For startups that need to scale with limited resources, the shortage of programmers is already a barrier. The U.S. Department of Labor says that by 2030 the world may have more than 85 million unfilled roles in this area. The estimate is that this could cause companies to lose around 8 trillion dollars in revenue.
Against that backdrop, startups are adopting low-code/no-code, or LCNC, as a way to speed up delivery with less dependence on technical teams. And believe it: Gartner says the LCNC market grows 20% a year and already moves about 14 billion dollars.
From basic solutions to complete systems
Low-code/no-code started as a basic tool for building forms, sign-ups, and simple approval flows. Things that helped startups validate ideas quickly without hiring a developer. But as SaaS and AI evolved, these platforms gained a lot more capability.
Today, it is possible to build systems, custom apps, and automations with visual interfaces, configurable logic, and integration with other platforms. An edtech, for example, can use LCNC to build a school app with enrollment, billing, and grades. Instead of months of development, delivery can happen in weeks.
LCNC vs. full code? Not necessarily
In startups, where the backlog is always bigger than delivery capacity, LCNC becomes an ally for developers, not a replacement for the full codebase. It removes the burden of operational requests from the team, especially the simpler ones, frees up time for work that truly needs code, such as security, critical integrations, and scalability-heavy flows, and gives business teams more independence.
It is common to see areas like marketing or operations using LCNC platforms like Bubble.io to create flows, dashboards, and prototypes. With AI support, these platforms can generate interfaces, define conditional logic, and adapt flows with great simplicity. That reduces the time between idea and test, which is what defines the edge for many startups.
Watch out for these three points
When different parts of the company start building their own tools without even minimal coordination, what was meant to improve efficiency can turn into a business problem and create real Frankensteins. That opens the door to failures, data leaks, duplicated effort, rising costs, and even compliance violations. Clear guidelines matter: who can build what, to which standard, using which data, and with what level of access. Without that control, LCNC creates unmanageable chaos.
Another point is the limit of the platforms. Even with all the progress, LCNC solutions still cannot do everything. Systems that require high performance, legacy integration, or specific customizations still depend on traditional development. You should not expect a low-code platform to solve the core of a banking system by itself, for example.
In addition, the “build in minutes” pitch can mislead people who do not know the technical side. Without strategic alignment and technical support, the platform can become a generator of technical debt. It is common to see startups excited about business-team autonomy, only to realize months later that everything must be rebuilt.
Classic problems include interfaces constantly freezing, unpredictable scaling costs, hacks with hard-to-fix bugs, inconsistent data, inability to integrate with some systems, poor observability, usage bottlenecks that create customer errors, vendor lock-in, and more.
In other words, startups that dive into LCNC without preparing the ground end up creating the very problems they wanted to avoid: information silos, rework, and operational risk. The benefit appears when creative freedom is paired with a solid technical strategy.
What comes next?
Low-code/no-code is moving fast. AI integration is making platforms smarter, improving flows, predicting errors, generating adaptive interfaces, and even writing part of the logic based on user behavior.
LCNC is also moving from prototype territory into core business. Startups in supply chain, finance, customer support, and education are already using these platforms in their main products. At the same time, multidisciplinary squads are becoming more common, with business and technology working side by side. For many startups, this is a more agile, accessible, and growth-friendly way to operate.
