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Launch HN: Freshpaint (YC S19) – Automated, Retroactive Alternative to Segment

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Re: Launch HN: Freshpaint (YC S19) – Automated, Retroactive Alternative to Segment

#31

Post by UnbugMe »

malisper wrote: post #15
UnbugMe wrote: post #12

This is a really cool product. Very impressive that you were able to build to many integrations with such a small team. Any advice on how you did that?

Thanks! The secret is that most APIs that accept event data are pretty much identical. They have some method or endpoint where you send a JSON dictionary of properties. Once we had had the core event processing down, it wasn't hard to quickly add a lot of integrations.

Ah, interesting...

I've looked a bit at CRM integrations and they all do things slightly differently in ways that make it hard to factor out common pieces. Glad to hear that isn't the case in the event data space.

Re: Launch HN: Freshpaint (YC S19) – Automated, Retroactive Alternative to Segment

#32

Post by icebraining »

flaque wrote: post #9
jamiequint wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Look at me I'm so self-important I must not let any service I use collect information about how I use their product to make the service better, that would be horrible, god fucking forbid"

^ kind of agree. Merging behavioral analytics like “people are still using this feature” and the more creepy type like retargeting ads that follow you around seems to be at the root of this. If you use a service, why would you expect them to not know you used the service? It makes tons of sense to be concerned with giving them PII or access to your other habits. But you’re upset that clicking a button on someone’s we…

You are not just "informing that website", but also up to "70 destinations like Google Analytics, Amplitude, Hubspot, Fullstory, Intercom" - including Freshpaint itself. Which can follow you around just as well as any ad service.

Re: Launch HN: Freshpaint (YC S19) – Automated, Retroactive Alternative to Segment

#33

Post by icebraining »

jamiequint wrote: post #8
aloukissas wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% this. Hopefully by the end of the decade data collection will default to opt-in rather than opt-out.

No, it will just be all server side and you won't have any choice.

Good, server-side data is harder to fingerprint and track.

Re: Launch HN: Freshpaint (YC S19) – Automated, Retroactive Alternative to Segment

#34

Post by pompouspurist »

modarts wrote: post #27
fitzrocks wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not vaporware! All of our integrations listed are all real and can be used today.

Similar question to the grandparent - wondering how you go about maintaining a relatively large catalog of integrations with limited resources (I worked at an integration platform as a service company and remember maintenance of those to be the most resource intensive part of the product)

outsourced?

Re: Launch HN: Freshpaint (YC S19) – Automated, Retroactive Alternative to Segment

#35

Post by jshevek »

omarchowdhury wrote: post #25
jshevek wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forgive me if I misunderstood, but it sounds like you are simply questioning the word "earnestly" in my comment? And not implying agreement with the snark laden comment to which I was responding?

I just think that parent knows very well how to opt out of being tracked on his own.

Without further clarification, I'm honestly confused whether you comment is related to my own, or you just wanted to make this observation for its own sake.

Re: Launch HN: Freshpaint (YC S19) – Automated, Retroactive Alternative to Segment

#36

Post by jamiequint »

icebraining wrote: post #33
jamiequint wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it will just be all server side and you won't have any choice.

Good, server-side data is harder to fingerprint and track.

It’s pretty trivially easy to set a first-party cookie or ID for a user in local storage for non-logged-in users.

Of course for SaaS all product usage is logged-in so fingerprinting doesn’t really apply.

Re: Launch HN: Freshpaint (YC S19) – Automated, Retroactive Alternative to Segment

#38

Post by lancesells »

mschaecher wrote: post #6

Perfect timing as we have a huge need for this for an upcoming launch. Question...will you be able to replay/backfill as you add new integrations? For example, Klaviyo is a huge hole in your integrations right now especially for marketing and ecomm. If I install Autotrack now, set up a few events and then a month from now you add Klaviyo, I can just replay everything into Klaviyo? Also FWIW, I was an early user at Se…

Totally agree with parent on the Klaviyo integration being a miss for ecomm. That and Mailchimp would help quite a bit.

I also use Segment with multiple clients that I work with. Will check this out as there's room for alternatives.

Re: Launch HN: Freshpaint (YC S19) – Automated, Retroactive Alternative to Segment

#39

Post by ernestipark »

I remember evaluating Heap (granted, a long time ago, so I'm sure it's evolved a lot since then) and the auto-tracking capabilities and retroactive analysis sounded awesome, but in practice it wasn't as valuable or easy as I thought. I found that in general, knowing the questions you want to answer and structuring your tracking around that to be far more useful, and that actually being able to take mountains of generic behavioral data and making sense of it wasn't that easy and a ton of work in and of itself. E.g. retroactively finding clicks to a single 'signup button' is easy, but a lot harder when that button is on many different pages and you want to group them or segment them in certain ways, or the implementation changes in some places, etc. In the end, it seemed like it was doing engineering work just to parse the data back out so it seemed more sane to structure in a better way ahead of time.

I'm curious what steps have been taken in the past several years to improve on this and how Freshpaint is approaching this. I think it's a really interesting problem and if done well, could be massively valuable. Good luck!

Re: Launch HN: Freshpaint (YC S19) – Automated, Retroactive Alternative to Segment

#40

Post by eswardhinak »

We use freshpaint to connect to Amplitude. The setup was super fast and we had product analytics set up within minutes! The auto-track is a life-saver so that we can confidently ship a feature and then come back and set up product analytics after the launch, while knowing that we aren't missing any old data. The team is very helpful with a ton of experience in the analytics space, so rest peacefully knowing you're in good hands :)
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