Building a No-Code Platform
From the idea to the launch of Kite, a no-code platform for building Discord apps
I recently launched Kite, a no-code platform for building Discord apps. This project has been a long time coming and I'm excited to share some of the insights I gained along the way.
Kite is still in its early stages, but I'm excited to see where it's going and how it can help people build fun stuff!
1. Idea
The idea for a tool like Kite came when I was building a Discord app for a private Discord community. I already had a lot of experience writing Discord apps after running two of the largest apps on Discord for a few years, but this was different. I didn't want to spend hours writing code and thinking about hosting for a simple app that would only be used by a few people.
I wanted a tool that would allow me to build a Discord app without writing any boilerplate code or worrying about hosting, and that's how the idea for Kite was born.
2. Process
Between the initial idea to the launch of Kite, I faced a lot of challenges and made a lot of mistakes.
The first commit was somewhere in early 2022 and the initial open-beta release was almost 3 years later.
I think I have rewritten Kite from scratch at least 5 times during this period, and every time I had a different vision for the platform.
Along the way, I learned a lot about building a project of this scale from scratch, and I want to share some of the insights I gained during this process.
Endless Distractions
One of the biggest challenges I faced while building Kite was the endless distractions that came my way. Over the three years, I wasn't able to focus on the project for more than a few weeks at a time. Whenever the excitement of starting fresh was over I would lose interest and move on to something else. Sometimes it was a new project, other times I just scrapped everything I had just built and started over.
I always drastically underestimated the time it would take to build the platform and overestimated my ability to stay focused on a single project for an extended period of time. Turns out that relying purely on excitement to keep you going is not a good strategy.
Scope Creep
Whenever I started yet another rewrite of Kite, I would have a clear vision for the platform. Sometimes it was a simple tool for building Discord apps, other times it was a platform for building and hosting WebAssembly apps.
But as I started building, I would get excited about new features and ideas and start adding them to the platform. This would lead to the scope of the project growing and growing until it was no longer manageable.
The only way I was able to overcome this was by creating a relatively strict list of features I wanted. Any idea that was out of the initial scope of the project was put on a separate list until after the initial release.
Delaying the Release
One of the biggest mistakes I made while building Kite was not releasing it sooner, at least to a handful of users. I didn't want to release something that wasn't perfect, so I kept telling myself that I needed to add just one more feature before I could release it.
By not releasing the platform sooner, I had no pressure to keep working on it. I could just scrap everything and start over whenever I wanted.
Everyone Is the Target Audience
When I started building Kite, I had no clear vision of who the target audience would be. I tried to build a platform that would appeal to everyone who wanted to create their own Discord app, from beginners to experts. Along the way, I realized that this was pretty much impossible, at least for the initial release.
In the end, I decided to focus on beginners and people who wanted to build simple Discord apps without writing any code. After all, this was the initial problem I wanted to solve! This helped me narrow down the scope of the project and focus on building features that would be relevant to this audience.
3. Future
Right now Kite has only a few dozen users, but I already got some great feedback and feel confident that it has a lot of potential.
Since the initial open-beta release, I have been working on improving the existing features and slowly adding new ones. I noticed that after the release I was able to focus on the project for longer periods and I'm excited to see where this will lead.
I hope I can keep the momentum going and build a platform that will help a lot of people build amazing things!