2020: Year in Review

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When I started Makerpad I never thought it'd be where it is today. A little side project that turned into the hub for everything no-code (although I still dislike the term 😉). I'm learning lots of things along the way, like; creating my own systems to get stuff done, finding exercise you like doing (tennis), you don't have to respond to all emails and DM's, it's ok to be a maker that has to do some 'manager' tasks.

I'm forever grateful to the growing community for all your support, our investors for enabling me to do this full-time and my team, for taking the leap with me, producing phenomenal content and being the reason Makerpad is what it is today.

This year I postponed getting married, got a puppy and had my fair share of up and down days. We've got to just keep going.

Here's some of what we accomplished:

Total Members: 4,943 (should hit 5k by 31st December)
+363% growth in members from 2019 → 2020
14,948 newsletter subscribers
278 tutorials in total
500+ projects launched by the community
Makerpad fund launched with investments such as; Supabase, Stacker and Causal
Community Program pilot

What to expect next year:

Build Club. 14 day cohorts of building projects, alongside others. First cohort kicks-off Jan 4th
Community improvement. We've got a couple of projects underway that we think will be super exciting for engaging the community in a new and meaningful way.
Content. We're planning more Tool-Paths so let us know any suggestions you have here
Some secret stuff 🤫

A few things we've learnt along the way

People like being guided. So we built educational content around business use-cases (e.g. How Morning Brew do sales) and Tool-paths (e.g. Build a membership community). This allows people to follow tutorials sequentially around a specific goal
Concise content. Videos need to be easy to consume and quick to inspire
Videos aren't just educational. They're often used as inspiration. Many people have watched a tutorial only to go off-piste almost immediately. This is what I used to do too—"this is how you can do X" becomes "Oh cool, I'm going to tweak that to the thing I want to do which is slightly different"
Challenges engage the community, but there are parameters to consider. 30-day challenges can work if they are broader or have big prizes and judges. Everyday challenges lose steam fairly quickly. This is why we're testing Build Club. 14-day rolling cohorts building projects alongside others

Below you'll find a collection of our top pieces of content from 2020; Tool Paths, Deep-Dives, Tutorials, Challenges, Workshops, Blog Posts and Podcasts.

We'll put together a 2020: Community in review shortly to show off some of the most amazing things our community has built - there's just so many!

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🛠️ Tool-Paths

Released in December our tool-paths have recently been launched and are available to everyone! They are sequences of step-by-step tutorial videos, tool-paths guide you through projects from start to finish.

The first 3 paths are:

👔 Automate a job board

🛒 Build an e-commerce store from your phone

🎟️ Build a membership community

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🤿 Deep-Dives

Our Deep-Dives are an in-depth exploration into the processes of an interesting business, individual or organization. We then break down how you could re-create that process using the latest no-code tools.

🌊 Automating an Investment Fund's Form to Contract Process (Deep-Dive)

🐬 The Community Creator - How to run a low-cost membership community (Deep-Dive)

⛵ Cottage Deep Dive: How to manage, track, and automate complex projects (Deep-Dive)

💧 No-code solutions let Stark focus on content creation (Deep-Dive)

🐋 Makerpad builds Community Building no-code solutions for 1 Second Everyday (Deep-Dive)

🏊 Rebuilding Morning Brew's sales process with no-code solutions (Deep-Dive)

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