E030 Marina Trajkovska: Co-founder of Biyo

Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 0:07
Once upon a time, there were millions of businesses struggling. Every day they wasted time, effort and energy on repetitive tasks that added no value. One day, the Better Automation podcasts by PROCESIO came to help them find a way. Because of this, these businesses save time, reduce costs, innovate, and make better decisions. And because of that, these businesses grow, scale, and use human creativity to change this world. Hello, my name is Aziz, and I'm your host at Better Automation podcast by PROCESIO where I interview the world's top experts and share their very best ideas on how to improve automation in your business processes. And life. As well as many founders from the no code community that will share their stories. My guest today is Marina Trajkovska. Marina is an ambassador at Women Techmakers, a project lead at NASA International Space Apps Challenge, a co organizer at Google Developers group Central Florida, a Scrum master, a full time mobile dev and the co founder of Biyo page, which is backed by On Deck X2. Marina, how are you today?

Marina Trajkovska 1:33
Yay. Thank you for the amazing intro. I'm doing good. I've been traveling last week, so still cannot get over that jetlag better.

Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 1:49
I know what you mean. And I'm sure this next question is very related. It's similar to have any jet lag when you become a founder. So how is you being a founder different to what you expected? Compared to before having such experiences?

Marina Trajkovska 2:08
Yeah, so this is actually I mean, it. I'm a second time founder. I mean, the first time, it was kind of bootstrapping everything, and I wasn't familiar with bubble, which made a huge change in my world. So right now being a founder is how can I say, being a founder and knowing no code? That's a superpower. Like, you can basically do anything you can imagine, like software related. But even not software later, anything that you can solve with author, I can definitely impact the world as a founder in the no code space.

Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 2:59
Thank you. I will ask you then, since you're a bubble dev as well, a lot of people say, when someone I spoke to too many people are becoming bubble devs, that the market will be flooded, and therefore that skill will become cheap. I understand for founders, you're doing it for yourself more than anything, and therefore it's good to have it that way. It becomes priceless. But what's your perspective on this?

Marina Trajkovska 3:27
That's interesting question. Yeah, at the moment, I don't think there are that many founder, that many bubblers. I'm hoping to see many more in the upcoming year. And I think that is a good thing, even though like it can get cheaper. I think that it is always going to be very expensive to find a very good bubble developer. And I don't think that everyone can get there. But I do think that a lot of people should that are interested in building something, building a technology building a software, shoe, the Learn, learn a no code tool, such as bubble, especially bubble, because it's such a powerful tool. You can basically build anything with it. But yeah, I do expect to see more and more people in in this area. Because I believe that is the future of creating MVP. Not that many founders are reaching for no CO technologies at the moment. And I do think that is it's just my opinion, but I do think that's kind of a mistake. Because I'll give you an example when With the previous startup, we build it with traditional code. And that was fine. It was a very good looking product. It was very nice. But we were struggling for one year to build a product. And then approach clients and validate idea. I know there are many ways to validate even before you have a product. But still, when the product goes out, we failed. Because it wasn't what we expected it to be. But with no code, we were able to build a product within three weeks. That's the idea, fail, build another product in the next two weeks, and then get better and better and better. Just iterate after iterate with every new feedback. And it makes us be more competitive to the market. It gives us sort of like a superpower to, you know, the test features to create new ideas and just to be better as a founder. So yeah, I definitely think people should explore no go technology more.

Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 6:16
Thank you. I will play the devil's advocate very soon. But before that, because I have a question for you about that. But you mentioned it's hard to find a good Bible developer, let's say, what how would someone know if they're dealing with a good bubble developer? What are the criteria? And if someone wants to reach that level? What should they do? I spoke with JJ, who is known within the bubbles Dev. Community. And he said he spent months where he was for eight hours every day on bubble, just to become, you know, good enough. That's not even for him to reach like a higher level. Which means I don't know, I imagine that hundreds of hours just to become good enough. What's your perspective on this? What's your recommendation? And how would the founder know if they're dealing with a good bubble developer or someone who knows how to speak but they don't deliver the goods?

Marina Trajkovska 7:21
Awesome, awesome. Question. Yeah, it is, it is. tricky, especially when something is I mean, I don't I'm not saying that bubble is new bubble has been in this world for the last 10 years. But people, it's gotten its momentum in the last year, which is great. So I even tweeted about this a while ago, saying that was my tweet, it was something like, it's not. It's not that bubble is slow, or bubble doesn't have like great performance. It's the Bubbler that needs experience in how to build better Bucha bases. And it's not that bubble has like terrible UI. It's the Bubbler that needs to learn about UI and UX. And the reason I tweeted that is because a lot of the people that are investigating bubble and that are trying to build things with bubble are looking for a shortcut. And that is, these templates, these templates for the databases right now, these templates for the UI. And I'm not saying that's a bad thing. I mean, that's okay. But maybe in the later stages, for example, I can use a template now. And I can use a database template right now, because I know what to expect expect from it. But for someone that is new in this area. And this goes probably against all of the no code mentality. But I do think that everyone that wants to become best, as a logo builder, they have to learn the basics of building software. And that is they have to learn the logic behind the software, they have to learn how a database works. They have to learn like, actually, what is a database? Like how do we create database? I learned that way back in college. And that's why maybe bubble was very, I don't know, it came so natural to me to understand, like, it was very easy for me to understand because I learned that in the past. But also like creating beautiful designs creating better interfaces for the users. That's very important. And that's not something in that bubble can pee too. And that's not bubbles job to do. Like it's your, as a developer, you have to learn the basics. And probably that answers my question, how do you differentiate someone, whether it's a good bubble developer or a bad one is someone that understands the software logic, someone that understands database is someone that understands all of those things. And one that is just following tutorials, creating bad interfaces, creating bad, but the basis and small application.

Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 10:39
Thank you. I love that. I have a question about that. But first, my devil's advocate question, which is, you said, All founders should look into no code, focus on it, use it? It's very important. It's beautiful. So, you know, the devil's advocate question is, is no code the fad. Because what's happening is a lot of the teachers of courses about no code are noticing that a lot of the excitement that used to be about no code is moving now to Biz Ops, and automation, and all that. So where people just excited about no code, and now it became not the hot thing, and they move to something else. And then therefore no code risks being a smaller space in people's mind or in the usefulness or in how popular it becomes, or do you believe that no code is here to stay? It will keep growing. And those people who are excited are the people who are using templates anyway. And therefore they were not making any big difference.

Marina Trajkovska 11:47
So it goes the same as with crypto, I believe, is it an excitement is it just the faith in this world is going to be abandoned? And the truth is no, I mean, bubble, and not just follow, like a lot of NoCo tools have been around since I don't know, like, maybe 15 years ago, I believe that even Microsoft had a Website Builder tool with which was just drag and drop. WordPress is an open tool. And it's not just something that came out of nowhere, everyone started using no code, it's very trendy, it's super cool. I think the people, the people brought it to life, like the need for building something quickly for testing ideas quickly, brought bottle to life. Even though welo existed, like 10 years ago, people were so into building things with code. But I think that as you build, you learn that you need to be faster in this world, you need to test your ideas much faster. And that's where bubble comes in. It gives you really good advantage in front of competitors, to test ideas to move quickly to, like, feel not so painfully. Which is great. And one other thing, which definitely reassures me that this is for this is here to stay is the community itself. And not just the bubble community, but the whole like No COVID community. It's amazing. It's like nothing. I mean, as you mentioned in my intro, like I've been part of a lot of communities that Google developers want. It's one of the largest communities in the world. And this one is, I believe, like the most supportive, the most like helpful community I've ever been part of. And I think that's the main reason why Bumble is becoming more and more popular, why people are more and more encouraged to try it out to use it. Yeah, I think it's here to stay. Definitely.

Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 14:11
Thank you. I love that answer. You mentioned as well, that someone to become a good no code maker or user of those tools, they should understand the basics and logic of software. Well, the promise or the hype of no code is that any person can use it. Any person can be that person. Do you believe that? Or do you believe even though no code tools are easy, they're not easy enough for a layperson or any person to become a no code maker and on the second hand to to ask you, you are now a founder. You could have made a lot of money or hopefully a lot of money be in a bubble Dev, offering your services to others. When Why becoming a founder? Where you're taking a risk to lose it all? Or did you always feel that if you're building for yourself, you're giving yourself more of an opportunity and a chance compared to working for other people? And tell me like the whole perspective, as a bubble Dev, did you experience the normal freelance, you know, situation where you have clients, and then no clients and then clients and then no clients? Or because there is a lot of excitement? You always had a lot of clients? How was it?

Marina Trajkovska 15:31
Yeah, so that was a big dilemma for me. Why, but I don't know, it's more, it's more natural or natural for me to be to have something of my own, like, do you do build something from zero to do the moon. I did work as a freelancer and the pays amazing. Especially when you come from a place like here, it gives you an ability to live anywhere in the world and not care about money. That's great. That's awesome. I became a very, very good mobile developer in the last, I don't know, like 12 months. And yeah, that gives me an advantage of choosing jobs and then choosing clients. And that's all great. But it kind of started to give me to give me like anxiety. Because there were a lot of deadlines to meet. I had a lot of clients in one month, I had a lot of cold, I had a lot of deadlines, I had to like it was all just crazy, because the demand for other developers right now is huge. Like, and I couldn't say no to anyone. Because it always comes with a big paycheck. And I was like obsessed with building obsessed with creating things. And I couldn't stop myself. And then I came to a point. But and I also worked on a side project, which was buyer. And I came to a point where we got the investment from on deck. And I was like, okay, I can balance this do. I can work as a bubble developer for like, whether it's going to be freelance whether it's going to be another company, and I can work on file. And I definitely crashed. Like I crashed big time. I haven't had a burnout like that in. I don't know how long I think I never had a burnout like that. For two weeks, I couldn't open my laptop, I couldn't think of doing anything. And being a founder, it does have a lot of challenges. But it definitely gives you the freedom to build and be creative, and also manage your deadlines. I'm not saying I'm working less, working more. But I don't know just not having that pressure of having like, like predefined deadlines or you have to deliver this to your clients, otherwise you won't get paid. That stress is out of the picture at the moment. I'm definitely loving what I do. Like I love building things with Pablo, like, I don't know if I see this too often, but do. And being a founder is giving me the freedom to see like to plan my own day to plan my own time to work on something that I love to do. How do I say like to innovate? Right now we're in the space of pivoting the app, which is scary, but also awesome, because we've finally like found something that really works for us as founders. But also like we found this huge pain point for companies and we're excited to give them a tool that will solve that. That feeling cannot be replaced with anything like with any job with any freelancing gig that pays you like I don't know how many money. That thing is. It's

Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 19:57
priceless. That sounds wonderful. So can you speak about Biyo, what's unique about it any good news and how it's solving a pain point for companies as you spoke about,

Marina Trajkovska 20:10
that's a new thing. So, as many of people know that that came across Biyo. Biyo is, right now, portfolio builder, if you are a maker, if you create software if you create things, and if you do a lot of things such as myself, like, as you mentioned before, like communities and founding everything, you have the ability to create this one page where you can put everything and integrate all of the favorite apps that you use, you can integrate them in one place. And that is great and gives you also something that not a lot of portfolios offer is you can create different versions of your portfolio. So for example, when you apply for a job, for a bubble job, you can give them one portfolio. And if you apply for a speaking conference, you can send another one. And it's going to be one base for your portfolio, but different versions, which is great, it can get like really personal, you can attach a personal Phaedo introduce yourself, hi, Aziz. Or if I'm applying a bubble have a law like that. And that product, for me personally, it's all the big issue, because me as a person that does a lot of things, I needed a place like that. But the data show something different. We are testing Biyo for three weeks now, I believe. And we came across this interesting portfolios, which were not created from people, they were created by people. They're not a personal portfolio, they are more like a company portfolio. And alike, Okay, interesting. And we, we discovered that a lot of the companies are using their Biyo portfolios as seals to, for example, if I have a client, user client, I'm in the sales process. And I need to give them something like documents, I need to give them links, I need to share data with them. They're using Biyo to send one link and add everything there. And that's very, very interesting. And like, okay, so we found this really cool signal in the data that solves a big pain point for clients, we spoke with those people. And they told us the they need a place where they can, that it's not an email thread, and anywhere, it's not a bunch of PDFs sent in those threads. And they need a place where they the data doesn't get lost. Like, okay, let's think about it. And we came up with this idea to build to be use all of the elements from Biyo, it has a very similar structure of building a page, instead of like, I mean, Biyo itself is a NoCode tool. Like you, all you have to do is click these buttons and you have a page ready to be shared. Because of that idea, we're like, Okay, can we add documents to to Biyo, can we add like PDFs? Can we add Excel spreadsheets or Word documents, stuff like that? Like, I dug a little bit. And there's doubt with bubble, it is possible. So right now, we are creating this thing called micro portal. That gives the ability for sales teams to be more efficient in their communication with future clients. So all they have to do is to give them this one link, just as a Biyo portfolio. Give them one link with everything in it. And they can collaborate on it. They can comment, they can assign tasks. They can assign people to those tasks. And the the great thing about it is it gives you analytics. So it's not just an email, and if it open, it's open because that link like it's not that someone downloaded the PDF that I send. Right now you have the ability to see that, like you have a dashboard for your client. You can see when they opened the The link that you said, where they click, have they clicked on the PDF that you wanted them to click? Have they completed the tasks? And they can also like get reminders, which is also something that it's very useful to the sales teams. And yeah, we're looking to publish this next week, probably or end of this one. Yeah, it's Monday. So probably end of this one. Because we're building with bubble again. And yeah, super fast. And it's great.

Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 25:33
I love that that's the entrepreneurial adventure that you said cannot be replaced by being any kind of developer or doing anything else. And its discovery is like pieces of the puzzle. And everything, you spoke about Biyo, you spoke about yourself, everything that you're doing, but really, you did that, can you say, a small summary page? Or whatever of what is Biyo where people can go to use it? How can it be useful to any of the listeners, or anybody currently? Or maybe like you said, Soon, you will publish it in a different way. So use that value proposition instead? Since things are changing? And if people want to learn about you, what's the best place for them to go? Is it Twitter, and I will write it in the description is it LinkedIn, just share all the details.

Marina Trajkovska 26:30
Luckily, Biyo is not going anywhere is going to be as as another tool that we created, we're not going to shut it down, or anything like that. And I do think it's very useful. So Biyo is something that will help you land your dream job, something that will make you send like personal portfolio, like personalized, something that will get you instantly connected with the receiver of your portfolio. And it's not just another resume, it's not a LinkedIn profile. It's something that it's very personal for you. You can attach all sorts of stuff there, you can attach a video. So it's more engaging for the audience. And I think you should definitely give it a try and see how it turns out for you. For me, personally, it actually got me one freelance gig and one full time job. So that was a good thing. But yeah, for the other thing for micro portal, yeah. For micro portal, I think we'll have to wait like, a couple of days to announce it. Officially. And yeah, people can definitely, I think the best place to find and to see what I do is Twitter.

Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 28:00
Thank you. Yes, like you said, I recommend her to everybody to test and use and try out Biyo, as well as of course, of course PRICESIO, which is what makes this podcast even possible. PROCESIO is the modern low code, no code platform for advanced automation and creating an enterprise grade back end for your software. You can even integrate it with bubble as a back end builder, you can request access to a totally free account at PROCESIO.app. And for those who have higher business needs, there is a very generous 50% discount code which is BETTER50OFF one word all in capital letters more information in the description, Marina. This was my pleasure, my honor. My privilege. I wish you a lot of excitement on this journey on this adventure. A lot of great news, a lot of evolutions and revolutions. And I wish you a great day

Marina Trajkovska 29:06
Same. Thank you Aziz for inviting me. This was awesome. Thank you again