Welcome to the latest installment of SaaSlife SPOTLIGHT, where we shine a light on innovative SaaS companies and their leaders. Today, we are thrilled to feature Darragh Mc Kay, CEO and Founder of Noloco.
Darragh shared insights into his founder journey, the challenges of building a startup, and the exciting future of Noloco.
Welcome to SaaSlife Spotlight
Dan: Welcome to the latest edition of SaaS Life Spotlight. It's my pleasure to welcome Darragh McKay, founder and CEO of Noloco. How are you today, Darragh?
Darragh McKay: Doing well, thanks, Dan. How are you?
Dan: Yeah, I'm not too bad, actually. How's the wonderful world of founder and CEO of an emerging startup?
Darragh: It's always ups and downs, but it's busy, which I don't think I'd have it any other way, really. So, yeah, life's good.
Wearing Multiple Hats
Dan: How many hats do you think that you're wearing at the moment? I think my record's 15.
Darragh: I don't even know if I could put a number on it. I think so often you discover a new one each and every day, but too many, it probably doesn't count. I'm hoping to reduce the number of hats very soon.
Who are Noloco?
Dan: For anybody that's listening that isn't aware of Noloco, can you give an overview of the organization, the service you provide, as though you're speaking to a 10-year-old in its simplest form? What is it that you do?
Darragh: We have a product that lets other businesses build the different tools and systems and workflows that they need to run their business. If they need a custom project management system, they can use Noloco to do so. They can build everything from the data that they store in those projects and tasks to the interface, the app that updates those data, the projects and tasks, all the way down to the permissions and the automations. So, it's really those four layers. There's a data layer, an app customization layer, a permissions layer, and an automations layer. And combined, they're kind of four big Lego blocks that our customers use to build really awesome apps. And that's it.
Dan: I imagine it allows any organization, if there's a glaring skills gap or they're finding themselves almost at a little bit of a shortfall product-wise, they can plug in Noloco almost immediately and it helps them with that layer.
Darragh: Exactly. Millions of small and medium-sized businesses don't have access to engineers at all. And even in massive companies, there's big teams that have no access to engineering resources. So, they look to platforms like ours to plug that gap, build the custom tools that they need that engineers can easily build, but non-technical teams just can't. They need things like client portals, internal tools, things to manage billing, payroll, timesheets, projects, tasks—everything that a business needs to do on an ad hoc basis.
The Origin Story of Noloco
Dan: What is it that identified this area for you as this is where we need to be, this is what I want to do, this is what I believe the gap is? Was there a moment?
Darragh: There were a few moments along the way. I'm a software engineer, my co-founder at the time was not a software engineer, he was a product manager at other tech startups. We were discussing the tools I had available to me to build tools for my team with kind of low code tools. He didn't have any of these tools at his disposal. We identified that there wasn't anything out there that could do that. There were ways of building websites without code, and complicated ways of building proper web apps without code. Nothing in the middle. So, we started building a better way to build web apps without code. We moved slightly into custom tools, internal tools, client portals that are less broad than the original vision of any web app. Our customers who got the most value were ones who were just trying to make a better way to update and manage their data across their teams. They imported their data, spun up an interface on top of it, controlled permissions, and automations. We designed our product around that thesis.
Transitioning and Pivoting
Dan: How did that come to be? What was the feedback loop that allowed you to pivot quite comfortably?
Darragh: We built this incredibly flexible product, the premise of which could do almost anything. The reality was it was very difficult to do almost anything. We had a successful product launch on Product Hunt, came second of the day with something like 900 votes. We reviewed the metrics, usage, and feedback. We realized this isn't what people want. It was humbling. Despite maybe hype, on the inside, it might be just falling apart. So, we needed to change this dramatically. We took away a lot of control to make the product simpler to use. We gave you less flexibility but had a much more focused goal in mind. Customers weren't grasping how to use the product because it was too complicated.
A Case Study: PressWorks
Dan: Do you have a perfect case study of where a customer has used Noloco and it solved the exact challenge for them?
Darragh: Absolutely. PressWorks is a multimedia production agency based in Oslo, Norway. They produce videos, ad campaigns, films, all sorts of multimedia for customers. Traditional tools like Asana, Trello, and Jira are complete, but a multimedia company is different than a tech startup. They have projects with multiple scenes, shoots, cast, directors, equipment, locations, and shots. PressWorks came to Noloco, and they already had a lot set up in Airtable, but it didn't accommodate the way they wanted to work with external contractors and different parts of their team. They built a powerful app to manage their multimedia production agency in Noloco. Creating reports used to take them a few days, now it takes them just three hours. They've had huge adoption and have been a customer of ours for about two years.
Looking Forward: The Future of Noloco
Dan: Looking at Noloco where you are now, nearly three years to the day, where would you like to see Noloco in 12 months?
Darragh: From a product perspective, one of our goals is to be the platform that can integrate with any of your existing data. We have five or six integrations with Airtable, Smartsheet, Google Sheets, and SQL databases. I want to expand that into CRM, Salesforce, billing data like Stripe, Xero, QuickBooks, and ultimately that long tail of integrations where small to medium-sized businesses have their data. I see a huge opportunity for us with AI, lowering the barrier for entry by adding an AI co-pilot to help structure their app and data. We're enabling non-technical people to do something technical, and AI can make that easier. We're a remote company, hiring amazing people across Ireland, UK, Europe. We'll be growing the team, hiring across engineering, marketing, and customer success. I think we'll see some growth in the team in the next 12 months, filling gaps in customer success and marketing. To do all that amazing AI stuff, we'll hire brilliant engineers.
Personal Growth and Leadership
Dan: Looking at yourself as a leader, is there any particular growth you'd like to see from yourself in 12 months?
Darragh: To put more context, 12 months ago, I was the CTO, charged with engineers and engineering, spending 60 to 80% of my day writing code, which I still love. Now it's 2% of my day writing code, the rest is firefighting, customer success issues. I'm figuring out how to be a good CEO, manage the whole team, not just engineering work. As I hire more non-engineers, that's more challenging. I need to improve setting time aside to focus on the bigger picture, planning for the future, hiring for key roles in advance. Hiring takes a lot of time, so figuring out who you want to hire in terms of skills, experience, geography, and pay is crucial.
Dan: You're preaching to the choir on that. Looking externally at what you need in advance is what I recommend to any CEO or founder. At least you've already identified it, which is always a great thing, right? It's the first step.
Hiring at Noloco
Dan: So speaking of hiring, if anybody's listening and you've mentioned a few different areas, what sort of skills are you looking for in engineers?
Darragh: We've had great success hiring engineers so far, from big companies and smaller startups. The main thing I look for is their ability to problem solve, think about both the customer and the solution. We've seen the best success in engineers who can think about what the customer wants and how we can build that. Noloco might seem simple, just tables and data and forms, but the complexity is in generalizing that. It's a fun challenge for engineers. How do I build this thing that the customer actually defines, providing the tools and building blocks? You need a good understanding of both backend data models and frontend work. We hire full stack, even if you have a preference, not being afraid of jumping into the other side. People who like interesting challenges and can think abstractly. Our project management style is light, often tickets are one or two lines of context, and you infer the rest. As we grow, that'll change, but for now, it's intuition we're hiring for.
Dan: Ultimately, everything they're building is allowing accessibility to non-technical people, so you're almost second-guessing what that technical ability is going to be. Everybody wants customer success, right?
Darragh: Exactly. Exactly.
Noloco's Company Culture
Dan: How would you describe the culture at Noloco?
Darragh: Culture is incredibly important. I care from HubSpot, which cares deeply about their culture. There's no point starting a business if you don't care about the people you work with and how you work together. Hiring or starting your own business means you get to choose who you work for. We're a remote organization, mostly based in Ireland. I recently moved to Spain for a better lifestyle. We work async with a short daily standup for a quick update, important for checking in and remembering we're part of a team. It's asynchronous work where everyone knows their goals and can hop on a call if they need a hand. It's working well so far.
How to Apply to Noloco
Dan: How best would someone interested in joining Noloco apply for a role?
Darragh: We have job postings on our website, Noloco.io. There's none currently open, but we'll have some interesting roles opening up in the next few weeks or months. Keep an eye on there. I'll also post about them on my LinkedIn when they're live.
Advice for Aspiring SaaS Entrepreneurs
Dan: Final question for anybody thinking about setting up a SaaS business, what would your key pieces of advice be?
Darragh: Key pieces of advice: Get a co-founder. It's a tough journey, having someone with the same goals and commitment is crucial. Balance your skills—one good at marketing and business, the other at technical side. Iterate as fast as possible. Listen to your customers. Find a way to get feedback. We found our first customer on Reddit, might be Twitter or LinkedIn messages. Ask for advice instead of trying to sell. Iterate on feedback quickly but have a goal in mind.
Dan: That's brilliant. Thanks very much. I think everybody listening will find that useful.
Dan: Thanks for your time, Darragh. I hope you're enjoying your time in Spain. I look forward to hearing and seeing more about Noloco's journey and growth.
Darragh: Thank you. Thanks for having me.
Dan: No problem. Thank you.
Conclusion
Darragh Mc Kay's leadership at Noloco demonstrates how a clear vision and adaptability can drive success in the SaaS industry, enabling non-technical teams to build custom tools effortlessly.
With exciting plans for AI integration and team expansion, Noloco is set to make an even bigger impact in the coming year.
To listen to the full interview - please check it out! *Coming Soon*
Stay tuned for more insights from SaaSlife SPOTLIGHT as we continue to shine a light on the brightest stars in the industry.