Welcome to 512 members who joined this week 👋
Hey there, I’m Joshua, and welcome to the NCF Weekly newsletter where we share actionable guidance on building a business as a non-technical founder.
Check out our other newsletters: Tiny Empires and Seedstrapped
🥜 In a nuthsell
Interview with Tally CEO - Marie Martens Watch
No-Code tools that got an AI power-up in 2025
Most popular AI Agent tools with NCF members this year
Most popular vibe-coding tools with our members this year
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Tiny Empires Podcast: Tally CEO - Marie Martens
Last week I spoke with Marie Martens, co-founder of Tally for the Tiny Empires podcast.
In this episode we speak about:
From failed travel startup to founding Tally ~ 0:56
Why existing form builders felt too complex and expensive ~ 3:40
Designing a simple product with powerful “hidden” depth ~ 5:48
Getting first users through cold DMs in the no-code community ~ 8:28
Product-led growth and virality built into forms ~ 10:40
Why Tally’s free plan is so generous (and intentional) ~ 11:37
How Tally reached 1.3M users with a tiny team ~ 13:21
A calm upgrade journey with no aggressive sales tactics ~ 13:38
Social listening as a core growth strategy ~ 16:05
Building in public and radical transparency ~ 17:10
ChatGPT / LLMs becoming a major acquisition channel ~ 19:33
Knowing when to hire and avoiding founder burnout ~ 22:05
Transitioning from two founders to a small team ~ 24:47
Long-term vision: staying lean and growing to $10M ARR ~ 27:27
Advice to early-stage founders ~ 28:54
💪 No-Code tools that got an AI power-up
2025 seemed to be the year where the big no-code tools fully embraced AI and added native features. Some were hits, others felt like an uneccesary add-on. Here are the AI power-ups that were most discussed in the community:
Bubble - AI agent that builds full-stack apps from a prompt pages, database, and logic
Xano - AI helps you create backend logic by describing what the API should do
Airtable - AI pulls structured data from the web directly into your tables
Webflow - AI generates SEO metadata, alt text, and descriptions automatically
FlutterFlow - AI turns UI descriptions into production-ready app code
Softr - AI agents clean, tag, and enrich data inside your database
Glide - AI-powered columns that summarize, categorize, or translate data
Notion - Built-in AI for summaries, answers, and knowledge base search
Make - AI drafts automation scenarios from plain-English descriptions
Tally - AI sets up form logic and conditional paths automatically
🤖 AI Agents
Teams got smaller and Solo-founders multiplied themselves as AI Agents hit the stage. Here are the most discussed.
Make - Low-code automation for connecting apps with logic and AI steps
Lindy - No-code AI agents that handle email, scheduling, CRM, and admin work for you
Gumloop - Visual AI workflows for marketing, ops, and data tasks (very beginner-friendly)
n8n - Powerful open-source automation tool for building custom AI workflows
ChatGPT Agent Mode - The AI brain behind many agents (custom GPTs, research, planning, writing)
Relevance AI - Build “AI employees” for lead scoring, research, and CRM work
Botpress - Best for chat-based AI agents (support bots, Slack bots, website chat)
👨💻 Vibe-coding took centre stage
Vibe-coding opened up a whole new world of opportunities to non-technical founders.
Where no-code tools allowed people to build without every seeing any code, vibe-coding tools gave the option of building real coded apps with simple text-based prompts. Whilst the results could sometimes be unpredictable, there have also been plenty of success stories.
Here are the main tools our community have been using:
Lovable - Generate full-stack, production-ready web apps from a simple text prompt
GitHub Copilot - AI pair programmer that suggests code as you type
v0 by Vercel - Create clean React and Tailwind UI components from plain English
Cursor - AI-first code editor for asking questions, debugging, and refactoring
Replit Agent - Build, test, and deploy apps from a prompt in the browser
Bolt.new - AI scaffolding for common SaaS features like auth, payments, and databases
Macaly - Build websites and web apps by describing them, with visual editing and databases
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