Zeroqode: a $200 landing page became a 7-figure no-code agency with 60+ people
Levon Terteryan spent $50,000 and two years getting a developer to build a simple meditation app. It made $1,000 a month at its peak. Then he rebuilt something similar himself in a week on a no-code tool, realized almost nobody was selling that skill as a service, and launched an agency with $200 spent on a landing page. Today Zeroqode is a 7-figure business with more than 60 people, and it controls over 60% of the revenue in Bubble's plugin marketplace.
Overview
Zeroqode builds web apps for clients without traditional code, mostly on Bubble, a visual app builder. It also sells products to people building on Bubble: close to 700 plugins, plus templates and courses. It is a Gold Tier Bubble agency and has worked with Naval Ravikant, the founder of AngelList, and Ali Partovi, the founder of Neo.
Levon and his co-founder Vlad Larin started at one shared desk in a coworking space in 2016. Today it is a 7-figure business with an international, remote team of over 60. The total investment to start was about $200 for a landing page design plus a domain name.
Before Zeroqode
Levon was born in Armenia and raised in Kazakhstan in a family of entrepreneurs. His father and grandfather ran businesses even when that was not entirely legal in the Soviet Union. From 21 to 32 he started and ran several businesses in IT and telecom.
In 2012 he shut them down to take a break: travel, starting in India, and meditation for several hours a day. He lived on rental income from real estate he had bought earlier. The break lasted almost three years. Then the rental income started shrinking, because the local currency was devalued, and his twins were born. "I really had to hustle to pay the bills."
The $50,000 app
During the break he wanted to build a meditation app. He wrote 70 short exercises that ask you to notice what you feel, see or think, plus random reminders through the day to pull your attention back to the present. It was called Zenify.
A developer in Moldova quoted $5,000 for iPhone and Android apps, a backend and a landing page, delivered in a couple of months. It did not go that way. Delays and bugs piled up. He paid for an explainer video, marketing materials, a consultant to name it, a trademark and App Store screenshots. After a review, he redesigned large parts of the nearly finished app, which took another five months. The final bill was about $50,000 and two years before launch.
The launch was the other half of the lesson. A BuzzFeed list ranked it the second best meditation app, and a Product Hunt launch brought another spike. Both faded. He tried Facebook ads and price drops, and translated it into ten languages. Revenue peaked around $1,000 a month and settled at $300 to $400.
The idea
He found Bubble through a Product Hunt newsletter. He was put off by its pricing at first, then came back a few months later when the pricing changed. He had coded a little in high school and had not written code in about 20 years, but he went through the tutorials and built a version of his app idea in one week. Most of that week went into polishing how it looked, not making it work.
What he noticed was that he enjoyed building in Bubble more than the app itself. And even though Bubble is much easier than writing code, it still takes time to learn and a lot of careful work. His co-founder puts it this way: "No code doesn't mean no work." Plenty of people would rather pay someone. He looked for companies doing exactly that and found none.
So he contacted Bubble's co-founder and asked whether they would want partners who build apps for clients. They did.
The $200 launch
He paid about $200 for a landing page design, bought a domain, and launched under the name Bubblewits. The pitch was simple: we build your web app faster and cheaper, without code.
Then the first customers came from four places:
Bubble's partner page. Bubble had just created a page listing partners and put them on it. Requests for help started coming in immediately. The first projects were small. They got bigger as no-code went mainstream.
The Bubble forum. They answered questions there constantly, sharing tips and fixes. The people asking questions on a tool's forum are exactly the people who might hire help.
Product Hunt. They launched Zeroqode there and finished #3 Product of the Day.
Selling both products and services. Services are slower to sell. Products sell while you sleep. TechCrunch reported in 2018 that templates had become the main focus because services were harder to sell.
Cloning famous apps
A few months after launch they built their first template: a working clone of Airbnb, without code. Then Uber, Amazon, Tinder and many more, each copying the core of a famous app. By early 2018 they had 28 templates, and 20 to 30 web products had been launched using them.
It worked for three reasons. People searching "how to build an app like Airbnb" found them. Each template was a product they could sell over and over. And each one proved they could build anything a client asked for. Years later they sold the whole template portfolio to another agency.
The TechCrunch stunt
With almost no marketing budget, they went to TechCrunch Disrupt in Berlin in December 2017, with about 500 startups exhibiting. Here is how they did it:
Someone else paid. They got a local organization to sponsor the participation fees.
The booth did the talking. A roll-up banner that said "NO. MORE. CODE." Cards showing logos of famous apps they could rebuild. A tablet looping a video of an app being built without code. T-shirts with slogans that started conversations.
Every visitor became a lead. A simple email form connected to Mailchimp captured contacts on the spot. More than a hundred people came by the stand.
They campaigned for the Wild Card. Disrupt picks one exhibitor to pitch on stage, chosen by audience vote and the editors. They asked every visitor to vote for them in the event app, and when the Android app broke, they worked out a hack to make voting easier. They were picked from hundreds of companies that day and got an on-stage interview with a TechCrunch reporter.
Then the reporter became a client. Afterwards that reporter, John Biggs, asked if they could rebuild his clunky WordPress website on Bubble and add crypto payments. They did it in a few days. He liked it so much that he wrote a TechCrunch article about Zeroqode in January 2018. Levon says it sent huge numbers of people to Bubble and to no-code, and the TechCrunch logo on their website became a permanent badge of trust.
Plugins: the recurring money
Two years in, Bubble released a tool that let anyone build plugins: add-ons that give Bubble apps new features or connect them to other services. Zeroqode jumped on it immediately. They hired JavaScript developers, built plugins in-house, and later bought other people's plugins.
Today they have close to 700 plugins, 17 people working only on plugins, and control over 60% of the revenue in Bubble's plugin marketplace. Most other plugin makers are solo developers. Many plugins are subscriptions, which gives the company steady recurring income on top of client work.
The team
Hiring was the hardest part. Normal agencies split work between front-end developers, back-end developers, designers and testers. Zeroqode hired designers and trained them to build entire apps in Bubble, so one person can build a whole app alone. TechCrunch reported the team grew from 1 to 17 people in under two years, with more than 10 no-code developers, which Larin said was worth four or five times as many traditional developers.
They screen job applicants with recorded video answers to set questions, which filters out people who will not bother. And to convert more sales leads, they invite leads into their Slack, so the conversation is direct.
Other channels that worked: blog posts about their own journey, "Best Startup Idea" competitions with templates as prizes promoted on Indie Hackers and Reddit, side projects like a free library of API collections that hit #4 on Product Hunt, word of mouth, search traffic from their templates and plugins, and an email list.
Close calls
Banned by Bubble. Yelp sent Bubble a cease and desist letter over their Yelp clone template. Bubble asked them to take it down. They were slow to respond, then slow again after a follow-up. Bubble removed them from the partner page and banned them for a month. "We thought we blew it and it was over." They made amends and were reinstated, and they now take legal requests seriously.
Almost out of cash. While buying plugins they nearly ran out of money and used Stripe Capital for short-term loans, which is fast but expensive. For a while they took new loans to pay off old ones until they were safe again.
The numbers
| Figure | Number |
|---|---|
| First app (built by a developer) | About $50,000 and 2 years |
| Developer's original quote | $5,000 |
| That app's best revenue | About $1,000 a month |
| Rebuilding the idea in Bubble | 1 week |
| Cost to launch Zeroqode | About $200 (landing page) plus a domain |
| Founded | 2016 |
| Product Hunt launch | #3 Product of the Day |
| Templates by early 2018 | 28 |
| Team after 2 years | 17 |
| Team today | 60+ |
| Plugins | Close to 700 |
| Share of Bubble plugin marketplace revenue | Over 60% |
| Revenue | 7 figures a year (his figure) |
| Outside investment | None |
Do what he did: step by step
1. Pick a building tool that is growing fast.
Do this: in 2016 it was Bubble. Today it could be an AI app builder like Lovable, Bolt or Replit, an automation tool like n8n or Make, or a site builder like Webflow or Framer. Look for a tool with a busy forum full of people stuck on the same problems, and few agencies listed as experts.
2. Learn it by building one real thing in a week.
Do this: build something you actually want, the way he rebuilt his meditation app. Keep notes on everything that confused you. That list is what clients will pay you to skip.
3. Ask the tool to list you.
Do this: email the founders or the partnerships team and offer to be an official partner or expert. Tools want people who help their users succeed. His first customers came from Bubble's partner page.
The email, word for word:
"Hi [name], I've been building on [tool] and I'm starting a small studio that builds apps on it for people who don't have the time to learn it. I'd love to be listed as a partner or expert if you have a page for that, and to send your users who need help our way. Here's something I built with it last week: [link]. Is there someone I should talk to?"
4. Launch with a one-page site.
Do this: one page that says what you build, on which tool, how fast, and how to get a quote. Spend almost nothing on it. His cost $200.
5. Live on the tool's forum.
Do this: answer questions every day with real fixes. Link your page in your profile, not in your answers. The people asking are your future clients.
6. Clone famous apps as templates.
Do this: build "Airbnb clone," "Uber clone," "marketplace starter" on your tool and sell them. They pull in search traffic, they sell repeatedly, and they prove your skill. Copy the functionality only, never another company's name, logo or design, which is what got him banned for a month.
7. Turn one client into proof.
Do this: go where your buyers gather, like a conference, a meetup or an online event. Get someone else to cover the cost if you can. Capture every contact. Do one fast, excellent job for someone with an audience, and ask them to share it.
8. Add products that pay every month.
Do this: when the tool lets people build add-ons, plugins or integrations, build the ones clients keep asking you for and sell them as subscriptions. That is how client work becomes recurring revenue.
9. Hire designers and train them.
Do this: people with taste learn these tools fast, and one person can build a whole app. Screen with short recorded video answers.
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Sources
- Hampton, "How He Turned a $200 Landing Page Into a 7-Figure Agency," interview with Levon Terteryan
- TechCrunch, John Biggs, profile of Zeroqode (January 11, 2018)
- Levon Terteryan, "How I spent $50K and 2 years building a meditation app," HackerNoon
- Zeroqode blog, "Zeroqode's Small Victory at TechCrunch Disrupt in Berlin"
