"No-code is great for simpler end-user apps. Low-code is for example where you have a form and approval workflow. They're not good for games, social and video. So you're not going to build a new Instagram on top of them."
You know that feeling when you're buying or creating new software in your company and you tell yourself that this time you won't be bending the SW, but it will be bending to you? And it still turns out differently again. You bend. Again and again.
Dalibor Houfek always been a developer, his path led from a corporation to a start-up. To Jetveo. Dalibor is co-founder and CEO.
With a team of developers, he was annoyed with how the software was being created. Coding everything over and over again from scratch and creating databases. There has to be a better way! So they thought and came up with the low-code platform Jetveo. From developers to developers. Simplifying work. Programming 4.0 was born. You don't have to do the basics over and over again. And complex programming in a few clicks. Software adapts to you, not you to it.
Jetveo is an application development platform that will automate and streamline your company's processes. No more years of development. But a matter of days. Ideal for enterprise applications such as CRM, ERP, help desks and more.
Doesn't it sound like it's from other worlds? I thought so too, and so I asked Dalibor further in Zaheh
🔸 What is Programming 4.0?
🔸 Why are low-code and no-code platforms popular?
🔸 When is it a good idea not to consider platforms?
🔸 How is the platform perceived by the professional public?
🔸 What are the main barriers to platform adoption?
And as an added bonus, download the Jetveo guide below to simplify your journey to digitalising your business.
BONUS
When is a low-code platform appropriate? (Bonus code: LOWCODEOK)
TRANSCRIPT OF THE INTERVIEW
Martin Hurych
Hello. I'm Martin Hurych and this is Zažeh. This Ignition will be about a recent trend. If you haven't heard of low-code and no-code platforms, it's like you haven't. That's why I've invited today's guest, Dalibor Houfek, CEO of Jetveo. Hi, Dalibor.
Dalibor Houfek
Hi, Martin. Hello, listeners and viewers.
What is Programming 4.0?
Martin Hurych
I've heard of Industry 4.0, I've heard of Web 3.0. I found 4.0 programming on your site, so how do I imagine it?
Dalibor Houfek
It's such a bazboletale. We're trying to do the same thing that was in the industry, because originally you started with some manual production at the belt, and gradually some robots, automation started to come in and it became more efficient. So we're trying to change the way applications are developed as well. With apps, it's still about that manual activity. There's a programmer, he has a new project, he has to start from scratch, install some database, connect to that, take the data, then display it to make it responsive and secure, and finally scale it. There are a lot of manual activities that take a very long time, and we decided to automate those activities. What robots do for industry, we replicated for programmers.
What was the path to Jetveo.io?
Martin Hurych
When I read the prep, I laughed so hard when you described the corporate part of your life, because I went through the exact same thing. You write in there that corporate is about a gold card from the airlines, a platinum card from the bank, and a red card from your own wife. I can confirm, my wife must have a halo over her head that she endured with me. So, let's start with a description of how you got into corporate and then what lured you away from the golden cage and into startups and building your own Jetveo.
Dalibor Houfek
That's pretty simple. I started out as a programmer, so I have some technical background. After about 8, 10 years of development, I got into ABB, where I started developing configurators and specific applications. Gradually, I found that I didn't have that much time for that development and I was more training other colleagues. So suddenly I found that I had a team of people all over the world and I was doing more project management, training and organization. The development itself went by the wayside. So I gradually started to learn what project management means and did some training. Corporate is great, it's relatively relaxing, you get to travel, meet new people. Unfortunately, you don't get to enjoy the benefits of the airline because there's no time. Eventually you get to a level where you have enough money and you can't use any more, so then you're left with your wife and you have to get your act together to make it work. So that was kind of a turning point.
What is Jetveo.io?
Martin Hurych
Jetveo je low-code platforma. Říkám to správně?
Dalibor Houfek
Yes, we are a sweet spot between no-code and classic development. A low-code platform means that you program a little bit and try to automate some of the activities. With no-code platforms, they hide the programming behind scripting, so it looks like you're not programming anything, you're just scripting something, but in reality it's even worse.
Why are low-code and no-code platforms popular?
Martin Hurych
Let's break down where their popularity is currently coming from. Many of us are probably familiar with Integromat, today Make. They have a bunch of variations, there are programs like Tabidoo and lots of others. Where is their popularity coming from at the moment, where did they come from?
Dalibor Houfek
It started a while back. If you take WordPress or Wix, it's all about simplifying the work and getting some results for minimum effort. Plus, they're repeatable activities that you can automate in some simple way. The reason it's pretty easy is because you have a shortage of people, a shortage of developers, it takes a long time. Every 5 years the number of devs doubles and it's still not enough. I don't know if you've ever hired devs, but it's quite an experience. When a new company comes up and wants to make an e-shop or an app, they can either do it the classic way or go for low-code, where it is already partially done for them. It comes at the expense of some flexibility, but then it's done in a fraction of the time. More and more companies now have to go digital. There are companies that have grown a lot now and suddenly find that they're still emailing things to each other, they have a big excel spreadsheet where they record everything, and they have to find ways to keep up the pace of growth with digital. These companies don't have a lot of options. Either they'll take some solution from IBM or Oracle that they'll pay big bucks for and have a hard time implementing it, or they'll hire a team of devs and spend a few years building it together. But the easiest way is to take some low-code, no-code platform and tailor it.
How is it possible that development on platforms is multiples shorter?
Martin Hurych
You wrote something in preparation that is unbelievable to me, as an amateur looking in from the outside. I of course know and use Integromat through partners who help me with it, however I have very amateurish integrations and automations. You say that the speedup of application development is from orders of magnitude of months and years to hours and weeks. That sounds too good to be true. What is the buried dog?
Dalibor Houfek
Just look at the activities a dev has to do to get into business logic. That's what you're paying him to do to help you with your business. He has to do a lot of ballast around it, figure out how to secure it, how to scale it, how to throw it somewhere in the cloud, and so on. Those are the activities that are repetitive and easy to automate. The dog is buried in the fact that most low-code platforms do it for devs who are then able to focus on the business logic. That means it allows them to speed up development. Plus, if you write that business logic in some framework that helps you visualize it, and then you have easier interaction with the customer, you can really speed up development tenfold, maybe even more.
When is it a good idea not to consider platforms?
Martin Hurych
As a business owner, when should I consider something like a low-code or no-code platform and when should I hear warning signs that it's no longer for me?
Dalibor Houfek
That's a good question. I have maybe a bit of a misconception of no-code platforms as more of a web application where a lot of people go and you want to have some simple workflow, or maybe a payment gateway. It could be an e-shop, for example, or some simple service. For low-code platforms, it's more about some internal applications, some backend, some logic. It's great for when you have forms in some approval workflow, some integrations, and you don't have to do much fancy graphics there. What I don't think it's entirely appropriate for, we certainly don't have a magic wand to convert your legacy application that's hard to maintain, and suddenly you'd get all the benefits of low- code. Unfortunately, you can't do that. However, you can do it from scratch. There are other times when it's not entirely appropriate, like when you have something very multimedia, graphics- based, or some computer games. Our platform is not suitable for mobile applications either. We are not able to generate a mobile app for Android and for iPhone, however, it can be used at least as a backend. So you can have all the logic and data on the backend within the platform, and then you can either make some single-page app in React or a native mobile app and you can mess around with the graphics there.
Why develop your own solutions and not rely on ready-made apps?
Martin Hurych
In the spring of this year, Filip Dřímalka and I were talking about Apple registering the slogan "There's an app for that". That means there's already an app for everything you want to do. Why develop your own? Why develop your own solution when very likely someone somewhere in the world has already done something similar?
Dalibor Houfek
I don't know how you find an app for your particular case. Maybe you want something simple and you can't find an app that fully suits you. That way you have flexibility in what your requirements are. Do you want to integrate it into Cool, do you want to have it in some reports, do you want customers to be able to come to it? That way you have clearly defined requirements for your specific business. It's possible that an app already exists, but I don't know if anyone has the patience to look for them, or if there's an easy way to find the right one. I've only had fun with such a stupid service. I wanted a simple email reader and to have some sort of calendar to note appointments. The number of options out there is incredible and out of a lack of virtue I ended up with Microsoft Outlook on mobile because all the others were even worse. If I had to search for apps for all other activities in a similar way, I would go crazy. Testing often takes more time than actual use. It's also about customers sometimes not knowing what they want. Then, when they test an app, they see what makes sense and what doesn't. That's the great thing about low-code. You start with some simple prototype so you don't have to have a detailed analysis up front and you can start with something simple that helps visualize the client's requirements. He can then immediately see what makes sense to him, where he had a slightly different idea and what he would like to work a little differently.
Martin Hurych
When you take something that's finished, you often have to bend the company to what's finished, whereas here you're bending what you're creating to the company. That's probably the biggest advantage there, right?
Dalibor Houfek
It's true. After all, that's why you have such a big problem integrating complex systems. They can do everything, but you spend half the time understanding what there is to do and the other half in integrating it into your environment.
How is the platform perceived by the professional public?
Martin Hurych
I have been to three implementations of different ARP systems in my corporate era. We always said that the next one would be better, that we wouldn't give in, and that they would have to bend it to our will. But in the end, we always did the vendor-specific submission. What is the perception of the professional community with respect to low-code, no-code platforms? From the outside looking in, and we were talking about this with Ed Hlava here, a lot of times those orthodox programmers treat Integromat as a toy for amateurs. Is that changing, or is it still the same?
Dalibor Houfek
I can't judge how it is with other platforms. But when we show our platform to hardcore developers, it's usually skeptical at first. They think it's just another clicker. But then when they find out that they can go from clicking and no-code to the programming they're used to, they usually change their minds. They don't have to do a workflow in some visual editor, but they can write a few commands or a simple condition. That's why we generally get a lot of positive responses. It's more flexible than they expected and they can do interesting things.
Martin Hurych
Among the younger ones, I observe that they do not know which language to choose, which direction to take and where the future lies. Again, seen from the outside, there are perhaps more languages than there are languages on earth. Is it the case that if I were a young aspiring programmer, I should bet on some low-code platform to gain a competitive advantage?
Dalibor Houfek
Your end state is that you should learn to code. It's a question of which way you're gonna get there. You can go and start studying theoretical computer science so that you have an understanding of what algorithms are and so on. Then you start writing some simple application in Java or C and it's going to take you an awfully long time to understand how it works and to spit out some results. You're going to miss the satisfaction of the activity because you're not going to see the result. If you go through a low-code platform, at least with us you start with a simple application that you can just slap on and then you'll gradually run into limitations. You want a certain box to only be visible under certain circumstances, so you put some simple code in there. Then you'll find that you want to integrate it into something. So you'll get to the programming from the other side. You see the result, you see how it works, you want to tweak something a little bit, and suddenly you find yourself writing code and starting to program.
Martin Hurych
But that often means letting go of your own ego. What I observe is that every programmer often writes their own libraries from scratch. Anything that's been written a long time ago, they don't trust because it's a competitive environment. I'm actually giving myself away here. So how much do we have to trust each other to start programming in your environment? Where do I check to see how you've written it, what it does, and if it's going to let me down?
Dalibor Houfek
You won't. It's always about some trust. But when you look at the whole stack, you have to trust the cloud providers, the database vendor, you're usually using some frameworks, some libraries, so you have to have that trust there. If someone pays you and gives you the time to develop every library by yourself, so you have a dream job, you can play and try what you like. But I'm afraid you can't be an expert in everything. If you're going to do a simple thing like security, user authentication, key exchange and so on, you have to study an incredible amount of material to be an expert at it. There are ways to alleviate this mistrust. Within our platform, we allow applications to run on your setpoint, so you have the feeling that you can control the application and that it's running on you. Then we also offer a skin backup of our entire platform. So if something were to happen and we were unable to continue with that platform, you get the serial codes of the entire platform as part of that backup. By having our platform ultimately act as a code generator, we are able to generate the source code for the final application. Worst case scenario, you can then run it in Visual Studio and continue development in the classic way.
How do the platforms stand in the Czech Republic and the world?
Martin Hurych
Now you've picked up my last nagging question, because what I'm watching in my bubble is partly distrust. There are relatively many platforms, all backed by a startup, and not every startup has a history and is well invested. What happens if they shut it down? In your case, you actually said that. I get the complete source code and then god willing. Let's look at it in a business way. What is the situation in adoption among programmers and among end potential users and customers in the Czech Republic and Slovakia and in the surrounding world? Does it differ? It is said that the Czechs are one of the fastest in the IT world. Is this confirmed or do you have a different experience?
Dalibor Houfek
At least in the Czech Republic, I know of three or four other platforms that are trying to do something similar. They have a slightly different case that it's either more on frandent or more on some internal processes. I think there's an IT superpower emerging here in the Czech Republic and it's starting to take hold. However, I still feel that at least on the customer side and on the programmer side, it's more about some market education. A lot of people don't even know that there is such a possibility and they are still mentally stuck somewhere 10, 20 years back. They don't know that suddenly they can have these applications many times faster and that there's another way to do it.
What are the main barriers to platform adoption?
Martin Hurych
That led us seamlessly into the second part that we often have in Zazen, which is the shop. So how do you educate the market to learn about you and start using you? When you go to a customer, who do you go to first and what are the blockers, when do they tell you they're not there yet?
Dalibor Houfek
It's very hard, it's really about the education. It's important to talk to people about the fact that something like this exists, to write articles, to explain what low-code is, to show programmers that applications can be made in other ways. When you go to a potential customer, you have to talk to the dev to see the value there and be willing to use it. Because if he's going to sabotage you, it's not going to work in the long run. So these technical people have to be willing to use it and at the same time management has to want to implement it in some way. The problem is that you, as an IT manager, have some ego, so the bigger your team, the better for you. When you're in a larger corporation and you're the CTO, your job is to deliver projects that are already clearly planned, so some innovation and low-code implementation isn't really an option. So you can go to some CFO and push it through finance. You show them that they don't have to spend
millions on development and it can be done with one or two juniors who can do it many times faster. Recently, even in corporations, innovation managers have started to emerge, whose task is to take the company further. So that's another interesting contact through which this can be addressed.
Martin Hurych
That means that by the nature of things, you're primarily going against your fellow believers. Isn't that right?
Dalibor Houfek
We came across it unceremoniously with software houses. We figured they would be able to handle dozens of clients instead of one, deliver in record time, and have some competitive advantage. However, we found that they weren't that interested because most software houses operate on a body shop basis. Their goal is to keep their people for as long as possible. So when we come to them and say they can get the job done in a few days instead of 9 months, they don't like it because it's great, but they don't make that much money.
Martin Hurych
This is not just an IT issue, this is unfortunately a characteristic of Czechs that we settle for little and we shop points to someone else. When I see a modern assembly plant, it's not much different than what we used to do when we assembled cable harnesses for the Germans for Volkswagen. The young guys don't see it yet, but it would be nice if we dared to do more. I'm sorry to hear that. How's it going out there? Is the situation more favourable there?
Dalibor Houfek
Our first feedback from Germany was that it was too good to be true. When we had our first project there, they laughed at us that it was impossible for us to deliver so fast for this money. Based on that, we probably quadrupled or quintupled the price, but they still laugh at us for being cheap. This client is large, manages hundreds of buildings, has dozens of employees, several contractors and various partners. The application we supplied would normally cost €1,000,000. We delivered it to them within 10,000 euros with a minimum monthly fee. When these companies see how cheap it is, they think it can't work, it can't be secure, or there must be some problem. If we tell them it won't cost a million, but half a million, they'll be happy they saved half the budget and they'll have confidence in you because they paid for the quality. That's the perception in the west.
Martin Hurych
What makes you think you're not gonna get more expensive?
Dalibor Houfek
We have found that the price is very subjective. There are companies that get value from an app somewhere completely different than other companies. We struggled a lot with how to set the pricing and what to calculate it by. We wanted to calculate it by some sort of utilization, by the number of commands, or by some crazy technical metrics. But then we got to the point where it was too complicated for the customer to understand how much it was going to cost. So we set it up by the number of end users of the final application. You can have all the developers you want, but you pay for the end users. It's just that this method is not really suitable for companies that have some simple application with hundreds of thousands of users. So we've got it down to 50 users. We also talk to companies and try to understand what it is, what it's worth to them, how much it will cost and tailor the price to them. It may ultimately be by the number of users, by some reshar, by utilization, and so on. So that's a way for us to price and to set that price. Again, it's about individual understanding of the customer.
What is Jetveo.io's business model?
Dalibor Houfek
Our business model is SaaS. For us, the intercomponent for development is absolutely minimal. Plus, as Jetveo, we don't do application development. We have partners for that, so we try to involve them in the development and for us, the primary revenue is the SaaS subscription from the end users who pay a monthly amount.
Martin Hurych
When a viewer or listener desires to be a partner, what should they theoretically do?
Dalibor Houfek
Go to our site, there we have a big become a partner button, email us and we will help you get trained. We'll ideally do the first project with you, so we can make sure you understand how to use the platform to its full potential. We'll do some customer analysis so we know if it's the right fit, and after the first project, you're usually able to continue development on your own.
What are the visions of Jetveo.io?
Martin Hurych
When I invite you here in a year or two, where would you like to be? What are you gonna tell me in a year or two, where you and Jetvee are going?
Dalibor Houfek
We have big plans. Now we want to conquer Europe, we don't dare to go to America yet because it will take a lot of money and we don't have any contacts there. So hopefully in a year or two we'll be number 1 in Europe and we'll be looking at the rest of the world.
Summary
Martin Hurych
I wish you that from the bottom of my heart. Let's close with what will also be part of the bonus we agreed on. Let's summarize in a few sentences when low-code is and isn't. Again, this is exactly what will be available for you to download on my website.
Dalibor Houfek
I'll start a little more generally. For no-code platforms, I would recommend something that is very end-user oriented, where you don't have that much complex logic. Low-code is more suitable for internal systems where you have some forms, workflows, integrations and you want to customize it somehow. You can also have it as a backend for your single-page app, or a mobile app where you can already have custom graphics. It can be to use it as a very flexible headless CMS, where you have a backend, you can put text into it and then display it somewhere on a blog or on the web. We really can't magically convert your existing application, which is hard to maintain and still runs on DOS. One client had an application that was running on Windows 95 under a desk somewhere, so not even in the cloud. That was interesting. We can't help you with that, however, if you decide that you want to modernize your legacy application that you have your entire critical business on, that's pretty cool.
Another no go for these platforms are games, or some social apps, videos and more. So another Instagram doesn't quite make sense to build on top of that, but anything where you have internal processes, approvals or notifications is great for that.
Martin Hurych
I would ask just for us amateurs, if this would come with examples, because I know you have examples of typical applications on the web that you can do in this, so that viewers and listeners have an idea of when to call you. That was great. Thank you so much for visiting and I wish you the best.
Dalibor Houfek
Martin, thank you very much.
Martin Hurych
Today was about programming and almost programming, amateurishly speaking. As I've mentioned several times, a bonus on when low-code and no-code platforms are appropriate for you will be available for download on my website, www.martinhurych.com/zazeh. Of course, if you get a burning desire to try something like this, contact Dalibor. My mistake for not asking for his contact information, but I'm sure you can find him on their website, jetveo.io, or on his LinkedIn profile. And lest I forget, I'm definitely asking for subscriptions and likes, either on YouTube or on your podcast app. All I can do is keep my fingers crossed and wish you success, thanks.