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Ask HN: I built it, nobody came, now what?

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Re: Ask HN: I built it, nobody came, now what?

#191

Post by d--b »

maCDzP wrote: post #171

I have to admit I don't quite understand your product. With that said. I work a lot in excel. So does my co-workers. Why is this better than xlwings? As you said - people learn VBA - why is this better than learning Python?

Excel files are not safe, as in you can't know what changed between two versions of a sheet, and because usually many things change between two versions of a sheet. So Excel sheets are very prone to having mistakes in them. It's usually fine when you have a few sheets handled by a few people. But when sheets start to pile up and people leave, then these errors tend to accumulate, leading to actual financial risks.

Re: Ask HN: I built it, nobody came, now what?

#192

Post by cixinlui »

d--b wrote: post #187
cixinlui wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think that there is 'no good reason' why excel users couldn't pick up some coding, and 'no good reason' why developers shouldn't make business reports, you should think about those questions harder, and try to understand what the reason actually is , not worrying about whether it's good or bad. Your not understanding why people do something is not going to make them stop doing it.

My opinion is that people do what they do because they don't have the choice. As in because my tool is not on their radar. Obviously optimistic from me, but I am launching a product, I have to be!

I don't think it is correct that "they don't have the choice". Reliance on EUDAs in Excel is a well telegraphed problem for literally decades. There have been lots of attempts to solve it, whether by apps which seek to replace Excel, addins or things which work with Excel, programming interfaces, changes made by Microsoft to Excel itself, alternatives such as Jupyter. You needed to know about these and understand to what extent they succeeded and why they failed. If there's an opportunity for your tool, why is it different to all the other solutions?

Re: Ask HN: I built it, nobody came, now what?

#194

Post by d--b »

willcipriano wrote: post #67

"What features are not in the beta, but that I can expect soon? Database connectivity. Right now, you can only access REST apis, and local files. Support for MySql, PostGreSQL and others is coming soon." That is killing you in my opinion. I'd wager it's 90%+ of your typical use case.

Yes, I agree with you, I'll definitely need to push these features. The problem is that it's hard to define where to stop..

Re: Ask HN: I built it, nobody came, now what?

#196

Post by disordinary »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #190
disordinary wrote: post #186

The fact that you've got a comment on the front page of hacker news about your products lack of awareness, yet you don't say what the product is or link to it explains a lot. You need to hustle more. This is a huge opportunity to get it in front of hundreds of people. Edit: I had to search through the page to find a link to your app. You need to make it more obvious.

I don’t know, if OP had included it I would have been suspicious this whole post was just an excuse to push the app. Not mentioning it made the question genuine. A bit of a catch 22...

Yeah, but that's where the hustle and salesman instinct of a founder comes in. You've got to include it in a way that feels natural.

Re: Ask HN: I built it, nobody came, now what?

#197

Post by d--b »

cixinlui wrote: post #192
d--b wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My opinion is that people do what they do because they don't have the choice. As in because my tool is not on their radar. Obviously optimistic from me, but I am launching a product, I have to be!

I don't think it is correct that "they don't have the choice". Reliance on EUDAs in Excel is a well telegraphed problem for literally decades. There have been lots of attempts to solve it, whether by apps which seek to replace Excel, addins or things which work with Excel, programming interfaces, changes made by Microsoft to Excel itself, alternatives such as Jupyter. You needed to know about these and understand to…

The main motivation is because "I was there". I've worked 13 years building EUDAs in Excel, with all sorts of addins and what not. I've been very good at it. Being the only developer on successful trading desks for years. Creating tools used by everyone at one of the best hedge fund on the planet.

Literally everyone wants out of Excel but can't. Users are too addicted to the speed of iterations.

Hiring UI guys to make web apps instead of EUDAs is going to be orders of magnitude more expensive than working with Excel and EUDA developers.

I've listed all the alternatives over the years. None of them is spot on. I've spent 13 years asking myself: why the f is nobody building this?

Re: Ask HN: I built it, nobody came, now what?

#198

Post by popeathlete »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #190
disordinary wrote: post #186

The fact that you've got a comment on the front page of hacker news about your products lack of awareness, yet you don't say what the product is or link to it explains a lot. You need to hustle more. This is a huge opportunity to get it in front of hundreds of people. Edit: I had to search through the page to find a link to your app. You need to make it more obvious.

I don’t know, if OP had included it I would have been suspicious this whole post was just an excuse to push the app. Not mentioning it made the question genuine. A bit of a catch 22...

I mean, if one doesn't want to use an app that solves their problem just because they think the guy might be advertising it like that... I don't know what to say.

Re: Ask HN: I built it, nobody came, now what?

#199

Post by Wowfunhappy »

popeathlete wrote: post #198
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know, if OP had included it I would have been suspicious this whole post was just an excuse to push the app. Not mentioning it made the question genuine. A bit of a catch 22...

I mean, if one doesn't want to use an app that solves their problem just because they think the guy might be advertising it like that... I don't know what to say.

It’s not about using the app, I just wouldn’t have upvoted the HN post. :) So it may not have been seen in the first place.

Re: Ask HN: I built it, nobody came, now what?

#200

Post by d--b »

tlarkworthy wrote: post #189

Oh I saw your original thread on Observable https://talk.observablehq.com/t/observable-based-dashboard-a... Currently I don't think you add enough value over the existing observable platform to entertain the thought of switching runtimes. Anyone who is not familiar with observeable will need a ton of literature to explain the reactive runtime concept. I feel like entrepreneur who see a successful product and thinks "…

Thanks for the feedback.

I think you misunderstand my project. I am not trying to steal people off observable, I think that Observable has the right technology and the wrong product.

It literally infuriates me that Observable is taking the "community-based data viz" route. In my opinion, they're sitting on a mountain of gold, and they just don't know how to dig it. They raised $10m, but hired 25 people in SF half of whom are dataviz guys. WTF? They won't last much with this kind of burn rate.

I very much doubt that they have any growth at all, considering how they are asking their users to share their stuff, and seeing how little active their forum is.

So what's going to happen when Observable goes down?

I would much rather join them and use their distribution channels to build a product like Jig which I feel can work in a business environment, than doing it on my own...

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