When Majella Campbell started as Chief Operating Officer at Fishburners — the first and largest startup co-working community in Sydney, Australia — they were using a “terrible off-the-shelf community management sort of platform. It was just a nightmare,” she says. But then Majella found Bubble, and everything changed.
Without any programming background, Majella quickly taught herself no-code, ditched traditional development, and even brought on a Bubble Silver agency partner, Lightning Products, to keep improving her new product. What they did with Bubble helped them scale quickly from a community of a few thousand startups to about 20,000 across the country.
With Bubble, Fishburners’s development process finally reflected their ethos. Australia’s ambitious startup community now had a platform that would never slow them down.
Where traditional code fell short, no-code stepped in
Aside from offering in-person coworking spaces, Fishburners wanted to create a founders hub: A centralized platform where startups could connect with mentors and other entrepreneurs, find relevant events, and access perks and discounts. But they couldn’t build it fast enough on their community management platform.
“Whenever we wanted something customized or changed, we had to wait months or years for their product sprints to catch up. So we had the idea of bringing something in-house instead.” But they faced a few roadblocks, says Majella. “We were reluctant to dedicate the funds, and we definitely didn’t have the resources to manage that technical debt. So we started trialing different solutions.”
A member of their community recommended Bubble, and Majella tried it out. She loved the platform’s speed and efficiency. “I started learning, and I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is great. I can just start. We don’t have to rely on another company and their sprints anymore.’”
“We found we could do almost anything [on Bubble], which was really exciting. We had that full level of customization and opportunity that we really wanted. And for us, that’s really important, because we want to keep leading the ecosystem. We want to keep innovating, and we want to give startups the best experience possible,” she says.
Over six months, Majella learned how to use Bubble; within three months, they had “a very good MVP that we put out to the entire community of thousands of entrepreneurs.” The Fishburners Founders Hub finally connected startup founders and coworking communities to one another and to the support they needed to succeed.
"We had that full level of customization and opportunity that we really wanted. And for us, that’s really important, because we want to keep leading the ecosystem."
Excited by their MVP, Majella decided to collaborate with Dave McManus of Lightning Products, a Bubble Silver agency partner. With Dave’s help, Fishburners rebuilt and automated their revenue operations, built robust security measures, and made their platform mobile-friendly.
Scaling their startup community with Bubble
Bubble also helped Fishburners automate and optimize existing processes like membership management, unlocking significant levels of growth all while giving them more flexibility with their runway.
“[Automating] helped us to free up funds to develop other products,” says Majella. The Fishburners Services Hub, which connects startups to quality service providers, “opened up a whole different revenue stream and customer base for us. From that alone, we doubled our growth and found new ways to support our community beyond coworking,” she says.
With the services hub, Fishburners could continue to expand beyond physical working spaces. “By having a platform that we could make available to anyone at any time, we were able to attract a global audience of other co-working and startup communities. We’ve even built products that have been used by Google and a bunch of other accelerators,” says Majella. “We also have had leading Australian universities run their programs through our platform, allowing us to expand our reach across the country and support entrepreneurs from some of the early stages.”
With their new products, Fishburners has 1,000 members and an ecosystem of 20,000 people across Australia.
A digital-first and user-first startup experience
Majella and her team are excited about the future of Fishburners. They’re now looking to optimize their other processes (like revenue operations) and scale their new products. In the long term, Fishburners wants to become a globally recognized, accessible community.
"[No-code] will fast-track development, save you money, and help keep you agile."
Since going no-code, Majella and her team have no intentions of turning back. In fact, they’re advocates for Bubble, especially among their own community.
“We tell all of our startups and even university students [in our community] to learn how to use no-code — it’ll fast-track development, save you money, and help keep you agile while you continue to develop your offerings. No-code is going to change the way you think and the way that you work.”
Build for as long as you want on the Free plan. Only upgrade when you're ready to launch.
Join Bubble
