your device, you can be closer to your users by sending some personalized push notifications and trying to attract them to open your app and buy some stuff.
Andrii: That sounds amazing. And so why don't all businesses yet, have their version in stores and leverage it?
Roman: I think they just don't know about us. So yeah, that's the main reason.
Andrii: So if your friend is not yet leveraging all the mobile stores, by simply wrapping their website and distributing to them, you know where to contact Roman, and he can help you increase your sales by 20 to 50 percent in a matter of days. And maybe you can share some of the notable clients or apps built and distributed through Natively?
Roman: Yeah. The trend that we have discussed, which is 2024, is AI, and one of our clients built an application named FitSite. It's a kind of AI assistant that helps you to be fitter, and they're utilizing one of the Natively features of Apple Health Kit. So basically, the idea of the feature is that you can just get some data from the health application.
Andrii: So you can even get user health data from the phone?
Roman: Yeah.
Andrii: Can you also get credit cards?
Roman: It's actually a good question regarding getting the user's credit card. In Natively, we are not tracking any data of our customers/users, and it's pretty safe and secure in terms of you will not lose any data of your users inside of the application. So you can just think about Natively as a web browser that you can use as a tool. Something simple and secure.
Andrii: Awesome. Great that it's secure, and security is our important topic. But you were talking about the AI projects that were launched on Natively and using health data to do what?
Roman: To improve your fitness level. So basically, they're using the OpenAI chart GPT and the health kit data to create personalized training programs. And so far, as far as I know, it's pretty fast-growing, and they have already achieved 100 K downloads.
Andrii: Awesome solution for a startup, especially in such a competitive niche as workouts.
Roman: Yeah, and you wouldn't believe that this startup was founded and built by one person who is a Bubble developer. He used Natively, and he started some marketing stuff. But just imagine how many people you will need in traditional code to build such a thing.
Andrii: Yeah, it's crazy.
Roman: Some AI experts, frontend developers, backend developers, iOS developers, Android developers, and so on.
Andrii: And a QA project manager on top to manage all of these people. Probably then, if you have so many people's HR, accounting, et cetera, in this case, it's really crazy. So nowadays, by leveraging just a couple of no-code tools, you can literally start, launch, scale, and manage everything by yourself or with a super small and agile team but just a couple of people. Isn't it great? The wonderful world that we live in.
Roman: yeah, that's true.
Andrii: That's amazing.
AI and no-code: Dyvo AI
Roman: The latest startup that we launched was Dyvo AI. So, when AI hype started at the end of 2022, we decided to build Dyvo AI. It's a tool for generation AI avatars. I know that in 2024, it's probably not.
Andrii: …not as sexy as it was in 2022. But in 2022, it was very, huge hype. Our idea was to create our own avatar generator, which we used a custom model of Stable Diffusion to generate AI Avatars. Built by you through pain and sweat. But you manage it. So, huge thanks to you, and thanks to our experience in no-code and BubbleBubble, we were able to create it from scratch, the application Dyvo in a matter of a month and a little bit less, just the two of us. Integrate the AI capabilities that you developed and launch it as a website and as a mobile application, through Natively and start advertising it on all three platforms, like web, Android, and iOS, and getting tens of thousands of users in the first weeks.
And I believe by the end of the year, there were more than 100,000 users on Dyvo, generating millions of avatars. It's been an amazing journey. And most of December, we were barely managing to fix, all the bugs, and, add new features as new clients onboarded and started using it, started generating their pictures, generating their avatars. And overall sharing them. It's been an amazing experience, and without no-code, definitely, we definitely wouldn't have been able to iterate that fast to be able to, receive feedback from users that fast and wouldn't be able to get that many users, and receive that much revenue as we did for this product because of the hype was as you recall, really short. So, by the end of February, it all dwindled down to almost nothing. And by summer, the hype went down to a very, very little level.
Roman: But we figured out how to get in a plus because of the no-code and speed. If we started it with traditional code developers, it would take months, and we just didn't earn any money at that point.
Our Dyvo journey didn't end at that point. We just started feeling this power of AI and continue working on another Dyvo product - Dyvo for businesses. Maybe you can share a bit.
Andrii: It was another version that we also managed to spin off, iterate, and launch very fast; that is a Dyvo for businesses to generate professional product shoots. For example, if you're selling a glass, you can take a photo of it, and it will generate stunning background pictures in different surroundings and in different themes so that you can leverage it for Instagram, Shopify, et cetera. Then we spun it off with another Dyvo product, Dyvo Headshots, for more professional LinkedIn-style photos for your resume so that you can get professional, good-looking pictures in suits, and, consistent backgrounds for your typical website, LinkedIn, and the website. It was just the beginning.
AI and no-code: chatbot for support
Andrii: Our Dyvo and AI journey didn't end there. With the AI avatars, we invested a lot more in the AI capabilities. And particularly, no-code is playing really, really well with the recent trend of AI and all the AI models that are currently in the market, and we've been doing a lot of more, AI integrations. Especially with no-code and for our clients. Can you share a bit more about chatbots and other interesting stuff that you're leading?
Roman: Yeah, we had several cases. One - for Natively. Our main point of pain was that there's a lot of information we need to give to our users, in terms of how to integrate Natively, how the App Store works, and how Google Play works because there are still things they need to handle from their side.
Andrii: We just need to mention it's not our fault that we need this information. Natively, it is simple enough. It's all Apple's and Google's requirements that are so complex and complicated that we need to share this information with our users so that they can pass this.
Roman: Yeah, pass reviews to the app store because no one can cancel it. So, the main pain was to educate the user on this information.
And when we saw, for the first time, chat GPT, and how it's just communicating and how it can analyze the information, it was pretty impressive. At that point, we were thinking - why can we just put all our knowledge on Natively into ChatGPT and make him talk to our clients and start educating them?
And we actually did it. We developed our own small chatbot by using Opi + ChatGPT API and added him. We put all our knowledge and documentation of Natively inside of Chat GPT, and it started answering the questions to our customers, and it really was helpful.
Andrii: I remember because we fed it with a previous history of one of our awesome developers and support specialists at that time, Vlad. He started at some point identifying himself as Vlad and responding, "Hello, I'm Vlad," and…
Roman: …suggesting a refund to the customer.
Andrii: yeah, and having the audacity to suggest a refund and give a discount code just on their own.
Roman: Yeah, you need to control AI.
Andrii: Yeah, control AI because it will not only take your job but can fool you. Take over your life.
Roman: Yeah, take your personality.
Andrii: How much were you able to reduce your support costs of Natively or save time by leveraging this AI for the support?
Roman: at that point, it was something like 30%. There were a lot of questions from customers, like, what is your pricing, guys? Or how to submit the app to the app store. These are all simple questions AI was able to cover, but there were some small things, like when users had some weird issues. For example, it can't handle some cases when a user asks some question about the Google or Apple "hidden policy," let's say it like that. You just need to educate yourself on releasing apps to get knowledge of these things. And such questions, unfortunately, AI can't handle, but it was pretty enough for us too.
Andrii: But it sounds amazing. Saving 30 percent of your support costs is huge. It's massive. Imagine if you're a business with dozens or even hundreds of support specialists; saving 30 percent of them can give you a huge boost and free up a lot of resources that you can rent in other fields and leverage for your business. So sounds like AI and no-code like a perfect match, to go together. On the one hand, AI opens so many capabilities, and nowadays, to become a support specialist, to give more personalized, more creative opportunities and solutions inside your business. On the other hand, with no code, you can put it in place literally days, if it is a small feature, or weeks, at the latest.
And because this field is so new, you obviously need a lot of time for the iteration to collect feedback from your users, hear what they like and don't like, scale, what works, and change what doesn't. And, spend this 2024 and further, in such a mode so that you stay ahead of this, new wave and make sure you're not left behind.
So leverage, from our experience, has been working really, really well. Highly recommend combining these two magic potions of AI and no-code/low-code to really boost your business. These fancy words, buzz words of digital transformation, really boost the digital transformation of your business, regardless of whether you're a small startup, small or medium business, or a big, big enterprise.
AI and no-code trend in Fintech
Andrii: Actually, apart from AI, we had quite a lot of experience with the FinTech field overall, and we have a couple of really strong Fintech cases in our portfolio. And, we know quite well how Fintech leverages AI and no code in order to, scale, their businesses.
Overall, anything in Fintech it's been quite a dynamic field in the last decade or so. And we've seen a lot of innovations there, from bringing personal finance to more users to opening new finance and lending options to the users, and with the race of so many new banks, Fintech has been really on the rise, and overall, it's a very dynamic and fast-paced industry.
As for any dynamic and fast-paced industry, it's really important to iterate fast and collect feedback. And, act on it in order to improve your products and services, for your users. The opportunities are immense, of course, in the FinTech industry to leverage the benefits that no code gives you, either in personal finance, management, or lending. We saw, for example, that N26 and Neobank have been using Webflow for their marketing campaigns a lot and have utilized no code for customer feedback collection for internal tool development, allowing them to adapt to market changes really fast.
Or another example, Upstart, maybe you heard?
Roman: yeah, of course. Upstart is a lending platform that uses AI for credit assessment and has embraced, no quote for internal processes and customer-facing applications, streamlining the operations significantly.
Andrii: That sounds amazing. A lot of buzzwords, but I hope that I indeed leveraged it to the fullest and got some really good business value.
Not only has no code and AI been leveraged in Fintech on the market, but We at Sommo had some very good cases, for example, with Plannly, which is a personal health and benefits program for companies that allows companies to create really personalized health and benefit plans. So that, for example, if I have a family and kids, I can spend it more on childcare and healthcare, for example, or if you're, for example, alone, you can spend more on gym or other home equipment,
In practice, we were able to launch this; even though it was a really complex one, we were able to launch it in a matter of three months. So it was a relatively low budget of below 30 thousand dollars. As usual, give it to the hands of the users, receive the feedback, and start iterating.
Later, it changed quite a lot from the original idea. Thanks to the benefits of no code and the different fintech providers, we were able to move really fast. Maybe you can share some other examples?
Roman: yeah, I think Miren is a great example of the service for micro lenders.
Basically, Miren is a startup that allows users to aggregate and streamline data on loans, community development projects, and deposits with the Miren API, or Miren loan, organization software. So we have already been working on this product for more, than a year and continue working.
As far as I remember, a few months ago, Miren raised a pre-seed round, and they are doing pretty well with no code.
Andrii: Awesome. For example, huge props to Miren for helping underrepresented communities. It is kind of like a sustainability, project helping underrepresented minority communities, get the funding that they need in order to launch or scale their businesses and, in that way, create opportunities and, economic growth in these communities. Amazing work and amazing leverage of no code in order to achieve such a notable mission.
A couple of cases that we want to share that we built at Sommo. One of the recent and notable ones is the loan management platform for a Canadian FinTech startup that we started working with in 2022 and quickly launched the first version within a few months so that we could launch it and start onboarding users.
The client stayed with us for years, and we still continue working with them, developing the project that allows Canadian businesses to apply for loans online, pass all of the verification steps, complete all of the compliance, provide the financial data, the goal of the loan that they are applying to, and leave this application on the one side.
On the other side, investors create their investor accounts and specify what amount of cash they are willing to commit to the fund so that this cash pool is later distributed among the applicants and, that way, helps the Canadian community to get necessary funding and scale.
All of the projects are built with no code, leveraging small sprinkles of custom cloud functions on Firebase and integrating a lot of third-party tools to get your credit history, your bank account, transactions, your credit score, and all other financial and banking, information.
Leverage no code stack to launch, iterate fast, and be able to scale your business.
Roman: These examples are really highlighting the transformative impact, of no code on the fintech industry, by embracing these fintech companies to innovate faster and iterate with their users faster.
Andrii: So to recap, FinTech indeed can leverage as being a really fast-paced industry can leverage, no code to stay on top of all the recent trends and competitors. The way our FinTech projects are structured with the no-code platform is by leveraging BaaS solutions or FinTech provider solutions like, Galileo, MX, Plaid, Stripe, or similar ones that actually hold a user bank accounts, actual funds, credit cards, and where the actual, transactions happen. We use no code in order to create a UI, interface that will, help onboard users, complete all of the compliance and security checks, and get whether it's like a loan, a credit card, a personal bank account, for a neobank, et cetera, and become a user interface to these BaaS providers, under the hood.
Most fintech projects are structured not only to no code; almost any other fintech provider actually works in a very similar way under the hood. For example, you have, let's say, Galileo or MX that handles all the fintech transactions because it's quite complex and costly to become a bank on your own, and new banks just distribute more like a frontend marketing, user-facing interface for users.
So, if the industry is working that way, why not leverage AI for it and no code because all your competitors already do? So if you don't, you will probably stay behind.
Roman: yeah. So, as we said before, you can trust no code if the fintech industry trusts in it.
Andrii: Spot on. Couldn't agree more.
No-code in Real Estate
Roman: I think I have one more topic for you. There is a really huge industry. The real estate industry utilizes no code, the same as FinTech. The real estate market is known for its fast pace and high stakes.
There are a lot of different companies and high competition, and they need to launch a lot of different digital tools and services to work with their users. For example, the feed recommendation of houses. They can easily utilize AI and no code for their software.
Andrii: As a great example, any fast-paced and innovative field, like real estate, becomes an amazing opportunity to leverage no code to get to the market fast, provide personalization, and recommendations that are typically expected from users in terms of what property they want to rent, buy, or just maybe scroll through and explore to browse among the opportunities on the market.
And with no code, you can provide it really fast and in a personalized way. You can reach more users, whether on the web in browsers or distributed through Natively to the mobile stores, or even provide more tools, not only for the end users but also for the real estate agents themselves, and easier and faster manage all the properties and client relationships, which by the way, one of our clients, Nomad, did exactly.
Can you share a few words about them?
Roman: Nomad was a really great example. They had established a business already, and then they decided to do some experiments on building a mobile app for agents to manage their properties. The main challenge there was to use their own database, which already had the data of the millions of different properties, to connect it to Bubble, which was done pretty simple because BubbleBubble is really flexible at that point, and rub this all with Natively and release to App Store and Google Play.
After that, they had one year of iteration, adding and improving this application. Right now, you can just go to the App Store and download Nomad Homes.
Andrii: Awesome example of an application that can really streamline your internal business operations. As you can see in this case, no code is not limited to any particular stack. Wherever needed, you connect to your own databases and data sources, which you fully control in a secure way, integrate them wherever needed, make changes, improve either your operational processes or provide better customer experience, and boom, you leverage, and you just grow.
Examples of real estate companies leveraging no code are enormous. For example, Compass, as most will know, is one of the biggest real estate tech companies, and it also leverages no code for internal tools, streamlining its internal operations and providing a better customer experience, which helped it IPO in the last few years. Or Bungalow, which offers co-living spaces and uses no code tools to manage all of their listings, applications, and agreements, making the whole co-living rental process smoother and more enjoyable for renters.
Roman: I think you also forgot about the REX real estate. It's another great example of a company that uses no-code platforms to enhance its consumer model. They created the platform with listings and customer service tools by using no code and doing pretty great right now.
One of our clients was a real estate and property management tool named Doorstead. Their initial request was to improve the performance of their website, which was actually built on Webflow, and help to increase their conversion rate by improving performance.
They're based in San Francisco, USA, and we helped them improve the performance of their website. And after that, they raised a new round of $37 million, which was a pretty nice boost.
Andrii: It's an amazing case and an amazing example of what great results you can issue with the no-code stack and raise a really, really massive round. By the way, based on this experience with Doorstead and helping them improve the Webflow site performance, we have a really cool article on our blog and a video on everything you need to know about Webflow performance optimization.
I believe that nowadays, the top article on this topic is on the internet. We got a lot of support from the community. Thank you for sharing this experience.
So if your Webflow site is not a top performer yet, you know who you can contact to make it.
To recap, as in any fast-paced and dynamic industry, if you're not using and not leveraging any code for your real estate, operations, or tech company, you are probably behind your competitors. So don't stay behind and leverage no code to stay ahead of the competition.
Let's Recap
Andrii: Let's recap our conversation. Thanks to all of the listeners and people watching for staying with us. It's been a pleasure to share all of the experiences we had with no code. I hope you found it useful and gained some new useful insights that you will definitely leverage in your own businesses to improve your efficiency, launch new products, iterate faster, to stay ahead of the competition.
And, we would be thrilled to hear your stories; how do you leverage a no code in your businesses? Whatever successes and failures you may share, please share with us. Ask questions, and we'll be happy to answer as soon as possible.
Roman: Have a nice no coding 😉
