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Launch HN: Fastgen (YC W23) – Visual Low-Code Backend Builder

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Re: Launch HN: Fastgen (YC W23) – Visual Low-Code Backend Builder

#31

Post by cschreiber »

ushakov wrote: post #19

Who is the target audience for this?

You can separate the target audience into three main camps:

Technical people at startups. In smaller companies that can be the CTO, in larger companies it is usually individual contributors. They are using Fastgen to extend their existing product or build the backend for small internal/external tools.

Solo entrepreneurs or small bootstrapped teams that are using low code tools to power most of their business. They would use a Frontend builder like Webflow or WeWeb for their Frontend and Fastgen to power the backend.

Freelancers and Agencies. They are enabled to quickly prototype and build projects for their clients. The visual nature of Fastgen makes it easier for clients to understand and provide feedback on the processes.

Before our launch today, we were running a private beta for 3 months. We had users from all the categories above participate and worked closely with them to improve the product

Re: Launch HN: Fastgen (YC W23) – Visual Low-Code Backend Builder

#32

Post by instagary »

Congrats on the launch!

I really enjoyed the simple demo on the landing page. I think this has great potential to be a better alternative to Firebase/Supabase for frontend developers.

Especially if I never have to worry about what is happening under the hood or integrate a cluncky SDK into my project. I look forward to trying it out on a side project!

Re: Launch HN: Fastgen (YC W23) – Visual Low-Code Backend Builder

#33

Post by ilrwbwrkhv »

Congrats. This looks excellent. I have tried the frontend ones like Webflow and Bubble and they are all clunky, not meant for any serious work.

No code for the backend actually might be the better usecase so I would love to try it out / see how it evolves.

One concern I have here is local development.

Re: Launch HN: Fastgen (YC W23) – Visual Low-Code Backend Builder

#35

Post by danielvaughn »

ceejayoz wrote: post #29
jasfi wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think of password-less sign-ins, e.g. email-based sign in or OAuth 2?

The email-based “magic link” approach I’m seeing a lot more of lately, and I despise it.

Why do you despise it?

Re: Launch HN: Fastgen (YC W23) – Visual Low-Code Backend Builder

#36

Post by ceejayoz »

danielvaughn wrote: post #35
ceejayoz wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The email-based “magic link” approach I’m seeing a lot more of lately, and I despise it.

Why do you despise it?

My password manager is faster and easier (and the email flows tend to make that slower, hidden behind a "login with another method" small grey link), email often has deliverability delays, and it's insecure to boot.

Re: Launch HN: Fastgen (YC W23) – Visual Low-Code Backend Builder

#37

Post by cschreiber »

Dave3of5 wrote: post #26

Body validation is too simple, for example I want the be able to configure the min max from the DB or interdependent validation i.e. if you pass in and Id and a search string I want to return an error. The DB Query editor is too simple requiring the user to manually create sql queries rather than visually build them. The DB editor doesn't allow foreign keys and complex DB relationships to be defined visually as well.…

Thanks a lot for your extensive feedback! It's detailed comments like this that help us improve and meet users needs.

Let me address each of your points:

Body validation, DB Query editor & DB features: Definitely understand your need for more complex validation and query building. We're still in public beta, and building out and refining our features is a continuous process. We're working on improving these areas for more advanced use cases and will consider your feedback as part of that.

Authorization: More granular control over authorization is on our roadmap.

Pricing: Appreciate your concern about pricing. In our private beta we had a different strategy and we have launched the new pricing plan this week after talking with our private beta users about what would be important for them. We'll certainly take your feedback into consideration as we adjust our pricing strategy.

Hosting location: Currently everything is hosted in the US, that being said region selection has been requested and is on the roadmap as well however we'll likely not not ship this feature before EOY. Till then, will include more information about the current hosting region on our website.

Long-term Reliability: We understand the reservation about how long Fastgen will exist since we just launched. We have not announced any funding for Fastgen yet but we are already well-funded for the next couple of years. It might also help to know that the whole core team has been working together for multiple years before we started Fastgen. While it was a different company, we raised more than 100M dollars for that one and are experienced in navigating different fundraising environments. We're in it for the long haul.

Re: Launch HN: Fastgen (YC W23) – Visual Low-Code Backend Builder

#38

Post by ushakov »

cschreiber wrote: post #31
ushakov wrote: post #19

Who is the target audience for this?

You can separate the target audience into three main camps: Technical people at startups. In smaller companies that can be the CTO, in larger companies it is usually individual contributors. They are using Fastgen to extend their existing product or build the backend for small internal/external tools. Solo entrepreneurs or small bootstrapped teams that are using low code tools to power most of their business. They wo…

I don’t think you can make everyone happy.

As a backend-developer I’d never use your tool, because it is limited to the set of building blocks you’re offering.

As a no-code developer “REST APIs, CRUD operations and dynamic workflows on top of a Postgres DB” are foreign words to me. Why would I even need that? And even if I needed that, why would I use something that is limited instead of a low-code tool like Windmill, Retool or Trigger.dev?

I think you really have to think about who is going to be using the product and what are their requirements. Maybe the type of customers didn’t even need an API in the first place?

Re: Launch HN: Fastgen (YC W23) – Visual Low-Code Backend Builder

#39

Post by marcklingen »

Congrats on the launch! Played around with fastgen some weeks ago and liked the focus on creating APIs and workflows. I have built many API endpoints with Make.com in the past as it made it easier to manage external connections compared to using lambdas but felt limited by the Make.con data model.

How/when do you plan to

- catch up on integrations other workflow tools have already built? E.g. my workflows often rely on data in CRMs/Notion/GitHub.

- integrate with alternative databases and datawarehouses? I don’t necessarily want to sync all state to the fastgen-managed Postgres.

Re: Launch HN: Fastgen (YC W23) – Visual Low-Code Backend Builder

#40

Post by cschreiber »

ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #33

Congrats. This looks excellent. I have tried the frontend ones like Webflow and Bubble and they are all clunky, not meant for any serious work. No code for the backend actually might be the better usecase so I would love to try it out / see how it evolves. One concern I have here is local development.

At the moment, Fastgen doesn’t directly support local development. Our focus has been on providing a cloud-based low-code experience that you can access from anywhere without the need for local setup. However, we do recognize the value of local development, and we’re exploring ways to support it. That being said, we already offer an experimental feature to call your route from your local environment through for example curl or postman. We plan to extend on this by allowing the user to call and test the currently unpublished fastgen route from the local environment as well as also having multiple environments (dev/staging/production) to switch between within your projects. Does that answer your question or is there something else you are concerned about?
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