This episode is the audio from a presentation I gave a few weeks ago to members of Betaworks based in NYC. Betaworks is a startup accelerator, co-working space, and community of founders. No-code is a pretty hot topic right now, and in this presentation I talk about how spreadsheets is one of the first no-code "platforms" and how your spreadsheet skills can be extended to build real tools. The presentation is adapted from a talk I gave last year at Webflow's No-Code Conference. I embedded the "slides" at the bottom of the post, and here is a link to the slides if you want to look on your own.

Summary of presentation

* The skills you've learned in Excel/Google Sheets — include data structuring — translate to building workflows for any part of your business* Thinking beyond spreadsheets as a way to do data analysis or "number crunching"* Any tool that helps automate or solve some workflow at your company can be built with spreadsheets* Why learning spreadsheets can set you up well for learning "no-code" tools

Spreadsheet examples from presentation

During the presentation, I showed actual spreadsheets (Excel and Google Sheets) I've built in the past for freelance clients and friends. The main concept I'm trying to convey is that each of these spreadsheets look and feel more like an application rather than a model that forecasts out certain values. Each of these examples consists three core elements:

* Database - A place to store information* User Input - Fields and forms for someone to fill out* Calculations/Display - Formulas (e.g. "business logic") to make the spreadsheet output something for you (the administrator) or the user

My 2 cents: When you're building an application in a spreadsheet, you're extending the original purpose and audience Excel and Google Sheets was meant to serve: financial models for accountants. But this is what makes the spreadsheet so versatile. The fact that an analyst can string together formulas to make a spreadsheet look and feel like an application is what gives the spreadsheet power. This innovation also pushes Microsoft, Google, and other platforms to release new features that give analysts the ability to build tools, not just models.

I've written extensively about this subject in the past, so will leave my soliloquy at that. On to the examples

Bachelorette planning Google Sheet

The first example I discuss is this bachelorette party planning Google Sheet I built for a friend. This spreadsheet has been duplicated quite a few times by friends of friends, and all it does is help a to-be bride plan figure out which weekend works best to have a bachelorette party.

The key insight is that the database is everything from column B onwards and row 3 and below. All the availability for each person is captured in each of these cells and there's some conditional formatting to give the bride a visual indicator to see when a weekend is available.

The user input is the ability for each friend who is shared the Google Sheet to edit the cells. "Yes," "No," and "Maybe" are the only inputs that matter for this Google Sheet. Finally, the calculations are in rows 31-33 which tallies up the user inputs for each w...