On June 13, startup founders, solopreneurs, and ambitious no-coders came together for Bubble’s Zero to One With AI + No-Code event to learn practical tips, hear insights from experienced founders, and explore Bubble’s new AI features for building even more efficiently.
Whether you’re an aspiring entrepreneur staring at a blank Bubble page thinking about how to get started, or you’re an early founder here to learn how no-code and AI can supercharge your development efforts, you’re in the right place: Our new AI tools make building software faster, easier, and more accessible than ever before.
Catch the full event replay below or take a few minutes to read up on the recap — it’s an exciting time to embrace building on Bubble.
- Founder fireside: No-code + AI
- Bubble founders who have built success with no-code and AI
- Introducing Bubble’s new AI toolkit
- A future fueled by the power of AI
Founder fireside: No-Code + AI with Emmanuel Straschnov (06:27)
The event kicked off with Emmanuel Straschnov, co-founder and co-CEO of Bubble, hosting a fireside chat on how the tech landscape has changed since the early days of Bubble.
Back when Bubble was founded in 2012, founders basically had two paths to building an app: learn how to code or hire expensive developers who knew how to code. Those limited options were the catalyst for Bubble — but if generative AI had been around then, Bubble’s story might have looked different.
“I think what generative AI has done lately is really give a new burst to the prompt interface,” says Emmanuel. “Had AI existed when we launched the company, text would have been a bigger part of it, and that’s basically what we’re doing today…. If we have ways to interpret what the user wants in natural language and help accelerate the [building] process … this is a very big win for the user.”
The biggest win for founders combining no-code with AI? “You're going to be able to put your product in front of people extremely fast.”
Emmanuel also highlights exactly why that acceleration is so crucial: “AI applied to application generation can really help people go to market much faster and react much faster to feedback that they’re getting from their users, which ultimately is how you create something valuable for your customers.”
Bubble founders who have built success with no-code and AI (17:54)
After the fireside conversation, Bubble welcomed three Bubble founders to share their stories of building on no-code and integrating AI into both their tech stacks and products. These founders include:
Chad Sakonchick, Founder of BetterLegal
Chad converted his original, traditionally-coded app to Bubble and brought in $2.7 million in revenue in 2022.
Albert Astabatsyan, Co-founder of Synthflow
Albert helped grow Synthflow from an MVP idea to a business that raised $1.8 million in funding in just six months.
Marina Trajkovska, Co-founder of Voicepen.ai
Marina is a Bubble-Certified Developer who specializes in building AI-powered apps on Bubble.
Chad, Albert, and Marina shared their perspectives on the most useful AI tools they’ve found to date, what they do to strategically leverage AI within their Bubble apps, and how they identified the core features that were “good enough” for their V1s.
“I’m a purist. I like to keep it simple. I use chat GPT and Bubble with Bubble’s API connector,” says Chad. “With ChatGPT, I mean, there is literally nothing that you can’t build.”
Albert took a step back and explained his approach: “When the entire AI hype happened, basically all these frameworks, they were code-based, based on Python. And I realized that there's quite a big added value if you can connect to these frameworks.” Once he connected AI to Bubble through Replit, he says, “That was quite a powerful combination.”
For Marina, who is a co-founder and Bubble Developer building numerous apps, AI is critical for speeding up the development process. “Building the frontend with AI is super, super helpful, especially if you have a [responsive] frontend,” she says. “I don’t have to think about [how] it's behaving on a different screen size. That saves tons of time when you're building with Bubble and focusing just on the functionality and on building the features.”
When it comes to building those features, Chad shares the importance of “just getting something launched.” Before his team built Better Legal’s full contract analysis tool, they started with a simpler “explainer” tool built into a Chrome extension. “We posted it on Product Hunt, [and] got 1,000 users. And that gave us the confidence to say, ‘Okay, we can now build a full contract analysis tool. There is a market for this.’”
As for identifying the right features for a V1, Marina’s advice for founders is straightforward: “Find the problem, solve the problem. That's the first feature you build.”
Introducing Bubble’s new AI toolkit (40:16)
Context and first-hand founder experiences provided the backdrop for a big announcement: the official launch of Bubble’s new AI tools.
Bubble Product Manager Henry Dowling and Senior Software Engineer Ally Cody took to the digital stage to share what the Bubble AI team has been up to and walk through the new AI features aimed at helping Bubble founders build more efficiently.
With Bubble’s new AI tools, users can:
- Get personalized, step-by-step build guides on how to break down your product idea into specific features — and then create them
- Prioritize potential features based on AI-generated effort scores
- Generate customized pages like landing pages, dashboards, user profiles, and more using descriptive prompts
- Implement a design system, layout, and basic UI building blocks in just a few clicks
- Receive custom recommendations for database and logic types based on your app concept and feature set
With Bubble’s new AI page designer, it’s as if you have both a bonus product manager and designer on your team to help you get a thoughtful head start on decision-making and design. These tools save founders time, effort, and trial-and-error hardships — ultimately getting you from zero to one faster.
A future fueled by the power of AI
AI will make software development much faster — and Bubble’s new AI tools are a stepping stone towards bigger AI plans. Henry says, “Right now, the page designer only generates UI — just the visual, not the functionality. That’s helpful, that speeds you up. But why stop there?”
Investing in AI is a priority across the Bubble roadmap — but it’s not the only priority. Mark your calendars for BubbleCon in October when we’ll be announcing our next big advancements in making software development accessible and efficient for all.
