Hey there 👋
So glad you're using Buildprint. My name's George - I built Buildprint to help apps scale on Bubble beyond what they knew was possible. I've audited 300+ Bubble apps, and I want to share my knowledge with you, so that you can scale on Bubble too.
Is this you?
I’m writing to you if:
your app has customers and you’re working on it every week
only one or two people really understand how your entire app works.
you want to keep building on Bubble, but are finding it hard to justify when building with AI agents is so fast.
people keep telling you to "just migrate to code", but that feels too simplistic.
Am I on a roll here? Let’s keep going:
you have thought about hiring help, then hesitated, because if you wanted to spend an hour explaining how something should work, you’d rather have just done it yourself.
there is at least one part of the app you are scared to touch.
you have a backlog full of good ideas, but every change still has to go through you.
you know the app could handle more users, but you’re not sure if you can handle the their support and bug reports
If that sounds familiar, this newsletter is for you.
My aim is to explain the problems that people run into when an app like yours becomes a serious business, so that you can overcome them and scale on the platform that handles everything for you.
Your fear of letting someone else touch the app is usually rational
A lot of founders think they need to let go more, and generally speaking, they’re right.
But your hesitance is quite often justified. When you built the app, keeping everything in your head was efficient because you knew what stuff is important and what shortcuts you took and why. It let you move quickly.
The problem is that your app does not record any of it. That thinking journey is something only you have.
Someone else looking at your app does not have the business context of knowing you built a feature in a fast and hacky way because it was a requirement to close a deal within a few days.
They might not realise that a certain page looks ugly because it mirrors another SaaS that the platform’s users often use, and is just ‘the convention’ in that industry.
Most developers can’t understand your app
So when a new developer opens the editor, they are working without the context you have that shaped the app. They start to change things and aren’t aware of the different ways that systems are connected, and bugs start to happen.
You might think that the developer was careless (meanwhile the developer thinks the app is badly built…). Now, both might be partly right, but the core issue is that the information lives in your head rather than in the app itself.
Even if you document your app well, there are still be parts that nobody ever uses anymore. They are lying dormant because, well, it's never been a priority to remove them. But they still contribute to being extra complexity that makes your app harder to understand and iterate on.
So, you cannot just throw more developers at your app without first making it self-documenting for anyone to pick up.
Your next step
Your first step should be to document your app, and remove the bloat that makes it more complex than it needs to be.
How you do it is up to you. Some developers will use Notion or Google Docs. I recommend using Bubble’s inline commenting. Now, it’s not a particularly advanced or great feature (no version history, no way to link comments, hard to scan… ehem Bubble), but they exist in the editor.
Buildprint lets you add comments really easily - use the /document skill and it'll go through and comment on your important data types, workflows, UI etc. It'll mean that any time an agent or human looks at your app, they have the latest context and be able to make good decisions.
I’ll be writing to you weekly (maybe more, maybe less - whenever I have something I think you might find useful).
If you stay tuned, you will find ways to scale your app further on Bubble, so that Bubble helps your business, rather than holding it back.
George
Founder, Not Quite Unicorns