There’s a peculiar kind of poetry in watching someone build their first business app — the same way there’s magic in watching a child take their first step, or a rocket soar on its maiden flight. Until recently, building a proper business application required long nights of coding, expensive developer teams, and the patience of a monk. It wasn’t a game for the everyday entrepreneur, the agency owner with big ideas but no tech muscle, or the real estate startup trying to streamline client onboarding.
But that reality is crumbling. Because Noloco — a remote-first startup founded in 2021 by Trinity College Dublin alums Simon Curran and Darragh McKay — has figured out a way to turn that trusty spreadsheet of yours into a working, sleek, and fully customisable app… in minutes.
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One Spreadsheet, Infinite Possibilities
Noloco’s secret sauce is deceptively simple: if your data lives in a spreadsheet (and let’s face it — most businesses do), then you’re already halfway to having your own app. Connect your Airtable, Google Sheets, or SQL database, and Noloco’s engine generates a beautiful, user-friendly web application in record time. No coding. No confusion. No compromise.
From CRMs to client portals, internal tools to partner dashboards — Noloco offers SMBs the kind of customization previously reserved for billion-dollar tech giants. Now, a boutique lending firm in Canada, a property manager in Madrid, and a fast-growing startup in Nairobi can all run their operations on custom apps built by themselves — and that’s not hypothetical. That’s Noloco’s global customer base in action.
“We’re not trying to replace developers,” says McKay, now CEO of Noloco after co-founder Simon Curran stepped back for personal reasons. “We’re trying to empower the 99% of the world that doesn’t write code — the people who know what they want, but not how to build it.”
Building in the Shadows of Giants
Before Noloco, both founders had walked through the halls of some of Europe’s hottest tech firms. Simon Curran brought product chops from Flipdish and Revolut, while McKay earned his engineering stripes at HubSpot and Inscribe. But it was during the long, lonely days of the COVID-19 lockdowns that their shared entrepreneurial spark truly caught fire.
“We’d spend hours on Zoom just riffing on ideas,” recalls McKay. “We weren’t trying to build the next unicorn. We just wanted to solve a real problem — giving non-tech folks the power to run their business their way.”
The duo’s relentless curiosity and execution caught the attention of Y Combinator — the Silicon Valley kingmaker that backed Stripe, Airbnb, and Coinbase. In 2021, Noloco joined the YC family, and suddenly the startup scene took notice. Investors followed. Fast forward to 2024, and Noloco has raised $5.5 million over three funding rounds, including participation from names like Anamcara Capital, Nomad Capital, and even Sean Mulryan of Ballymore Group.
Small Team. Mighty Vision.
At present, Noloco’s team is refreshingly lean — just three engineers and a customer activation wizard, all rowing in unison toward a single goal: turning complex data into usable tools for real people.
“Our users are CEOs, operations managers, customer success leads,” McKay explains. “They’re tired of being boxed in by rigid SaaS products that don’t fit their workflow. Noloco gives them a blank canvas, but one that’s already 90% filled out. They just need to tweak it.”
The interface is drag-and-drop. The permissions are airtight. And the integrations? Airtable, Xano, Google Sheets, SQL — pick your poison. Everything syncs in real-time, meaning the tools built with Noloco aren’t just functional — they’re reliable.
“We hide the complexity,” says McKay. “What looks like a simple dashboard on the surface is powered by some of the most advanced real-time syncing tech behind the scenes. But that’s our job — to make it feel effortless.”
From Pivot to Purpose
Like many young startups, Noloco’s road has had a few sharp turns. The team pivoted twice post-YC, each time inching closer to the sweet spot where vision meets market demand. And each time, McKay brought his engineering instincts to bear.
“I’ve written code for fun since I was a teenager,” he says. “So even if I’m not writing it day-to-day anymore, I still think like a builder. And that helps — because we’re building for builders, just not the kind who use JavaScript.”
That philosophy — of enabling builders, regardless of their technical skills — is what makes Noloco so sticky. Its users don’t just adopt the platform; they evangelize it. Because in a world obsessed with automation and AI, Noloco reminds us that the most powerful tool we can give people… is agency.
What’s Next?
With its Series A wrapped up, Noloco is now focused on scaling responsibly. The roadmap includes more integrations, better collaboration features, AI-assisted app creation, and even more intuitive UI design — because even no-code should never mean no-thought.
But beneath the updates and feature releases is something more radical: a quiet revolution against the tyranny of one-size-fits-all software.
“Noloco isn’t just a tool,” McKay says with a smile. “It’s a permission slip. For anyone with a vision but no technical background, it’s a signal that yes, you can build that.”
And maybe, just maybe, the next unicorn won’t come from a Bay Area coding dojo — but from a kitchen-table entrepreneur armed with nothing more than a spreadsheet… and Noloco.
