161–170 of 326 posts
“I just joined a meeting 3 minutes late instead of 5 because of Superpowered, which is a resounding success in my book.” - Jeff Barg
Well, I must admit this is not the most compelling sales pitch in the world. It almost seems like satire. I understand the utility, but the calendar tab is ok.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Indeed the founder says: >We’ve only solved a small part of a bigger problem. The SaaS platforms we use for work don't work well together. It shouldn’t take cycling through ten different apps and Chrome tabs to stay on top of everything. >We’re now looking to bring Slack and GitHub into a unified notification inbox in the menu bar. We want to better organize everything you use as we’ve done with Google Calendar.
If they build a unified notification inbox, I will pay for that. I had one of those when I used a Blackberry and I miss it as I now have to check 10 sites periodically to stay on top of things.
I want it to be really easy for people to get a hold of me if the information is important or if they are important to me, e.g. via SMS or voice.
I want it to be very difficult to be overwhelmed by low signal content unless that is my focus at the time, e.g. mailing lists, work email, etc.
And I want to be able to select my focus. When I am reading about mountain bikes, I want to read about mountain bikes. I don't want to sort through work messages, family memes, or tech news at the same time.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Indeed the founder says: >We’ve only solved a small part of a bigger problem. The SaaS platforms we use for work don't work well together. It shouldn’t take cycling through ten different apps and Chrome tabs to stay on top of everything. >We’re now looking to bring Slack and GitHub into a unified notification inbox in the menu bar. We want to better organize everything you use as we’ve done with Google Calendar.
Good luck to them with that. Maybe I’m too cynical but I remember back in the days of multiple IM services, MSN Messenger, Yahoo, AIM, etc. One company would try to implement interop with another, only to be shut out a few days later. I’d posit that if they are even remotely successful at building a unified notification inbox they’ll get their access shut off very quickly. These companies don't want to share.
Calendar is a really bad product that needs disruption as well. I imported my victor ops on call schedule the other day and it imported wrong, so then I had to go through an entire year of two meetings a day fixing it, something that would have taken 10 seconds if they let you search and delete results.
Re Mac only, the first stage of a startup is finding product market fit. It isn't about making your product work on every platform. In fact that's counter productive. The goal is to have the shortest build-release-learn cycle, if you are porting to multiple platforms, you just increased your build time, which increases your cycle time, which means you will take longer to reach product market fit. Once you do, you can go port to every platform, but it's harmful to do it early.
Offtopic: I despair that a calendar widget for my Mac is now a pay monthly thing. It is becoming widespread that things that were previously just a piece of software you could buy (then optionally upgrade in the future) are now a monthly cost. It makes sense for high ticket pieces of software (Office, Photoshop), where it makes it more accessible for regular users. However, for a calendar widget or many similar examp…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
$10/month is not a cheap tool. I'm paying $90/year for Intellij Idea which is my main development tool. IMO that cost is extremely prohibitive for most users and it's definitely not a way to get plenty of people on board to monetize it later.
To put it into perspective, for someone making $200k+/yr (a lot of the HN audience), $10 is about 6min of their time/month (assuming a 40hr work week). Over a year it adds up to 72min of time. On the other hand, researching and trying out alternative free/cheaper tools might take hours. For a busy person making good money, $10/mo to make them more productive isn't a crazy ask IMO.
Literally every time you see a startup release a product that seems trivial it's because that's not the full story. You're judging without complete information. For example, the public face might be a simple Mac calendar widget, but that could be the gateway to calendar sharing, native office apps, meeting booking, event management, ticket sales, corporate flight sales etc. Building an audience with a cheap tool that…
$10/month is not a cheap tool. I'm paying $90/year for Intellij Idea which is my main development tool. IMO that cost is extremely prohibitive for most users and it's definitely not a way to get plenty of people on board to monetize it later.
People misunderstand YC's business model. They invest 125K for a 7% stake in the company. That's a <$2 million valuation. If this company sells a couple thousand (at $120/y), YC breaks even. If they sell a couple million, YC gets back 1000x on their money. It's a great investment.
And if they sell four? Wish I still had a copy but there was a brilliant story printed years ago called something like "there are numbers smaller than 1%." It illustrated the fallacy in the thinking behind saying things like, "even if we only sell 1%, we'll be rich." Just because you pick some arbitrarily small number as your minimum sales doesn't mean it's actually the minimum, or even the most likely minimum. You c…
The success rate for hope-to-be-unicorn startups is very low.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
$10/month is not a cheap tool. I'm paying $90/year for Intellij Idea which is my main development tool. IMO that cost is extremely prohibitive for most users and it's definitely not a way to get plenty of people on board to monetize it later.
I don't get when people say $X/month is too much. Too much for you maybe. But for me, if I can save 1 hour per month, that's worth $500. That's the top of what I've charged per hour for some consulting gigs. So $10/m is literally nothing for me if I can save time. Time is your most valuable asset. Money is nothing. Focus on time.