How to Build a Marketplace With No-Code with Connor Finlayson

[00:00:00] Sean: Hey there and welcome to We Can Do This. This is Sean Pritzkau and today I'm excited for our conversation with Connor Finlayson. Connor is the founder of The Unicorn Factory, which is a freelancer marketplace in Canada and New Zealand built entirely with no code. Connor also runs a YouTube channel where he teaches aspiring entrepreneurs, how they can build their own online businesses using no code.

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[00:00:30] Sean: You may recognize Connor's name from episode 20 of this podcast, where Stephen Johnson, the founder of Chive discussed how Connor helped him and Alice launch their own MVP of Chive Charities. I've invited Connor on the podcast to share about his own journey building and running a marketplace. And the opportunities there are for others to launch impact driven marketplaces, or other online platforms, utilizing no-code tools.

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[00:01:00] Sean: I really loved talking with Connor. So let's jump into this conversation that with Connor and listen.

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[00:01:19] Sean: All right. Hey, welcome to the podcast today. I'm here with Connor Finlayson. Connor is the founder of The Unicorn Factory, a freelancer marketplace in Canada and New Zealand. And he also runs a YouTube channel where he teaches aspiring entrepreneurs, how they can build their own online businesses with no code tools.

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[00:01:38] Sean: So Connor, Hey, welcome to the podcast. Hey, thanks for having me. Yeah, I'm super excited. You're here. I just saw you presenting on no-code conference web flows conference that they hosted last week. Love your presence. 

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[00:01:53] Connor: Thank you so much. Yeah, it was good fun. It was going to be in-person, but because of the whole pandemic thing, they had to move it online and yeah, it was really great.

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[00:02:03] Connor: The part of my presentation was recorded. So it was actually quite cold to be able to see people in the chat. And a lot of familiar faces like a lot of people from the Unicorn Factory, a lot of people that I've seen on my YouTube channel who came in to support. So it was really great and really appreciate 

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[00:02:19] Sean: it.

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[00:02:20] Sean: I was really hoping to make it out to the conference myself and I've watched and participate in so many like online summits. I had produced some in the past and the conference like overall was. Probably one of the best online things I'd ever been a part of, one from dislike aesthetic visuals. Audio programming was so good, but to keep my, especially I think maybe my attention for two straight days and feel like I could have stuck around for a third was pretty impressive.

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[00:02:52] Connor: Absolutely. Well, I think a lot of people were quite disappointed that it had to be moved online because who years ago they had that conference in San Francisco. And that was amazing because meeting everyone in person is just amazing. So when they had initially announced that it would be another in-person event, I think a lot of people were very excited and then having to shift online kind of seem like it's not going to be the same, but I actually must say that the entire experience kind of exceeded my expectations as well.

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[00:03:21] Connor: Because before the conference even started the fin sweet guys organized the scared of town. And I dunno if you had a chance to check it out, it's a virtual world where you can kind of just like walk around and whenever you moved up to someone, the webcams open up and you can have conversations with them.

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[00:03:36] Connor: And that was awesome because it kind of created that networking. Feeling that you get from going to conferences. So that gather town as well as the conference platform that they use, the host of the actual conference made it a really, really great experience. 

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[00:03:54] Sean: Yeah. It was such a good time. And then, I mean, all the presentations were fantastic.

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[00:03:58] Sean: First thanks for being on the podcast today. The reason I wanted to really introduce you here is because of your work with The Unicorn Factory for listeners, The Unicorn Factory and all that kind of really talk about it is a freelancer marketplace that he's built primarily using no code tools. And he's been able to run that in New Zealand.

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[00:04:18] Sean: Now I understand it's in Canada. So yeah. Share with us a little bit about, you know, The Unicorn Factory, what inspired you to get started and what. 

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[00:04:27] Connor: Yeah. So I started the unit confection, new Islam, probably about. Two and a half, four years ago, it's kind of being different things at different times. When I started freelancing myself, I needed to find clients.

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[00:04:40] Connor: And for some reason I fought, you know, instead of building a normal portfolio website, like every other freelancer does, I could just create like a little online marketplace slash directory of New Zealand freelances so that I can. I give myself a little golden star, which would make me look a lot more trustworthy, you know, kind of like that little Twitter verified badge for The Unicorn Factory.

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[00:05:05] Connor: And there were a few reasons why I wanted to do it. First of all, I got quite inspired by Webflow experts, which is basically the online marketplace for web flow designers that were set up by Wipro and they built the entire thing in. And I had just really gotten into workflow and seeing that you can actually do a lot more beyond just building nice marketing websites was really interesting to me.

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[00:05:29] Connor: And so I kind of decided to rebuild aspects of Webflow experts for the coworking space that I was in at the time, because I had friends in there who were freelancing as well. And I was like, Hey, this is such a fun project to work on. Before, you know, it, it kind of got out of control. I got people, my coworking space to sign up.

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[00:05:47] Connor: I started telling different businesses about the uniform Unicorn and we started getting inquiries, not just me. I actually didn't get that many inquiries despite the fact that I tried to stack it as much in my favor as possible. But a lot of the other people on the site started getting inquiries. And that means started creating a bit of word of mouth, which led to more freelancers asking me if they could sign up more businesses using the platform.

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[00:06:11] Connor: And most of the beginning was just built and Webflow. So I didn't use all the different tools that I'm using today, but as it started to grow, I started to run into little limitations of like, I can't manually manage all these things. And that kind of lead to the discovery of all these other tools that allow you to do certain things.

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[00:06:29] Connor: And now The Unicorn Factory has around 700 freelancers in New Zealand. We have heaps that come and go. So since we've started, we've had like thousands of freelancers on the site. We've worked with a lot of different businesses in New Zealand. And yeah, now I've also said it in New Zealand and the entire platform is built with no code.

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[00:06:50] Connor: I primarily use Webflow to build the website side of things, IR table, which is my database. And then I also use a range of automation tools to basically automate workflows that I would otherwise have to do manually. And yeah, it's been a great fun project to work. Absolutely. 

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[00:07:06] Sean: Yeah. We talked to a lot of people that are in the social impact space that are looking to start up new ideas, new companies, new ventures.

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[00:07:15] Sean: And with this idea that no code provides this opportunity to create some sort of minimum viable product that they can really get their idea started and maybe even build on. CECA tools. Right? And so recently we had Stephen Johnson on the podcast that you introduced me to, um, who has built chive charities with no-code tools and hearing yourself, build this marketplace.

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[00:07:41] Sean: Using no-code tools really to connect people with freelancers. So when there's like this opportunity that no code provides in the space, which I think is really, really cool, but also there are people in the space too, that are actually using these tools to. Use them for good and social purpose. So I'm really excited to have you on the show today, and I'd love to kind of introduce this idea of even marketplaces, right?

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[00:08:08] Sean: Cause there's a lot of ways that marketplaces can be used for impact businesses and hearing you share a little bit about how you built The Unicorn Factory, utilizing no-code tools, marketplaces. Uniquely difficult, especially these two-sided marketplaces that provide kind of two audiences, right? Your primary customers, but also the people that might be selling these services to their it's a complex world.

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[00:08:30] Sean: Right. So I'd love for maybe you to share a little bit about. Maybe if there's people in the audience that are looking to build something similar, but for a very kind of different use case, how should they begin to look at their stack of tools, maybe how to select these tools and what are the different kinds of things that they should be doing?

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[00:08:50] Connor: Yeah. I mean, I think when you think of marketplaces, there is a lot of complexity to it because obviously you're building a platform, not just for one particular set of customers. You're also building it for another set of customers and you essentially act as the intermediary, but you know, when I started the Unicon Unicorn, I didn't actually think of it as a marketplace.

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[00:09:08] Connor: I thought of it more as a phone book and I fought that my job is to basically add people to the phone. And then make that phone book visible to people, right? And then suddenly you shift from a, been a marketplace to simply been a directory and building a directory is a lot more simple in building a marketplace, but a directory lays the foundations for what eventually becomes a marketplace.

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[00:09:40] Connor: And so that was kind of my starting point. And if anyone is in a position where they want to create a marketplace or directory for their matter, then what I think is the best starting point is actually just building the visual front inside of that experience for people so that you are immediately adding value to one side of the market.

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[00:10:03] Connor: So with chive it, Steven and Ellis worked on. Via main goal was to make it easier for New Zealand to find and support local charities. So you can pretty much immediately add value to those charities by listing their information on a website. Now it doesn't have to be fancy, but a lot of these charities don't have the resources or the know how to build their own websites.

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[00:10:32] Connor: So even by just building a nice landing. For the, a charity basically edit immediate value. And then over time, you'll start to generate traction around your website and that will then expose certain use cases or certain problems that you can then address the way that my journey with no-code tools evolved over time was my initial goal was let's find work.

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[00:10:57] Connor: That was my top priority. Just a simple profile page about myself. My friends were also freelancing is what did the job. And I actually did the job for six months. Then I came across the problem of more and more people are signing up. Everyone's information is all over the place. I need to find a way to basically.

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[00:11:20] Connor: If I can order. And that is kind of where air table came into the mix. And so before I added air table to my stack of NOCO calls, I actually just keep track of it inside of workflow. Then obviously as a group, even further, a lot of the things that I was doing manually was becoming too time-consuming and I couldn't keep up with it anymore.

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[00:11:42] Connor: So that's when Zapier came into the mix, which was the automation tool. So where I'm trying to go with this is that when you are considering what kind of tools you should use for your project, you are better off starting with one tool, solving a particular use case, and then adding new tools as you are exposed to more issues that need to be solved.

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[00:12:05] Connor: And the main benefit that you'll get from that is that it won't overwhelm you because that is oftentimes what I feel. People trip up. Before they even get started, which is what tools, how do I build this and that feature? And I feel like just solving one issue at a time will put you in a position where you'll get a better understanding of the tools that you're using, and that will be easier for you to find.

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[00:12:29] Connor: More tolls that are fit for the purpose you're trying to solve for. 

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[00:12:33] Sean: That's really good. You often hear people talk about minimum viable products and how they're often not very minimum. And I loved when we had Steven and he talked about how the MVP of time really, I think he said it didn't do everything he wanted to, but it did it, everything he needed it to, which was what really made it stand out.

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[00:12:50] Sean: Right. And once you build, you start getting your hands into every feature, it can be incredibly overwhelming and maybe. Three things. Okay. But not one thing. Well, 

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[00:13:01] Connor: yeah, when I meet Steven and Alice and they kind of gave me the rundown of what it is that they wanted to achieve, I think before the no Cobell came along, you would kind of have to list everything that you wanted, because that is basically how working with software developer would work.

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[00:13:20] Connor: You would give them a scope of work. You would include all of the different things. And then that is the deliverable. And that means that there is no concept of a minimum viable product when outsourcing that type of work to people that you can't be as agile and nimble when you're paying hundreds and hundreds of dollars per hour to a developer.

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[00:13:43] Connor: And so I think that now that these no code tools are getting better, more and more are being added. We're basically putting ourselves in a position where we fundamentally change how we approach building platforms and we can actually build MVPs, you know, with barely any features. So when I met Steven and Ellis, they wanted to have an analytics dashboard.

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[00:14:07] Connor: They wanted to have a whole bunch of different things, which is what people usually want. It's quite a fought out product is kind of what they envision. We kind of just took a step back and we broke down this big product division into hint little projects, and we just approached the first one. Once that was done, we moved on to the next one.

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[00:14:29] Connor: And now they're moving more and more towards what they had envisioned when they start. But in the meantime, they have managed to find a whole bunch of charities that have signed up. They've been getting a whole bunch of new donors, and I think aspects of the platform has also gone into directions that they may not have anticipated in the first place.

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[00:14:49] Connor: So they were great to work with because they kind of came to the realization that this is what you can kind of shift your thinking with no code. And that's why they're doing so 

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[00:15:01] Sean: well. So we sort of shared a little bit about this idea of the MVP creation process. And so if we wanted to maybe take a step further and begin to, once you have that MVP, let's say when you had the MVP of The Unicorn Factory, how did you begin to navigate those decisions about what to iterate when to iterate on those things as you were.

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[00:15:24] Sean: Beginning to kind of take this step further. 

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[00:15:26] Connor: I actually did The Unicorn Factory as like a side project, more than like my main thing. I was still freelancing. I had just finished working in a startup and I pretty much burnt myself out and I got like nothing out of it financially. So as soon as that was done, I was like, I am going to focus on freelancing and my top priority is going to be to make money.

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[00:15:46] Connor: The Unicorn Factory was a side project. Even today. I'm still kind of like, I don't look at the uniform pantry as like my main thing. I feel like it's a component of my professional life, I think. Yeah. So they're kind of made me be very careful about how I make changes to the product and because I didn't want the product development side of things to interfere.

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[00:16:12] Connor: With my freelancing work, which took priority at the time. So I very early on established that I would only add something. If I felt like one, it would help freelancers get more work, which is my most important metric on the uniform Unicorn. Like if I can get them more work, that's why the uniform Unicorn exists.

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[00:16:34] Connor: Then I'm going to do it. Number two, it saves me time. So if me sitting up a certain feature means that I have to do less manual work, then I'm going to do it because I know long-term, that's going to pay off big time. It's going to generate more revenue for the business, which ultimately then in turn leads to me being able to get more work for freelancers because the majority of our work comes through paid advertising.

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[00:17:02] Connor: So I basically had those free. Points is kind of like a reference points on whether or not I should build something and I was just ruthless about it. And I was honest with myself about it as well. I was kind of like if there would be like a feature that I thought, oh, that would be cool. I would just ask myself, is this going to help freelancers get more work?

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[00:17:24] Connor: No. Is this going to save me more time? Not that much. Is it going to make me more money? And then you just dump it. You move on. Yeah. 

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[00:17:32] Sean: So what I'm hearing is it's really important to be pretty clear with kind of the strategy behind what you're doing and know what is the main, maybe core metric, like you said, of your platform or what you're building and kind of use that as the litmus test for I'm going to pour more energy.

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[00:17:51] Sean: Pour my time, pour more. Where money in the building, this is it helping me increase that maybe that core metric. And I love the efficiency piece as well. Like if this is gonna save me more time and that will kind of compound over time. Yes. That might be worth putting in some more time and energy in the integrating 

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[00:18:11] Connor: I'd benefit of taking an approach like that is you build way less than you think you would initially.

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[00:18:16] Connor: Like, I feel like sometimes when you have a few minks, something like your main thing, you've got a lot of time to think about how you can constantly make improvements to things. Now, a lot of the product improvements are based on what you think is going to work. Not what anyone has told you is going to work.

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[00:18:30] Connor: It's kind of just like dream features. And I used to build products and features like that. I was like, oh, this would be cool. I think people would like that. But until people actually are helping you, that they wanted, or that they need. The falling yourself really. Right. And what I have found over time is that even though it's built on no coat tools and no, coastals have a reputation for kind of being not as scalable, which is incorrect, but that's a different story.

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[00:18:57] Connor: It's been so easy for me to manage the platform and make improvements, thought without breaking a whole bunch of things. And there was a, I think I saw this. A few months ago that was simple scales, fancy fails. And I feel like that should be like, it should be like the motto of the narco world, because that is kind of how I now approach building things.

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[00:19:20] Connor: It's kind of like, just keep things simple. Don't over-complicate things because as soon as you overcomplicate things, things break and then it's over. 

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[00:19:26] Sean: Yeah. Related to that, I think in this space, no code really provides this opportunity to really get your hands in the product itself. Be the one building it opposed to learning and figuring out how to communicate what you want and communicating that to someone else.

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[00:19:44] Sean: Who's going to be building your product instead, you're doing yourself, right. Which provides a lot of benefits. What would you say? Uh, and this is probably different for different people, but. What would you say is maybe the signs that when you're building your own product as a founder, but also as like this no-code builder, right.

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[00:20:03] Sean: And you're using these tools, are there signs where you think it's important that maybe those founders consider bringing on a freelancer to help them roll out these no-code tools or maybe hire a agency that has experienced in helping build these platforms? When. Right to like, maybe take your hands a little bit off the product now that you've built.

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[00:20:24] Sean: It's being the scale. Bring out other people 

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[00:20:27] Connor: that kind of help. I mean, I think, again, it comes back to some of the key points that I made before when considering building a feature. It's like, I think that probably the most important one is that will this save you time? You know, like people sometimes just want to like build a business.

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[00:20:40] Connor: I want to solve a problem, you know? And so like, if you go through the process of learning everything. And that's going to take time. There's a learning curve involved with learning all the different tools. And so if like your longterm goal is not to become like a no-code person being that might make sense to make that investment, but.

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[00:20:59] Connor: With that being said, I think the thing that's so great about the no-code space is that it mostly appeals to people who are just getting started and might not have the funds to invest in hiring someone so you can get started. But then as soon as you reach a point where you make enough money, that you can potentially bring someone on and you can bring them on.

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[00:21:19] Connor: And again, you can get, usually the quality of the work is a bit better. You get things done faster. That's at least the experiences that I've made. I, as soon as I got to the point where the uniform Unicorn was making a decent amount of money, I would just remiss that money into bringing developers on helped me refine the platform.

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[00:21:38] Connor: So like the first version of the uniform Unicorn looked very, very average. And then I hired a workflow developer and designer from The Unicorn Factory and he came on, he made some like visual changes. And that led to more conversions, more people visited the website. More people got in touch with the different freelancers.

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[00:21:57] Connor: The UX made a lot more sense. And so again, that came back to it may generate a more leads for freelancers. It made the business more revenue, and I didn't have to go through the process of learning web design or UX and all those types of things. So if you are in a position where you can invest in certain aspects of your business, And I definitely think it's worth doing, because you'll just get to where you want to go faster.

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[00:22:25] Connor: I think another thing is it's like if you have gone through the process of building aspects of the business first, then it will be so much easier for you to communicate with the people that you're hiring. In terms of what you want, what your expectations are and all those types of things. And so, yeah, I'm really happy that I had to go through the process of learning everything first before hiring people, because that's made me a way better communicator when I have hired people.

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[00:22:51] Sean: Yeah. A hundred percent, especially if you know this freelancer or maybe this agency or whatever is, you know, getting to jump in and build on maybe what you've already started. A whole lot of benefit to understanding the structure and the tool set in the stack that you've already kind of been involved with so that when you can communicate better, but to actually like understand, I mean, if you don't have software knowledge and you're communicating with a software developer, not just even on a design and features, but also.

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[00:23:25] Sean: The actual tool itself. Like it's, it's nearly impossible. You're not even speaking the right language, but, uh, if, if you've begun to build your own product and you can speak the language a bit. So now that you're actually communicating with someone who's maybe working in the no-code space as a freelancer or a developer, you can speak the same language, which I think is a really cool benefit of these tools to 100%.

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[00:23:44] Sean: Well, cool. Well, as we start to wrap up, is there anything else that you want to share about before we 

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[00:23:50] Connor: close? I think a lot of your audience are social entrepreneurs. So, I mean, I think that that is going to be as spaces very much going to benefit from no-code tools. I think one of the things that no-code tools have done that I think is really creating a lot of opportunities for people.

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[00:24:09] Connor: Is that in the past, if you wanted to build something like the uniform Unicorn or build something like chive, it would have to make a huge investment in order to make that happen. There's just no way around it. It was just like going to cost tapes. And that meant that in order for you to justify the costs, you would have to tackle problems on a global scale, but those costs are now gone, which means that if you want to get started and have like an immediate impact on say your local community being that is now possible.

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[00:24:38] Connor: So what I think we're going to see, not just in the social entrepreneurship space, just in entrepreneurship and like the maker world in general is that they're going to be a lot more opportunities to build localized versions of certain. Platforms, for example, Airbnb, there'll be like a localized version of that or like Five-O upward, which essentially is like The Unicorn Factory just localized, you know?

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[00:25:02] Connor: And so I kind of feel like that is a huge opportunity that I think people should take advantage of because it makes a big difference to like a lot of people. I know, like the work that Steven and Alice has done has been like huge for like, Charities and New Zealand. Yeah. And there is nothing out there that currently can do that for that group of charities specifically.

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[00:25:24] Connor: So I think there are like good opportunities and I definitely encourage anyone to look into it. 

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[00:25:30] Sean: Yeah. I think there's things that I think just should exist. Right? Like there's always these things you think of that should exist. That should be a thing. And exactly like you're saying. Some of those things just didn't make sense because the investment was too large for maybe the revenue that that would generate for example.

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[00:25:46] Sean: And if the schools are shifting that paradigm quite a bit, and it's a really exciting time to see and being well. Thanks so much for lending your time today and joining me on the podcast and you've been generous with what you've shared today. I'll include links to The Unicorn Factory in your work and the show notes.

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[00:26:04] Sean: And we talked a bunch about chive as well. So I'll include chive as well. If, if people just want to maybe even look at some of these links and see what people have built utilizing no-code tools. I think one just being a user on these websites and experiencing what people are building can be really, really inspiring.

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[00:26:20] Sean: So definitely check out the links that are in the show notes, and we'll include everything there. But again, Connor, thanks so much for being on the podcast. 

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[00:26:27] Connor: Thanks so much for having me. It was great fun.

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[00:26:45] Sean: All right. Hope you liked that conversation with Connor Finlayson. I know I really enjoyed the talking to Connor and it's really wild. The opportunity there is to start and build a marketplace similar to The Unicorn Factory and do so as a solo founder, without having to hire a team of. Your operating costs are relatively low with these platforms and you can build and run these and even maintain other projects on top of it, if you wish.

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[00:27:12] Sean: So if you found this interesting, I've loaded the show notes with all the links that we talked about in this episode. And I wanted to let you know that Connor also offers a course that he teaches people to build marketplaces on. Where he guides you in creating marketplaces, utilizing no-code tools. So if you're interested, definitely check that out in the show notes, but again, thanks for listening.

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[00:27:39] Sean: And I'll see you next week. .

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