As Adalo grows, we want to share with our community more stories that show the diverse and interesting projects that our makers are working on! We wish we could get to every one of them, but we will have to settle for just a few of them right now. That brings us to brother sister duo, Nikki and Dan Gusz from Lloyd. Lloyd is a career advancement and coaching platform that brings some aspects of automation and technology and pairs them with the human element that we all seek when making big life decisions. Nikki comes from a background that includes teaching and human capital consulting. Dan comes from the product management side, working with different types of technology. We asked them a bit about their journey, why no code, and where they want to take Lloyd from here.
*One Qualitative Note*: We have spent over 600 hours working directly with our end users and are seeing interest from people across the globe.
Questions
- Lloyd is a really neat idea. How did you come up with it and when did you know this was something you wanted to pursue?
According to researcher Dr. Meg Jay, 80% of life defining moments happen by age 35. Yet, most young professionals can’t afford expensive executive coaching or professional development programs to address their career needs. Enter Lloyd, which started as a concept to create more structure, accountability, and personalization for people in their career. We started working with anyone that would talk with us: friends, family, friends of friends, etc. Soon people started paying for our offerings and we knew there might be something here. As we consolidated our learnings and began to deeply understand the issues individuals face in their career, we turned our attention to productizing these learnings. Enter the Adalo platform. - What led you to pursue a no code platform to build out Lloyd?
We explored many avenues: full-time developers, on-shore contractors, off-shore contractors, no-code platforms. Our instincts usually err on action, and we recognized that with no-code platform we could start building right away. This decreased execution risks, while simultaneously being much lower cost than alternative development options. - I’m sure you both did a lot of research into no code platforms. What set Adalo apart from the pack?
The marketing and explainer videos from Adalo were very clear and made us comfortable understanding the direction we could go with the platform. Furthermore, one feature of Adalo that made it very compelling for us was the built-in database. Being able to build screens and workflows on top of an actively connected database made building very seamless for us. There really were very few barriers for us to start building on Adalo. - You two have been working on this business for a little over 100 days… What’s the journey been like and how has no code helped you achieve your goals?
We have been working on the business since early 2020 but only have been building on no-code tools for a little over 100 days. The first ~10 days were about exploring the possibilities of the tools, mostly focused on Adalo. From there, we created a formalized product development structure and started hitting on all cylinders. We had our first users start testing after about 30 days, and launched on Product Hunt 104 days after signing up for Adalo. Here is a look at our no-code stack today:
- As a brother/sister duo, what sort of advice would you two give to family members who are thinking about going into business together?
A big learning is to set clear expectations about your goals, the direction of the business, and your specific roles. We have met many many sibling, couple, or family-member teams along our Lloyd journey. It may be a good idea for some, and a not-so-good idea for others. To start, think about your goals and make sure that everyone is aligned to those goals just like you would if you weren’t family members. You need to be able to treat the business like a business for it to be successful! - What would you tell someone who is curious about using Adalo in regards to the path forward? Follow up: how does Adalo (and no code) change the equation in the digital world we are living in for those who are non-technical?
We believe that no-code platforms like Adalo democratize creativity. To give folks confidence, we are two non-technical co-founders. Our biggest piece of advice when it comes to no-code platforms is this: get started! The barriers to entry for no-code tools are practically zero. Most have freemium plans, limited technical knowledge needed (if any), and lots of templates and tutorials to help you get started. So if you are thinking about starting something or launching a company … start it today! - Who is your target audience? How do you plan on reaching them?
Our target audience is anyone in the first two decades of their career who are looking to navigate their careers. Think of Lloyd as Waze for your career. We reach our members through a few channels, including online marketing, events and partnerships, and referrals from our current members. We aim to provide an extremely high level of service and support for each of our members, and our preference is to grow organically as much as possible. - Finally, what are your dreams for Lloyd going into the future and how will Adalo help you achieve those?
Our goal is to have thousands of members using Lloyd to take their career to the next level. Adalo allows us to iterate fast as we continue to build upon our MVP, in pursuit of delivering value to our members. We wouldn’t be where we are without the power Adalo gives us to build for our members.
Dan and Nikki are a very insightful team and we could not be more happy to have them building out their dreams on Adalo! They recently hit an exciting milestone by launching on Product Hunt. You can check that out here. We want to thank them for taking the time to answer some questions for us and we urge the Adalo community to take a look at the neat service they have put together.
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