My guest on the show today is Matthew Busel. Matthew is the cofounder of Whalesync - a no-code tool that lets you sync data across Airtable, Webflow, and Notion. Prior to Whalesync, Matthew worked in product management at various startups including MakeSpace and NextRev. He's also the author of Game Changer: How Augmented Reality Will Transform the World of Sports.
Guest Twitter: @WhalesyncData | Web: whalesync.com
Music: RYYZN
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Full Transcript
[00:00:00] All right. We're live Matthew, welcome to the show. It's so great to have you on. I think we're going to talk about some things that the no-code community will find really interesting and unique. And when we talk about website builders, we talk about freelancing and stuff like that all the time. But I think today we're, we're going to talk about something really unique.
[00:00:18] So I'm excited to get into it. First of all, welcome to the show.
[00:00:21] Well, thanks so much. So you're the co-founder of Whalesync and the way you described Whalesync is it's a NoCode tool that lets you sync data across multiple tools. So the likes of Airtable, Webflow, et cetera. what I equate it to is akin to middleware. We've seen be applied in a lot of software applications in the past.
[00:00:45] what's the difference between no code middleware and a middleware that you would deploy? If you were trying to sync up two different apps in the first place? Yeah, it's a really good comparison. you know, for us, I think we look at a lot of the [00:01:00] things that exist today and sort of, you know, develop a world and there's a lot of, sort of overlap between what needs to be built or is, you know, being built in the no-code space.
[00:01:09] And so certainly, yeah, one way to think about what we're building is sort of a really simple sort of middleware. but, the, sort of the difference between that, and I think what you see today and the middleware space is, we're building as a real time, two way sync. and so when you're connecting tools like Airtable, Webflow Notion, we make it really easy with no code to, not just send data from one place to another, and sort of a big batch, but to sort of stream data across your tools.
[00:01:37] So what's the difference between that and something like a zap or maybe a couple of zaps that I could build on Zapier or use make, or something like that to automate.
[00:01:49] Yeah. So Zapier make, we think there are just like incredible tools we use Zapier ourselves for a ton of different things. what they're really built for is sort of a, if this, then that [00:02:00] statements. So like if a record is updated and narrow table, then send that record update to Webflow. Or if someone.
[00:02:07] And submits a form, send them an email. what we're doing is a little bit different. So the idea is not that I want to chain together a few step automations, but I want to literally sync data. I want to have the same exact data set or shared data across tools. And so could you sort of architect a way to do that with Zapier and make yes.
[00:02:26] What we've seen with, you know, now dozens and dozens of people is, A, it's just difficult to do that. But B it's brittle because the tool wasn't built to handle sort of high density or complex levels of data syncing, which is essentially what, what Whalesync is built to do. Yeah. And I think the latency component becomes really critical.
[00:02:46] For example, a team is using data and the data needs to be in sync. Or you have data in an Airtable, database that's being then delivered to your website on Webflow, for example. And it needs to be real-time essentially. Right. [00:03:00] So I think there's, there's definitely something there. What, what made you stumble on this idea?
[00:03:05] Cause it's, it seems like something so obscure, to have a couple of questions on, on the idea, but let's start with what, what made you stumble on this specifically as an idea you want it to be. Yeah. So it's, it's really interesting. It's one of those things where it's, you start off with some very specific use case, and then you realize that this isn't sort of a one-off thing, it's it actually applies to tons of different use cases.
[00:03:27] But anyway, but yeah, just to give you the quick story, we, my co-founder and I started, investigating, sort of a different idea back in January of 2020. We were actually trying to build sort of like a stacker, like APIC are familiar with what that tool and in the course of doing user research for that.
[00:03:42] Oh yeah. So, you know, look, we, we built something sort of MVP there with that was, was okay. We, we went and spoke with, know about 50 different people that were in the no-code space and kind of threw this idea at them and tried to understand what they were building. And, the thing that just kept coming up.
[00:03:56] People are showing us their Zapier setups. So they're Integra mat [00:04:00] setups at the time. and that what they're doing is sort of architecting, a way to move data around from one tool to the other. it was something that took maybe like 15 steps Zaps that had taken them a week to build that was brittle and breaking all the time.
[00:04:12] And we just kept seeing this and we said, you know what? Why should it be so hard to share the data from one tool to the other, like the way that if you think about your, your iPhone, you know, you take a picture on your iPhone. It goes, it gets uploaded to the cloud. That picture is now available on your tablet, on your computer.
[00:04:28] You don't have to think about like architecting a zap to send it from your iPhone to your laptop, or to your tablet. And so, we basically said, you know, this is what this is, this should be the case with SaaS apps. and so. Airtable and Webflow, because that was the sort of use case we saw over and over again.
[00:04:42] But, we've now spoken to, you know, thousands of people that have all different kinds of tools that they want to connect. That's really interesting that you were actually researching, the, the space and discovered, what, what sounds like a very similar problem that multiple people were experiencing.
[00:04:58] What made you [00:05:00] zero in on the tools that you described there? Like, is this specifically available for Airtable Webflow and Notion and,and nothing else, or are you growing into other tools? What, what does that look like? And how did you know where to start.
[00:05:12] Yeah. So we, as you mentioned, we, you know, this wasn't unlike some of the other ideas that we had thought of a pursuing. This was like the opposite of something that we like thought up in our own heads and just thought it was a good idea. Like this was purely something that we discovered because we just saw it happening over and over again.
[00:05:29] and just sort of following that train. the use case that was most common across, you know, the dozens was both to, was they wanted to connect Airtable and Webflow, with which, you know, I'm sure you're very familiar with both those tools, but Webflow being this amazing front end website, builder, Airtable, being this amazing database, it's really natural for people to want to bring those two together.
[00:05:48] And so that's sort of where we started and what the product does today is it makes it super, super simple to connect to Airtable and Webflow. But from there again, we started just talking to more and more people, the no-code space, showing them this tool [00:06:00] and what we really want to do next is just connect all of the top no-code tools out there.
[00:06:03] So Notion bubble Coda, that's sort of the first step. and then beyond that, you know, we've now spoken to many companies and they are using a whole different set of SaaS apps, Shopify and Salesforce and HubSpot and whatnot. And so, that's where we're, we'll be going out. Yeah, I think the, the one use case that you outlined was just keeping data in sync from like an Airtable to a Webflow where it's being served on a website.
[00:06:26] but I think even from like a data migration standpoint, it's actually a pain for a team that decides to switch from Notion to Coda. For example, to actually go ahead and do that and migrate everything or have this kind of. Passed through timeframe where both systems are active at the same time, where they can test something out, et cetera.
[00:06:45] And I think that's one use case. where something like a Whalesync could come in and really help the team validate that idea. at the same time though, I also really see a threat in terms of, companies building native integrations, like [00:07:00] Notion has an API connector. so what's, what's kind of your way of coming at this where a company could build a native integration.
[00:07:07] Like tomorrow Airtable and Webflow could decide to work together and, and build some kind of a native integration. one of, one of the tools that I use to build websites, Dorik, they just launched an Airtable integration where you could, use the table ID and really port that data into a web interface.
[00:07:24] And they have like two or three ways of representing that on the website, on, on the. But w what's your way of thinking about this? because obviously there's a business that can be built here. A lot of founders get caught up in, you know, my ideas already thought up, thought up by someone else and it it's already, it already exists.
[00:07:42] Whereas that's actually validation and Zapier is a prime example, right? So something like a Zapier could very easily be dissolved by native integrations, but the fact that they built out so many of these connectors. Means that inherently, you know, they're an active business that continues to have legs and continues to grow.[00:08:00]
[00:08:00] So how are you coming at this? Yeah, no, I think that's a great question. for us, the, the idea of data syncing really goes beyond sort of the simple integrations. if a company wanted to build sort of a, a bespoke integration between let's say Airtable and Webflow. They definitely could. It's just, it is not a trivial task.
[00:08:19] You don't have to keep kind of multiple two sets of data in sync or eventually, you know, for us we'll be 3, 5, 10 different tools on second ones. that's, you know, a fairly complex undertaking, I'm sure at different tools that we partner with, we want to build sort of one off things again. Yeah.
[00:08:31] Airtable and Webflow, Notion and Airtable. Maybe they'll kind of partner and build up these one off things, but, to build across, you know, dozens of integrations, really deep bi-directional sync that handles a lot of edge cases, to do that as sort of a part-time thing is, is just not something we, we foresee a lot of these tools.
[00:08:48] Yeah. And a lot of the times that, when I talked to founders on the pod, I usually start by talking about, you know, their, their origin stories. And so on today, we kind of dug into the present. So I [00:09:00] want to rewind the tape a little bit and talk about, you know, Started out with like product management in previous roles.
[00:09:07] And what are you bringing in from like a product management type role into founding a startup where you're probably wearing multiple hats. So tell us what that experience is like. transitioning from a single singular focus to potentially wearing multiple hats.
[00:09:21] Yeah, absolutely. I'll give you the quick overview. my background, so I studied international economics at Georgetown, and while I was there, kind of got into the startup space during an internship. and first got my first exposure to the product building, kind of a fitness app, with a small team and, realized at that point that, you know, tech, startups product.
[00:09:41] Pursuant. So left school joined a virtual reality startup and product moved from there to, logistics and operations, a company called MakeSpace. and then just along the way, whatever I had ideas or things that I was curious about outside of work was building them and building them with no-code tools.
[00:09:57] and so that was really my, my entry. I started off with [00:10:00] Wix and Weebly and sort of the, you know, WordPress, the, the original, sets of tools as these things evolved and eventually moved over to Airtable Webflows, Zapier's for the modern stack and just became in thrilled with the idea that I could build, you know, being non-technical I could build almost anything.
[00:10:14] and so when we eventually, you know, started this company well sank, I brought both sort of this background and product, but background in NoCode. to it, my co-founder Curtis, who is just incredible. He's a software engineer, had spent six years at Google prior to starting this, but also very heavily product focused as well.
[00:10:30] And so between the two of us, you know, we're certainly a product focused team and product focused company. And as we think about building out a Whalesync we're definitely going with the approach, first of trying to build something that, you know, people love, and once we have that, bringing it to market.
[00:10:45] It's I think it's really interesting how you referenced Wix and Weebly and then referenced Airtable and Webflow as a quote unquote modern stack. my one-liner on, there's always that Weebly's really wobbly because that [00:11:00] used to be the way. I think those, products have come a long way as well, but that used to be the way, which Weebly really felt was it was like a toy.
[00:11:09] It wasn't really a real little product. but I think some of those tools have come a long way and are mature products in their own. Right. so I, I really find it interesting that, you know, the, the product background, th that you bring to, to Whalesync, Translates into, you know, quick turnaround of, of new features and development.
[00:11:30] how are you bringing in focus? So you cannot, over-manage a product that's just growing, right? So, you gotta be laser focused on what you want to build every release. So how are you thinking about that? Like, if someone were to say.
[00:11:43] create a product on, on bubble on something like bubble, where the possibilities are endless. They can create an app that has a ton of features, but they really need to prioritize what they're building next. So I'd really love to hear how your team's thinking about this.
[00:11:57] Yeah. Yeah. We, so first of [00:12:00] all, just say you're a hundred percent, right. You know, despite the fact that we are now venture backed startups, there's a little bit different than, you know, maybe when I was building things on my own, you know, we're still a really small team. we're a team before. And so we have to really think very carefully about what we want to spend our resources toward, the way we go about it, is a process that we've really found that.
[00:12:19] The valuable so far is we set a medium term goals. So it's not every quarter, but you know, look every six weeks to 12 weeks, we'll go ahead and say, you know, where do we want to be? You know, six to 12 weeks from now, what's the major, major undertaking. For example, for us things like getting to two-way sync or building a Notion integration, like these are sort of major goals that we need to make sure we're making progress on.
[00:12:41] And so we start with that at the high level. and then every two weeks we, we work in two week cycles. we set a very specific goal. And the idea is that that goal of that two week cycle should feed up to our medium term goal. and so that keeps us in line to make sure that in the short term we're making progress and in the medium term we're making progress.
[00:12:56] and I'll just mention that all of this, the schools and everything that [00:13:00] goes behind is underpinned, really just by customer feedback. We try to spend a lot of time talking to our users. obviously that was how we discovered this idea in the first place. But even now, you know, we are in a slack channel with our users talking every day and, trying to use that, to decide what to build.
[00:13:15] So who are these users? Like, who would be, who, who are your biggest customers? Are they, are they enterprises? Are they, you know, individual, NoCoders that want to use this or or these people freelancers that are looking to build something for their clients. Like what's your biggest customer?
[00:13:33] Yeah. So it's definitely a mix, as you can kind of imagine if you think about like, let's say Zapier make right, they'd have everyone from the individual no-code or all the way up to large enterprises using their tools. for us, like I mentioned, because we focused so heavily on, the, the no coder, to start that's really where we've, we've grown this product out of.
[00:13:52] And so, you know, our, our biggest customers today. Yeah. Or people consider themselves no coders. [00:14:00] There are freelancers, there are eight small startups that a, the founder or the, you know, the operations teams are, are pretty familiar with these no-code tools. So, we're set or heavily centered around that in the future.
[00:14:10] We might go and take a look at enterprise more of a, a traditional sales motion, but for now, we love being, you know, working with these really heavily product focused people that are using that.
[00:14:21] So you're a venture backed startup. give us your top lesson for founders that are looking to raise, raise money and, go the VC route.what's the biggest thing you learned while you were raising?
[00:14:31] Yeah. I would say two things, first of all, you know, like the, the pitch really does matter. And being able to tell the story of, I think the two big things in the story that you wanna tell are, first of all, how could this become a really big company? Like you take a look at what we're working on. you know, we're really trying to build sort of the, the shared set of data across all of your SaaS apps.
[00:14:51] We want to make it really easy to sync data, really from any, you know, not just from Airtable to Webflow, but really. Any tool. And if we can ask you to on that [00:15:00] successfully, there's a world in which Whalesync can be, you know, pretty, pretty significant. and then second of all, just telling the story of how, you know, why is your team, the team to do it?
[00:15:08] and how can you execute on that? So again, just to give a specific example with us, like I told my story a little bit about my background at no-code and you know, my co-founder's background as both a builder and he previously built a no-code website builder as well. and so that combination of things I think is pretty important.
[00:15:25] one other just small tip is you'd really do want to focus on trying to run a tight process when you're raising coach coming out to raise, we tried to pack all of our fundraising activities into a kind of a three week window. and so that lets you, you know, first of all, you know, kind of build momentum as you raise money, you can quickly kind of convert that into, to raise more funds.
[00:15:44] But second of all, keep the distraction low. for us, we want it to get that out of the way and get back to building as quickly as possible. Ah, that's, that's so valuable that right there. what, tell us a little bit about, you know, What you've seen in the software space over the [00:16:00] past several years.
[00:16:00] I mean, no code as a phenomenon has just been taking off. we've talked about this on the pod before the construct of being able to call it visual development are being able to do something. Using a user interface is not new. where do you see this technology going over the next few years? And what are some.
[00:16:21] Sort of obscure things today that might become big tomorrow. Cause that's kind of what I w when I see where you guys are operating, I think you're operating in a space that, probably most founders aren't really looking at right now, but could be really big or the next few years. So is there, are there areas like that, that you've also come across while you were doing your user research that you chose to kind of leave on the shelf?
[00:16:44] Yeah. Oh my gosh. There's so many, so many interesting things in the no-code space right now. I like having been in this now for, for awhile. I still think it's just, An incredible time to join. If you're, if you're curious about no-code, if that, if that's something that [00:17:00] interests you there, there's a lot of companies to be built and problems to be solved.
[00:17:03] just very broadly to, to speak to your first question. I think we're going to see kind of two different major paths around no-code tools. I think first of all, you've got sort of the, what I'll call like the all-in-one tools, you know, tools like bubbles is a great example that are trying to be a sort of the end to end.
[00:17:18] that you can do everything in that one space. And I think you'll see a lot of, you know, new use cases emerge where people that don't know how to code pick up one of these platforms become really proficient in it and are able to go really far. but then I think on a, more of like a team basis, you know, larger company is right, you'll see more, less of that and more sort of, the kind of use the best tool for the job.
[00:17:39] Or if they're trying to do everything all in, let's say Notion, right? They're using Notion for certain things. They have their sales teams, sales force they're used, you know, in our time to talk to their customers, they're trying to use the best tools for all these different jobs. and so I think with low-code again, you'll see the same thing.
[00:17:53] These companies using Webflow for their front end. Retool for their internal tools. Airtable to do some sort of operations. And so [00:18:00] with that set of customer, that's certainly where we see Whalesync becoming more and more, important. Right. If you're using all of these great no-code tools, we want to make sure it's easy to connect the data across all of them.
[00:18:08] Awesome. Yeah. I really liked that answer. I think you, you covered a lot of ground in everything that you, that you covered today. And specifically, I think, you know, a little bit more than the rest of us, about how augmented reality will transform sports. Do you want to talk a little bit about the book?
[00:18:26] Sure,. Yeah, this is, I guess, before I got into the no-code space was, you know, as I mentioned working in the virtual reality space at a company, trying to build VR for shopping and, you know, while I was there, it was just deep into AR. VR and started to write on line about my experiences. as again, I'm sure a lot of people, a lot of your listeners do is you, you write on medium, you write on sub stack day.
[00:18:52] and you know, it starts to get a decent amount of interest. And, you know, there, there just, wasn't sort of a collection of all [00:19:00] these AR research, search and articles. how augmented reality will transform the world sports. we'll just say on that, you know, that, that book now, being a couple of years old, that the space has moved so quickly that, I'm sure, there's a portion of it that, needs to be updated.
[00:19:13] But, yeah, I think thinking even more longer long-term than the no-code the AR space and everything that's happening there with Metaverse it's still fascinating and I expect it will eventually be pretty important. . It's really fascinating how quickly some of the stuff has changed even with, with NoCode tech, just the introduction of NoCode, AI, and ML tools that allow you to apply some of these models, but sort of a drag and drop user interface.
[00:19:39] that's really compelling. And, I'm, I'm really impressed at the pace at which some of this technology is getting adopted by enterprise software companies as well. and, and some of these SaaS companies are working with large archaic businesses, but they're bringing in some of the best in class technology.
[00:19:56] So it's, it's really interesting to see that dynamic. Matthew, I really [00:20:00] enjoyed speaking with you today. I think. not only am I sure that , our listeners got a ton out of this discussion, but, I'm also sure that,several people that have listened to this will go and check out Whalesync
[00:20:12] and, I'm definitely going to test it out for a couple of my use cases as well, just to see,you know, what I can do with, with that Airtable Notion combo. but, I want to thank you for taking the time, to be on the pod.
