#2287 AI made a “no code” founder into a coder

Startup Stories - Mixergy

Andrew Warner

Motivation, Business, Startups, Improvement, Entrepreneur, Mix, Society & Culture, Education, Tips, Management & Marketing, Ambition, Synergy, Energy, Growth, 581719, Money

4.5 • 591 Ratings

🗓️ 8 December 2025

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Ben Tossell used to listen to Mixergy interviews as he hunted for a big idea to launch. Then he nailed it. MakerPad, an educational company for people who wanted to build using no code. It did so well that he sold it for life-changing money. Then he started coding. Because of AI. This is his story.

Ben Tossell is the founder of Makerpad, the no-code education platform he sold to Zapier. Today he’s the Head of Developer Relations at Factory, where he helps shape the AI coding agent used by developers worldwide. When he’s not working, he’s hanging with his twins.

More interviews -> https://mixergy.com/moreint
Rate this interview -> https://mixergy.com/rateint

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	This guy created the number one community for no code builders
0:04.0	than he sold it to Zapier.
0:06.0	What's he doing now?
0:07.0	Helping developers stop coding by using AI.
0:12.0	Ben Tossel is the founder of MakerPad,
0:15.0	the maker community that he sold to Zapier.
0:18.0	He is now the head of developer relations at Factory,
0:21.2	the agent native software development company.
0:28.0	Ben, I got to start with this question.
0:29.8	Dude, you created MakerPad.
0:31.8	This is like the platform for teaching people
0:34.0	how to code without coding.
0:35.9	You sold the freaking thing too zapier.
0:38.9	And now, instead of going and creating another business using no code solutions, you took a job
0:44.5	working a factory as head of developer relations. What's up with that?
0:47.9	It's just hard. It's really, I don't know whether it's the period of time after I sold that made everything else feel like the whole period was harder or whether it was just it was actually really hard doing it because both feel true to me.
1:04.0	I wrote this in my newsletter today.
1:06.0	The developer relations feels very similar to like a founder role where you need to be on top of your community.
1:11.5	You're the person that everyone reaches out to. You've got to build the product or you understand
1:14.9	the product in and out. You've got to grow the product. You've got to sort of be in charge of
1:20.5	growth. And there's just a ton of the core aspects of running a company feel like similar to developer relations.
1:29.6	And I mean, I had a company.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Andrew Warner, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Andrew Warner and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.