> What would have most impact in getting the app in front of people?
Can't it be web-based? I'd like to try it, but I'm on Linux.
I mean - Linux certainly isn't your problem, but not being web-based probably doesn't help.
Ask HN: I built it, nobody came, now what?
71–80 of 270 posts
Re: Ask HN: I built it, nobody came, now what?
#72It looks interesting, but CEO's don't have time to get syntax errors. That is why they pay big money to companies for products like Synergy SmartViews or UniPoint or Crystal Reports. So they can pay someone with moderate skills a moderate salary to generate professional looking reports. This would have to undercut those other tools in price and also be geared towards more technical industries. Preferably industries that have internal developers with time to play around with this. Then the real money will come in the form of paid training courses and certification levels.
I think you're onto something and I do think there's a market for this, but you're aiming too high. The target audience for this is buyers, planners, and schedulers. They are the boots-on-the-ground who generate these kinds of reports for the CEO. They are the ones who will see your product, identify with it, and recognize it's value. CEO's don't care where pretty reports come from. They pay someone else to worry about that.
The good news is the hard part seems to be mostly done. If you spent some time adding Visual development features to this (so you can just click and drag buttons to create queries) you would have a very big market. You would get bonus points for integrating this directly into popular ERP systems like Job Boss or Infor Visual.
Re: Ask HN: I built it, nobody came, now what?
#73This sounds like something I could use for my job, but what I’m wondering about is:
What feature does it have (or will it have) that R or Python doesn’t already do better? I don’t see why I’d choose this over generating a report in R Markdown
Re: Ask HN: I built it, nobody came, now what?
#74> What would have most impact in getting the app in front of people? Can't it be web-based? I'd like to try it, but I'm on Linux. I mean - Linux certainly isn't your problem, but not being web-based probably doesn't help.
I've used Cluvio (cluvio.com) for what I think is a very similar use case. Have you seen that tool?
Killer features there (for me) are:
1) seamless integration into the Segment -> Redshift stack
2) Postgres-flavored SQL for building queries
3) easy to publish as a nice-looking read-only dashboard with fancy-looking graphs
Re: Ask HN: I built it, nobody came, now what?
#75Downloaded it and installed it, and you seriously need to have some kind of onboarding for this kind of tool. I'm an extremely technical person and I have no idea what I'm looking at. I can create cells that have code in them? How do they connect? What's the output, what's the input? Can I at least see an example of a jig file? Is this vanilla Javascript? It looks like it might be, but the `viewof` keyword is confusi…
It is a reporting and graphing tool for data. Like Synergy SmartViews or Crystal Reports but instead of a Visual editor for crafting queries this uses code instead.
> It is a reporting and graphing tool for data...
It doesn't really seem like what you're describing once you run it. For one, I can make all kinds of widgets and import all kinds of code (which is confusing in its own right). But more importantly, I can't export or publish my workspace in any meaningful way.
Re: Ask HN: I built it, nobody came, now what?
#76If your goal is to build a free tool that will be used and beloved by millions, you probably need to continue building on a deeply technical foundation and blog about it the whole way. It's ancient history now but a master class of this is when Damien Katz built and live-blogged Couchbase, like 2004. If your goal is to build an indie software business with hundreds or thousands of customers where you're making like 1…
What advice would you give if going for 10k-100k a month?
Re: Ask HN: I built it, nobody came, now what?
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is a reporting and graphing tool for data. Like Synergy SmartViews or Crystal Reports but instead of a Visual editor for crafting queries this uses code instead.
> It is a reporting and graphing tool for data... It doesn't really seem like what you're describing once you run it. For one, I can make all kinds of widgets and import all kinds of code (which is confusing in its own right). But more importantly, I can't export or publish my workspace in any meaningful way.
I didn't test the software, I just read through the marketing materials. Just took another look and I'm more confident than before that what I described is eventually what this intends to be. From the website it claims that these features are coming soon.
Re: Ask HN: I built it, nobody came, now what?
#78"Build it and they will come" doesn't work anymore.
I see way too many people have killer skills to build something wonderful, but don't execute much when it comes to marketing. The reasons are plentiful: marketing is boring, it's a sleazy game, I don't want to spam people, I don't know how to, etc. That's why sometimes you see people that are good at marketing/sales out-succeed those that are great at building.
These days you gotta take people by the hand and bring them to your product (esp at the beginning). At worst, you're going to learn. At best, you'll get new customers.
Looking at what others are doing, I'd say it takes an equal amount (or more) of time and effort, to tell people about your product, as it does to build it. And it's a continuous thing, there's never an end to it.
So just like you develop the product and learn what it takes to build the best version of it, plan on telling people that it actually exists. You got tons of platforms for that. I've started Polyzag [0] to educate people (and learn myself), about how other profitable companies do just that.
It's a skill that you can learn, just like dev'ing.
P.S: Bonus points if you level up on marketing yourself w/o a co-founder. It's a superpower.
Re: Ask HN: I built it, nobody came, now what?
#79pour yourself a drink
Re: Ask HN: I built it, nobody came, now what?
#80"Build it and they will come" doesn't work anymore. I see way too many people have killer skills to build something wonderful, but don't execute much when it comes to marketing. The reasons are plentiful: marketing is boring, it's a sleazy game, I don't want to spam people, I don't know how to, etc. That's why sometimes you see people that are good at marketing/sales out-succeed those that are great at building. Thes…
> "Build it and they will come" doesn't work anymore.
Did it ever? I feel like this omits the mechanism for people to get to know there is something to come to and reasons for them to come. Not sure why this saying really exists.
If someone builds a pile of garbage, I won't come, even if I knew about it, and I definitely won't be telling other people about it either.
EDIT: so the phrase is a variation on some phrase from a film from the 1980s where some guy was having auditory hallucinations ... https://samuelmullen.com/articles/startup-fallacies-if-you-b...