Alex Rainey used to be a technology consultant for a large, worldwide consulting firm — but that didn’t mean he knew how to code or scale software. “I understood the concepts within software engineering, but I couldn’t build an app like what we have today by myself, independently, through coding,” he shares. When he discovered Bubble, that all changed.
Today, Alex and his co-founder, Mike Heap, run My AskAI, an AI agent assistant for customer support teams that nets $25,000 in monthly revenue and supports over 40,000 registered users — with no other staff except each other. As the sole Bubble Developer, Alex estimates he built the current version of their product in just six weeks. “Once I started tinkering, I realized I could do a lot of stuff really quickly,” he shares. Having worked on other startups prior with traditional tech teams, he soon concluded Bubble was “a totally different ballgame” — one that would provide a long-term foundation for My AskAI’s growth.
Bubble helps suss out product-market fit quickly and cost-effectively
Alex was coming off the heels of another startup when he met Mike. They threw around a bunch of ideas and knew they didn’t want to have to rely on expensive developers to see them through. When they discovered Bubble, they realized they’d really only need the two of them to build a V1 successfully.
“It didn’t take long for us to see that Bubble would be the platform to enable us to move super quickly,” says Alex. “The pace at which we moved [before that] is just totally incomparable. We had a team of three or four React Native engineers, and the kind of things that we build in a day in Bubble probably took 2–4 weeks. There’s no way I’d ever start a project in pure coding ever again.”
“There’s no way I’d ever start a project in pure coding ever again.”
After spending considerable time understanding the power of fine-tuning AI models, they decided to add a relatively simple no-code layer on top of their AI model backend. For this first early version of their product, customers could upload a spreadsheet and behind-the-scenes, AI magic would interpret and train off the uploaded data.
With time, Alex and Mike realized that customers were using their tool to improve customer support activities. They decided to pivot by cloning their Bubble app, selling the existing version of their tool, and using the proceeds to start anew — this time with a concentrated focus on customer support.
A full pivot in just six weeks
“It probably took us six weeks,” says Alex, reflecting on rebuilding after the pivot. “We took everything we learned on Bubble [the first time] and made a different version totally focused on this use case.”
The new Bubble app — today's version of My AskAI — trains off a customer’s website, internal documentation, and other resources to create a unique customer support agent to field end-user inquiries. If the AI agent can’t support a conversation, it can elegantly hand it over to a human for higher-touch assistance.
Doubling down on customer support use cases has worked out well for My AskAI. In a crowded landscape with several established customer support chatbot players, My AskAI differentiates itself through cost, value, and integrability. “We’re about ten times cheaper [than competitors],” explains Alex. “For a huge enterprise that may not matter, but for a lot of small and medium sized startups, that’s a huge difference and can mean saving thousands of dollars each month.”
“I struggle to think of what you couldn’t build with a no-code builder like Bubble.”
Alex notes that My AskAI has seen several customers adopt the tool because of superior answer quality. “Customer support is a problem we are solely dedicated to — that focus can give us an advantage.” Throw in an obsession with agent accuracy and practical integrations to tools like Zendesk, Intercom, and Hubspot, and My AskAI’s business has evolved past a simple no-code success story and into a thriving business with an exciting roadmap ahead.
“We want to take our AI customer support integrations with Zendesk and Intercom further,” says Alex. “Improving our integrations, hardening them, and building out the use cases and feedback that we’re getting from customers is really important to us.”
Alex also shares that they’re looking into an AI assistant concept — built on Bubble — that would live within a Chrome extension and follow a customer support agent around the web, allowing them to interact with customers on any platform and tap into a variety of existing tools. “The idea is to help them resolve the customer’s query and also take action within other tools that they’re already using — we want to be able to give that kind of toolkit all within one place.”
As for advice Alex would share with others considering no-code, Alex doesn’t mince words: “Don’t listen to any of the negativity… the speed with which you can build on no-code and Bubble will completely set you apart from your competition and keep your costs super low,” he stresses. “I struggle to think of what you couldn’t build with a no-code builder like Bubble.”
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