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Launch HN: Livedocs (YC W22) – Live data in your documents, without code

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Launch HN: Livedocs (YC W22) – Live data in your documents, without code

#1

Post by arsalanb »

Hi HN, I’m Arsalan, founder of Livedocs (https://livedocs.com). Livedocs is a no-code analytics tool that lets you build simple reports with live data from tools like Segment, Stripe, and Google Analytics, without writing code. Here’s a video of how it works: https://cln.sh/6NKYiG.

Working on early stage teams in the past, I got tired of tracking and reporting even simple metrics. My team would resort to either esoteric hacks, VBA scripts, or simply nagging data guys for metrics—even simple ones. Tracking metrics from multiple tools is a pain in the neck.

That’s when I realized most teams rely heavily on software that already offer some sort of embedded analytics on their dashboards. All they needed was a way to compose data from these dashboards into a single place.

Livedocs lets non-technical users track common metrics like retention, MRR, etc by connecting directly to tools via OAuth. IMO, until teams or projects hit a certain size or success, writing SQL queries or hopping between different dashboards to track simple metrics is overkill. So we let these users build live reports and documents using pre-built blocks that connect to their tools directly.

For example, solopreneurs, super-early stage startups, and small businesses use us to keep track of metrics like MRR, churn, web traffic, and product analytics like retention, activation, etc., from Stripe, Google Analytics, and Segment. See here for what that looks like: https://livedocs.com/doc/1e2e4001-ed5a-44ad-8d13-806deafdde9....

To pick another example: side projects! I have so many side projects, each with their own Google Analytics, Stripe, and sometimes Twitter account that I lose track of how each is performing. Now I just set up a quick report on Livedocs for each—like this: https://livedocs.com/doc/46a38473-e525-4482-aa46-4da4a77cf18....

We call these “live documents” because they are like a document with live variables, graphs, etc. The closest comparison would be a dashboard, but way more flexible—e.g. as editable as a document.

I also wanted these documents to be easy to replicate for other projects and quick sharing, so I built a templates feature into Livedocs. Commonly used templates are listed here: https://livedocs.com/templates. You can easily clone one and connect it to your own data sources to get started, so please feel free to try it out.

We charge $30/month and offer a free 14 day trial (without a card).

I’m keen to hear your feedback!

Launch HN: Livedocs (YC W22) – Live data in your documents, without code
livedocs.com

Re: Launch HN: Livedocs (YC W22) – Live data in your documents, without code

#3

Post by lewisjoe »

This is a really good idea! The power of editable documents combined with custom blocks that react to live data.

Quick question: how do you plan to compete with existing platforms like Notion and Coda? For them, this could be just another block element type that they could ship with minimal effort?

Re: Launch HN: Livedocs (YC W22) – Live data in your documents, without code

#4

Post by arsalanb »

alphabettsy wrote: post #2

Looks great but being able to use data from an API or SQL query is essential for any use-case I have right now.

We're looking to add support for connecting with APIs and databases (and passing SQL queries to those DBs) visually so larger teams can invite their data engineers to write queries for them.

Re: Launch HN: Livedocs (YC W22) – Live data in your documents, without code

#5

Post by arsalanb »

lewisjoe wrote: post #3

This is a really good idea! The power of editable documents combined with custom blocks that react to live data. Quick question: how do you plan to compete with existing platforms like Notion and Coda? For them, this could be just another block element type that they could ship with minimal effort?

Thanks! We're trying to build a more complete data solution. The pre-built block types are the first step, which let you setup basic metrics. We want to build connectors with custom APIs, databases, and even data warehouses, and then let teams invite data engineers to setup metrics for non-technical users in their team to use.

Re: Launch HN: Livedocs (YC W22) – Live data in your documents, without code

#8

Post by Callusing »

I am utterly shocked it has taken this long for something like this to come around. Direct integration of data flows into document processing has been an obvious next-step-up for any kind of scalable document production/management framework for at least the past few years. The amount of time I have to spend on a regular basis inputting, updating, and managing information that is presented in documents but compiled in other places has me apoplectic on a weekly basis.

I'll tell ya, at the moment, this isn't quite where I need it to be, because every team I work in/with is entirely Drive / GDocs-centric, and so what I'll need in the long-run to roll it out is a native integration within that interface. I'd love for GOOG to just buy y'all and integrate that capability into their rapidly-growing Workspace capabilities. Until then, watching with great interest, may play around with it a bit.

Re: Launch HN: Livedocs (YC W22) – Live data in your documents, without code

#9

Post by arsalanb »

gkoberger wrote: post #7

This looks great! I applied to YC almost a decade ago with a company called LiveDocs. Didn't get in at the time (I applied again w/ a different name), but glad there's finally a LiveDocs in YC :)

Appreciate it! I'm a huge fan of ReadMe!
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