Honey Mittal is the Co-Founder & CEO at Locofy, previous to this he was the Chief Product Officer at 3 Sequence A-E startups (specifically – Homage, Finaccel & Wego) in early and development phases.
Locofy turns designs into production-ready frontend code for cell apps and internet. It permits builders to ship merchandise 10x sooner utilizing present design instruments, tech stacks & workflows. Locofy gives a plugin for Figma and Adobe XD with which makes designs responsive for various display sizes.
What initially attracted you to pc science and machine studying?
I initially needed to hitch the Indian Air Power (and bought near choice) however after I couldn’t make it, I had 2 choices : Arithmetic/Economics and Pc Engineering. I bought a scholarship for Pc Science on the Nationwide College of Singapore, however not for the others, in order that was that.
My true curiosity in coding and constructing merchandise solely began creating in direction of the top of college after I constructed an award successful product on alternate on the College of California, Santa Cruz, adopted by an internship at Microsoft when i began constructing cell apps (earlier than the App Retailer was launched by Steve Jobs) and I began to see my code fixing actual world issues.
There was no going again from that time. I spotted I beloved a extra holistic method at drawback fixing and took the bounce into product administration and met my cofounder Sohaib (in 2014) who was a a lot better engineer than me. Working with Sohaib, we have now labored on journey, healthcare, and dev tooling issues for greater than a decade now, and someplace mid-way we began tinkering with machine studying to construct higher suggestion engines, higher monetary consequence selections based mostly on mountains of information, and now code era immediately from designs.
The latest breakthroughs within the discipline have solely made it simpler, cheaper, and sooner to unravel issues that have been simply not doable even 5-10 years again. That prompted us to start out constructing Locofy.ai in 2021, on the crossroads of the growing want for a design to code resolution like Locofy, and the breakthroughs in ML.
In 2016-2017, alongside together with your present co-founder you constructed one of many world’s quickest journey cell websites. What was this website and what did you study from the expertise?
This was wego.com‘s cell web site. In 2016 – loads of Asian corporations have been considering killing cell web sites fully, particularly in rising markets the place units have been low-cost and cell web was gradual. Flipkart even famously killed their cell web site for his or her app (and later retracted), however we confronted an identical dilemma at Wego, the place our apps have been considerably higher than our cell website for efficiency, expertise, and unit economics.
We selected to rebuild our cell web site to work like an app, utilizing service employees, AMP and PWA ideas with none prior expertise in constructing for the online. My cofounder Sohaib, our VP Engg (Tien) and I labored on this for 2-3 months and constructed our new wego cell website and that turned the quickest cell journey website (amongst 150+ websites).
Our key takeaways – firstly the conclusion that we weren’t simply cell app specialists, and should you put first ideas considering to any drawback/ any expertise and put a crew of decided people collectively, something was doable. This helps us until date, as a result of Locofy is a devtool and we by no means thought of whether or not we had any prior expertise constructing for engineers. We simply considered it as an issue (one thing we confronted every day), and went for it. Additionally, the trio discovered that we work properly collectively and eight years later – we’re constructing Locofy collectively once more! If not for that mission, the three of us could not have realized how properly we work collectively.
When did you first understand that low-code and no-code was the longer term?
In 2020-2021, the entire tech world went loopy, with engineering salaries going by means of the roof, fueled by public market tech shares and a surge in VC funding into tech startups. We confronted this ourselves at our final firm. Hiring and retaining good engineers appeared near unimaginable and cheaper offshoring markets like India modified eternally because of sturdy home traction. We studied the market and found that for each 20 open CS jobs, there was 1 CS scholar graduating within the USA – shedding some mild on not simply the scenario we have been in, but additionally the instances to return.
Upon speaking to our mentors and founder buddies, we not solely validated the issue but additionally bought funding gives from everybody we talked to, inside 48 hours of even enthusiastic about fixing the drawback of writing ui code from scratch with AI-led automation. The truth that we have been fixing our personal drawback additionally bought the curiosity of our fellow builders who confirmed curiosity in becoming a member of us. In a short time, it was clear to us that the time to hitch the low-code revolution was right here.
How did this transition to you launching Locofy?
Sohaib – probably the greatest internet/cell/gaming builders I’ve ever met (I fee him within the prime 1% on the planet) was tremendous pissed off in our final mission on the earlier firm. It required him + 2 builders to write down 500 screens revamp. Once I requested him why he did not do one thing about it as one of many prime builders round, it didn’t take him lengthy to return again and inform me that we are able to automate UI code / 80% of the frontend duties. Within the subsequent 2 days we met some founder buddies they usually all validated that we have been onto one thing. We registered the corporate and raised $1M over the identical weekend. We launched the primary beta product 5-6 months later in Jan 2022.
Locofy takes a little bit of a unique method to low-code, are you able to focus on how the platform takes present designs and converts them to code?
Sure, our analysis confirmed us 2 clear outcomes.
- The marketplace for no-code helped largely non-developers and designers. Nice market, however not one thing that we have been fascinated by.
- The marketplace for low-code that largely helped professional builders and designers, however valued issues like code high quality and retaining builders inside their stack as their prime priorities.
We resonated extra in direction of #2 i.e. constructing for professional builders and designers, however we discovered not one of the gamers within the design to code market doing even half an honest job. In the event that they did, we’d not solely not construct Locofy, but additionally begin utilizing these choices to construct the five hundred screens we needed to construct. As builders and designers ourselves, we knew our groups most popular their instruments (Figma for example) and tech stacks (React, Nextjs for instance) and our thesis was to only adapt and slot in (and therefore, additionally strive the instrument with out making adjustments), whereas working in direction of prime quality code because the differentiator.
Locofy obtained some rave opinions and loads of suggestions from ProductHunt and different platforms. What have been some key takeaways from this suggestions?
We launched on Product Hunt 6 months after the primary tender launch. The concept was to open up the lids and get suggestions from extra builders outdoors of networks. Based mostly on that suggestions, we higher understood who our best buyer profile was, why they beloved us, their ache factors and in addition who’re we higher off not catering to in any respect (and therefore get extra centered).
In open beta, we don’t block anybody from making an attempt Locofy, which means larger suggestions velocity, but additionally loads of noise. We used the suggestions to study sooner and concentrate on customers who beloved the platform, and customers who have been a number of modifications away from loving it. All of it culminated into Locofy Lightning – a 1-click resolution powered by Massive Design Fashions. It made the platform extra correct and very easy to make use of. We are going to proceed studying with the identical method in free beta till we’re able to monetize ultimately.
Claims for the quantity of growth time that’s saved has a variety, what’s the common time financial savings that you’ve got personally seen?
It’s tough to provide one quantity that matches all. Some corporations with lean groups constructing an app from scratch have informed us they saved 80% of their growth time. Others constructing for present codebases have saved 50% of the time. For us, if we save something within the above 50% vary, we all know this can be very priceless right now, whereas we work on growing that much more.
What’s your imaginative and prescient for the way forward for low-code platforms and Locofy?
Frontend growth is a broad house – we wish to assist make it straightforward first and outline this class ranging from design to UI code.
However in the future, our imaginative and prescient is to assist go from thought to launch to affect a lot sooner and cheaper and make groups focus extra on the advanced engineering issues and enterprise mannequin innovation greater than worrying about constructing interfaces. This can assist the subsequent era of class defining corporations construct their merchandise sooner and cheaper and in the end assist clear up extra world issues with the restricted provide of builders we face right now.
Based mostly in your journey with Locofy.ai, what recommendation would you give to aspiring entrepreneurs trying to enterprise into the AI trade?
Very merely, AI could be very highly effective and opens so many prospects, however it is advisable focus first on the issue you are fixing. Discover an enormous drawback after which see clear up the issue and the way AI makes it more practical/cheaper/sooner, reasonably than the opposite means spherical. In 2023, I’ve seen too many new AI corporations constructing one thing “cool” that does not actually clear up an actual drawback. It jogs my memory of the saying “if all you could have is a hammer, every part seems to be like a nail” and that is actually the case with loads of new AI entrepreneurs who jumped shortly to journey this wave.
Thanks for the nice interview, I stay up for following the progress of the Locofy crew, readers who want to study extra ought to go to Locofy.
