From Product Hunt Community Manager to Building a No-Code Education Empire Acquired by Zapier

Hello! Who are you and what are you working on?

Ben Tossell's path to building Makerpad didn't start with some grand vision about the future of no-code. It started with him being deeply embedded in the world of makers and builders as the community manager at Product Hunt. Every single day, he watched people launch products — some incredible, some half-baked, all of them fascinating. And he started noticing a pattern: more and more of these products were being built by people who couldn't write a single line of code.

That observation planted a seed. But before Makerpad existed, Ben had to go through the painful process of learning what doesn't work first.

After leaving Product Hunt, Ben launched a venture he called newCo. The idea was broad — too broad, as it turned out. It was a grab bag of services and content aimed at the startup community. He managed to get it to around $6,000 in monthly recurring revenue, which sounds decent on paper. But when you're running something that lacks a clear identity, every dollar feels like it was earned through sheer force of will rather than genuine product-market fit. The business was pulling him in ten different directions at once. There was no flywheel, no compounding effect. Just hustle.

So Ben made a decision that most first-time founders struggle with: he shut it down. Not because it was failing in the traditional sense — it was making money. But because he recognized that "unfocused and making some money" is one of the most dangerous places a founder can be. It's comfortable enough to keep going but not good enough to ever become something real.

With that lesson fresh in his mind, Ben turned his attention to what he was genuinely excited about: no-code tools. He'd been using them himself. He'd watched the ecosystem explode from a handful of clunky tools to a legitimate movement. And he realized something important — the tools existed, but most people had no idea how to use them together. There was no school for this. No curriculum. No community where people could learn to build real products without code.

Makerpad was born out of that gap. And here's the beautiful irony: Ben built the entire platform without writing any code. Webflow for the website. Airtable for the database. Zapier for automation. MemberStack for the membership and payment layer. The product itself was proof of concept. Every time someone asked "can you really build a real business with no-code tools?" Ben could just point at Makerpad and say "you're looking at one."

He launched it as a side project, which is an important detail. There was no dramatic leap-of-faith moment where he quit everything and bet the farm. He built it incrementally, testing demand with real users and real money before committing fully. The tutorials and courses he created showed people step-by-step how to build apps, websites, and automations using tools like Zapier, Webflow, Glide, and Airtable. The content was practical and specific — not theoretical hand-waving about the future of software, but actual walkthroughs of how to build actual things.

The community responded immediately. Within the first twelve months, Makerpad had bootstrapped its way to $240,000 in revenue. No venture capital. No ads. No growth hacks. Just genuinely useful content distributed to a community that was hungry for it. The no-code movement was accelerating, and Makerpad was riding the wave at exactly the right time.

Membership grew past 10,000 members. These weren't passive subscribers either — they were active builders who used the tutorials to launch their own products and businesses. The community forums buzzed with people sharing what they'd built, asking questions, and helping each other troubleshoot. This created a network effect that made Makerpad increasingly valuable over time. Each new member added knowledge and energy to the community, which attracted more members, which added more knowledge. Classic flywheel.

Ben's approach to content was refreshingly practical. Instead of chasing trends or producing clickbait, he focused on detailed, high-quality tutorials that walked people through real-world use cases. Want to build a marketplace? Here's how to do it with Webflow and Airtable. Want to automate your client onboarding? Here's a Zapier workflow that handles it. The content was the product, and the product was the content.

The revenue grew to roughly $400,000 in annual recurring revenue — impressive for a bootstrapped education platform run by a tiny team. But the most interesting chapter of the Makerpad story is how it ended up being acquired by Zapier.

Wade Foster, co-founder and CEO of Zapier, saw a retweet. That's it. Someone on Twitter had suggested that Zapier should acquire Makerpad, and Wade happened to see it. He reached out to Ben, and conversations started. In March 2021, the acquisition was completed. Makerpad became part of the Zapier ecosystem, which made perfect sense — Zapier was one of the core tools that Makerpad taught people to use, and Makerpad's educational content helped drive adoption of Zapier itself.

The acquisition story underscores something that founders often overlook: being visible in your niche matters enormously. Ben wasn't just building a product in the no-code space — he was one of the most recognizable voices in it. His Twitter presence, his community engagement, his willingness to build in public and share what he was learning — all of that contributed to Makerpad being on Zapier's radar when the right moment came.

Looking back at Ben's journey, the through-line is clarity earned through experience. His first venture failed because it lacked focus. Makerpad succeeded because it was laser-focused on one thing: teaching people to build with no-code tools. He built the platform with no-code tools themselves, proving the thesis every single day. He grew through community rather than advertising. And he stayed bootstrapped, which meant he never had to answer to anyone except his members.

The lesson here isn't just about no-code tools or education platforms. It's about the power of being genuinely embedded in the community you serve. Ben didn't observe the no-code movement from the outside and decide it was a market opportunity. He was a builder himself, using these tools every day, talking to other builders, understanding their frustrations and aspirations at a visceral level. That authenticity is almost impossible to fake, and it's what made Makerpad resonate so deeply with its audience.

For aspiring founders, especially those who feel like they can't compete because they lack technical skills, Ben's story is a powerful counter-narrative. You don't need to code to build a successful tech business. You don't need venture capital to grow quickly. And sometimes, the best business ideas come from simply paying attention to what's happening right in front of you and asking "why doesn't a better solution exist for this?"