Zerocoder CTO: From Designer to Entrepreneur
Posted: Sun Dec 22, 2024 5:27 am
Denis Mokrinsky has gone a difficult way from a designer to an entrepreneur. Denis was at the origins of the online university "Zerokoder" and made a huge contribution to both the educational program and automation. He told about all the stages of becoming an expert
Bubble FlutterFlow Make (ex Integromat) Cases
Study is sacred
The first step on the path of a developer was studying. I studied at the Lyceum of Information Technologies No. 1533 and, as separate areas, there were design, economics and programming. At uk email database that time, I made websites on an old constructor - Adobe Dreamweaver. There was more emphasis on design, not development, and at that time the teachers were unable to spark interest in me. But I sincerely liked doing graphic design, and I decided to try myself in this direction, began working as a freelancer, taking orders. Basically, I made various cards, business cards for fitness centers.
First startups
Over time, I had a regular customer for whom I made presentations. We tried to make a website for which I created the design. This was my first encounter with web development. During my studies at the university, I took small orders for website layout, working with WordPress, classic HTML, CSS and JS. I tried to create and develop my startups, for which I studied classic programming - PHP, JavaScript, MySQL. It was not a quick process, and I did not release the product, but I saved the developments and gained practical experience.
I went to work for Nestle as a project manager in the logistics department. There I actively interacted with analytics, tables, uploads, etc. There I realized that in the process of automating internal operational tasks using Visual Basic in Excel I was drawn to development. I went freelance again and wanted to do design again, but I was swept up by the wave of infobusiness. I was a member of a community of entrepreneurs that was located on VKontakte. People launched trainings and needed designers, chatbot developers. I was slowly learning something myself, helping others, taking orders.
Production center
In the process, I came across an urgent task: it was necessary to make a fairly large presentation, about 200 slides, in one night. Having earned about 20,000₽ on this, I continued cooperation, became a full-time designer. This online school gradually developed, I studied new tools, gradually took on more tasks, then began to hire a team and delegate these tasks. This is how I came to the position of technical director and worked in the online school for about 4 years.
Zerocoder at a glance
On the Internet I saw an advertisement of Vadim and Leonid, the founders of the online university "Zerokoder". At that time they were doing an intensive course on Integromat (Make) and in it they showed a solution to the main pain point that was in the infobusiness on data analytics - automation of collecting advertising statistics.
The difficulty was that when analyzing advertising, data had to be taken from Facebook, which has a very complex API. And the guys showed how to solve this problem in 5 minutes without knowing the code. I received a lot of useful information, I got fired up and went to study for an intensive course on Integromat (Make) at the online university "Zerokoder", which at that time was not yet so large.
Technical Director
I closely communicated with Vadim and Leonid, together we automated all processes in the online school, and I became the technical director at Zerocoder. We created the first courses together, I took an active part in the development of the methodology, recording courses on what was then Integromat. We collaborated for about 2 years, I began to get acquainted with a large number of new platforms. I had a long-standing goal - to launch a product. To do this, I needed to learn a programming language. But thanks to the online university, I learned that this can be done based on nocode tools. Things that I studied for six months can be done in a week. How can this not inspire?
At the same time, I was still taking orders, consulting people on working with various tools. I especially delved into Bubble, which is why I became even more immersed in development. After Zerocoder, I participated in many startups, held the position of technical director in several development studios, and I take and continue to take commercial projects.
Own development studio
Now I am creating my own studio. At the moment, I already have a team of specialists with whom I build processes. Our direction is low-code development, we use FlutterFlow, Bubble, Directual, Airtable, n8n, Make, Creatium, Tilda, Supabase and many other platforms.
Who are we taking?
I want to see practitioners in my team. It is important to me that a person has practical development skills. Therefore, I take those who want and know how to learn, who quickly grasp information, into my team. A technical mindset is certainly important to me.
Good leader
My management experience is in managing a small number of people. In the future, I want to improve this skill, to become more business-oriented. I understand that you need to look for people stronger than you, who are strong in a specific aspect. Therefore, the main quality of a good manager is the ability to delegate and choose competencies that can be covered with the help of other strong specialists.
Values
In addition to being business-oriented, it is important for me to maintain the quality of work with clients. As a rule, when a client brings his project after other developers for revision, he himself does not know how everything is arranged in it. Some developers do the project haphazardly, not caring about either the documentation with the description or the correctness. They are concerned either with money, or the speed of the project delivery, or something else. For me, my product must include quality, speed, and uniqueness of the solutions that my team provides.
Is it possible without languages?
I am convinced that only thanks to nocode development it is quite possible to grow and develop in the industry, improve the level of knowledge and skills and ultimately achieve decent results in the form of large-scale projects, your own studio or a high grade. Classic code is just a tool. Still, the basic logic and understanding of what is happening are more important. Knowledge of programming languages is generally not necessary, but it will not be superfluous for further development.
The ideal developer
Now I am gradually moving away from the role of a developer and moving towards entrepreneurship. I have never had a goal to ideally master development skills. But if I imagine some end point when I can say that I am a super-specialist, then for this I need to ideally master all the platforms that I work on at the moment. Or I should specialize in one platform to close a specific client request. When a person is so deeply immersed in development, he begins to create his own knowledge base, and when it grows, he gains the confidence to pass it on to others. Of course, some watch a couple of lessons on YouTube and already start teaching someone, but in my opinion, this is absolutely dishonest and wrong.
For me, a large flow of clients is also an indicator. This means that you can increase the check and choose who to work with. If we delve deeper into the topic of the career peak, then I would also add to the list the presence of a group of people who will study with me. For me, in terms of implementation, this is an important point.
Advice to myself
I would advise myself, who is just starting out, to first sign a contract with the customer. When you discuss one thing with a person, and in the process something else comes out, and this or that consequence follows, it greatly harms further development, psycho-emotional and financial state. Before taking on a project, it is necessary to analyze it. There are two possible scenarios. Either the customer must have resources for design, development, analytics, and when the developer comes, he solves only his own problems. Or the developer covers absolutely all aspects, providing a turnkey product. Therefore, you cannot just take and agree, you need to study the project.
Ahead of us awaits…
As part of our team, as a full-fledged brand, we want to implement many interesting projects, both in terms of training in nocode tools and auxiliary platforms for work. This is project management, documentation, quality control.
You can contact Denis on Telegram .
Link copied
https%3A%2F%2Fya.zerocoder.ru%2Ftehnicheskij-direktor-zerokodera-put-ot-dizajnera-do-predprinimatelya%2F
Bubble FlutterFlow Make (ex Integromat) Cases
Study is sacred
The first step on the path of a developer was studying. I studied at the Lyceum of Information Technologies No. 1533 and, as separate areas, there were design, economics and programming. At uk email database that time, I made websites on an old constructor - Adobe Dreamweaver. There was more emphasis on design, not development, and at that time the teachers were unable to spark interest in me. But I sincerely liked doing graphic design, and I decided to try myself in this direction, began working as a freelancer, taking orders. Basically, I made various cards, business cards for fitness centers.
First startups
Over time, I had a regular customer for whom I made presentations. We tried to make a website for which I created the design. This was my first encounter with web development. During my studies at the university, I took small orders for website layout, working with WordPress, classic HTML, CSS and JS. I tried to create and develop my startups, for which I studied classic programming - PHP, JavaScript, MySQL. It was not a quick process, and I did not release the product, but I saved the developments and gained practical experience.
I went to work for Nestle as a project manager in the logistics department. There I actively interacted with analytics, tables, uploads, etc. There I realized that in the process of automating internal operational tasks using Visual Basic in Excel I was drawn to development. I went freelance again and wanted to do design again, but I was swept up by the wave of infobusiness. I was a member of a community of entrepreneurs that was located on VKontakte. People launched trainings and needed designers, chatbot developers. I was slowly learning something myself, helping others, taking orders.
Production center
In the process, I came across an urgent task: it was necessary to make a fairly large presentation, about 200 slides, in one night. Having earned about 20,000₽ on this, I continued cooperation, became a full-time designer. This online school gradually developed, I studied new tools, gradually took on more tasks, then began to hire a team and delegate these tasks. This is how I came to the position of technical director and worked in the online school for about 4 years.
Zerocoder at a glance
On the Internet I saw an advertisement of Vadim and Leonid, the founders of the online university "Zerokoder". At that time they were doing an intensive course on Integromat (Make) and in it they showed a solution to the main pain point that was in the infobusiness on data analytics - automation of collecting advertising statistics.
The difficulty was that when analyzing advertising, data had to be taken from Facebook, which has a very complex API. And the guys showed how to solve this problem in 5 minutes without knowing the code. I received a lot of useful information, I got fired up and went to study for an intensive course on Integromat (Make) at the online university "Zerokoder", which at that time was not yet so large.
Technical Director
I closely communicated with Vadim and Leonid, together we automated all processes in the online school, and I became the technical director at Zerocoder. We created the first courses together, I took an active part in the development of the methodology, recording courses on what was then Integromat. We collaborated for about 2 years, I began to get acquainted with a large number of new platforms. I had a long-standing goal - to launch a product. To do this, I needed to learn a programming language. But thanks to the online university, I learned that this can be done based on nocode tools. Things that I studied for six months can be done in a week. How can this not inspire?
At the same time, I was still taking orders, consulting people on working with various tools. I especially delved into Bubble, which is why I became even more immersed in development. After Zerocoder, I participated in many startups, held the position of technical director in several development studios, and I take and continue to take commercial projects.
Own development studio
Now I am creating my own studio. At the moment, I already have a team of specialists with whom I build processes. Our direction is low-code development, we use FlutterFlow, Bubble, Directual, Airtable, n8n, Make, Creatium, Tilda, Supabase and many other platforms.
Who are we taking?
I want to see practitioners in my team. It is important to me that a person has practical development skills. Therefore, I take those who want and know how to learn, who quickly grasp information, into my team. A technical mindset is certainly important to me.
Good leader
My management experience is in managing a small number of people. In the future, I want to improve this skill, to become more business-oriented. I understand that you need to look for people stronger than you, who are strong in a specific aspect. Therefore, the main quality of a good manager is the ability to delegate and choose competencies that can be covered with the help of other strong specialists.
Values
In addition to being business-oriented, it is important for me to maintain the quality of work with clients. As a rule, when a client brings his project after other developers for revision, he himself does not know how everything is arranged in it. Some developers do the project haphazardly, not caring about either the documentation with the description or the correctness. They are concerned either with money, or the speed of the project delivery, or something else. For me, my product must include quality, speed, and uniqueness of the solutions that my team provides.
Is it possible without languages?
I am convinced that only thanks to nocode development it is quite possible to grow and develop in the industry, improve the level of knowledge and skills and ultimately achieve decent results in the form of large-scale projects, your own studio or a high grade. Classic code is just a tool. Still, the basic logic and understanding of what is happening are more important. Knowledge of programming languages is generally not necessary, but it will not be superfluous for further development.
The ideal developer
Now I am gradually moving away from the role of a developer and moving towards entrepreneurship. I have never had a goal to ideally master development skills. But if I imagine some end point when I can say that I am a super-specialist, then for this I need to ideally master all the platforms that I work on at the moment. Or I should specialize in one platform to close a specific client request. When a person is so deeply immersed in development, he begins to create his own knowledge base, and when it grows, he gains the confidence to pass it on to others. Of course, some watch a couple of lessons on YouTube and already start teaching someone, but in my opinion, this is absolutely dishonest and wrong.
For me, a large flow of clients is also an indicator. This means that you can increase the check and choose who to work with. If we delve deeper into the topic of the career peak, then I would also add to the list the presence of a group of people who will study with me. For me, in terms of implementation, this is an important point.
Advice to myself
I would advise myself, who is just starting out, to first sign a contract with the customer. When you discuss one thing with a person, and in the process something else comes out, and this or that consequence follows, it greatly harms further development, psycho-emotional and financial state. Before taking on a project, it is necessary to analyze it. There are two possible scenarios. Either the customer must have resources for design, development, analytics, and when the developer comes, he solves only his own problems. Or the developer covers absolutely all aspects, providing a turnkey product. Therefore, you cannot just take and agree, you need to study the project.
Ahead of us awaits…
As part of our team, as a full-fledged brand, we want to implement many interesting projects, both in terms of training in nocode tools and auxiliary platforms for work. This is project management, documentation, quality control.
You can contact Denis on Telegram .
Link copied
https%3A%2F%2Fya.zerocoder.ru%2Ftehnicheskij-direktor-zerokodera-put-ot-dizajnera-do-predprinimatelya%2F