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Show HN: Causal 2.0 – Modern Financial Planning for Startups

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Re: Show HN: Causal 2.0 – Modern Financial Planning for Startups

#61

Post by refrigerator »

jgorn wrote: post #57

Understand this is targetted at financial planning for startups/SMBs, but I'm curious as to if it could be adapted to work for personal financial planning (retirement wealth projections, modelling market downturns)? Curious if that's a use case you considered or a path the product may go down in the future

Definitely — we have a bunch of users doing that kind of stuff in Causal as well. The product is completely general-purpose (a bit like a spreadsheet), but for business reasons, we're trying to keep our messaging and targeting much more specific to the startups/SMB financial planning use-case :)

Re: Show HN: Causal 2.0 – Modern Financial Planning for Startups

#62

Post by thearrow »

refrigerator wrote: post #31
jtwaleson wrote: post #27

First thing I noticed is that the UI looks exactly like Linear. Have seen more companies copy the same UI but not sure if it was actually Linear that started it.

Haha, I think the evolution was something like this: 1. Slack introduces "sidebar" concept 2. Notion takes it a step further 3. Everyone starts doing sidebars, including Linear We took inspiration from Linear's 'search button in sidebar' and 'profile pic in sidebar', which I think were maybe their unique contributions to the tradition :)

Do you use a react component library? If so, which one?

Re: Show HN: Causal 2.0 – Modern Financial Planning for Startups

#63

Post by gillesjacobs »

Looks great, but I have my reservations about confidentiality of the data.

The financial model, expenses, hiring/ salary plan and basically all thin ledger financials of most SMBs/startups are highly sensitive.

If leaked or sold to third parties, it gives competitors (or maybe your own investors) insights in the technology, development expenses, and direction of the company.

How do you handle data confidentiality? How is the data security?

Re: Show HN: Causal 2.0 – Modern Financial Planning for Startups

#64

Post by Lukas1994 »

satvikpendem wrote: post #52
refrigerator wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice — definitely try Causal out! We have a 'scenarios' feature that lets you easily spin up "discrete" scenarios, and then you can use the Monte Carlo stuff to see continuous ranges of outcomes.

This reminds me a lot of calculators I use for FIRE, ie the ones shown here [0]. Perhaps I should try Causal for personal use as well as for business use. I've also seen Maybe [1] for personal finances, which looks good too. [0] https://engaging-data.com/early-retirement-calculators-and-t... [1] https://github.com/maybe-finance/maybe

It'd be great if you can share the model once you've built it. We can add it to our template library :)

Re: Show HN: Causal 2.0 – Modern Financial Planning for Startups

#65

Post by I_am_tiberius »

refrigerator wrote: post #6

Hi everyone, I'm one of the Causal founders — we actually launched a super barebones MVP here on HN in 2019[1], back when we were still tinkering around on nights and weekends, and the reception + signups from that gave us the confidence to quit our jobs and go full-time on this, so thanks for the early support! The product has come a long way since that first HN launch. The best way to think about it is as a 'multid…

Seriously, don't you think Runway is copying your product exactly?

Re: Show HN: Causal 2.0 – Modern Financial Planning for Startups

#66

Post by refrigerator »

I_am_tiberius wrote: post #65
refrigerator wrote: post #6

Hi everyone, I'm one of the Causal founders — we actually launched a super barebones MVP here on HN in 2019[1], back when we were still tinkering around on nights and weekends, and the reception + signups from that gave us the confidence to quit our jobs and go full-time on this, so thanks for the early support! The product has come a long way since that first HN launch. The best way to think about it is as a 'multid…

Seriously, don't you think Runway is copying your product exactly?

The UI is definitely similar and no doubt that we're competitors, but under the hood I think we've taken somewhat different approaches to how the product works :)

Re: Show HN: Causal 2.0 – Modern Financial Planning for Startups

#67

Post by I_am_tiberius »

refrigerator wrote: post #66
I_am_tiberius wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously, don't you think Runway is copying your product exactly?

The UI is definitely similar and no doubt that we're competitors, but under the hood I think we've taken somewhat different approaches to how the product works :)

I've been following your product for some time, and when I visited their website, the app images appeared to be an exact copy of yours. It will be interesting to see how this situation unfolds. Clearly, you seem to have a head start. Good luck.

Re: Show HN: Causal 2.0 – Modern Financial Planning for Startups

#68

Post by 1oooqooq »

dark_ph0enix wrote: post #59
1oooqooq wrote: post #34

WOW! congrats! it's been ages I didn't see anyone actually manage to make a website that doesn't work with the non-dominant browser! I cannot even login using firefox.

Curious to hear what issues you faced (please!). I use FF (on Linux) as my main daily driver and I haven't had any issues with Causal (disclaimer, I work for Causal). (granted, the experience is optimised for Chromium based browsers, but FF is not forgotten).

i registered before ok. now i can only see the alert on top to use chrome. no other content.

Re: Show HN: Causal 2.0 – Modern Financial Planning for Startups

#69

Post by Terretta »

localhost wrote: post #41
refrigerator wrote: post #6

Hi everyone, I'm one of the Causal founders — we actually launched a super barebones MVP here on HN in 2019[1], back when we were still tinkering around on nights and weekends, and the reception + signups from that gave us the confidence to quit our jobs and go full-time on this, so thanks for the early support! The product has come a long way since that first HN launch. The best way to think about it is as a 'multid…

For your use case, what if you could use Python in Excel with pandas, numpy and the Anaconda ecosystem readily available? How would that change things? Disclosure: I was a founding member of the Python in Excel team and am looking for new problems that Python in Excel could solve.

> looking for new problems that Python in Excel could solve

You could solve releasing Python in Excel for MacOS.

Re: Show HN: Causal 2.0 – Modern Financial Planning for Startups

#70

Post by Terretta »

Lukas1994 wrote: post #48
localhost wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For your use case, what if you could use Python in Excel with pandas, numpy and the Anaconda ecosystem readily available? How would that change things? Disclosure: I was a founding member of the Python in Excel team and am looking for new problems that Python in Excel could solve.

IMO this still doesn't change the fact that Excel is a 2D grid. Dealing with multi-dimensional data will always be tricky in that paradigm. Also, you'll still have cell references, no version control, no access control, ... Excel is an amazing product and I'm sure people will still use it in 10 years. Our thesis is that for financial planning (and various other number-crunching use-cases) our building blocks make mor…

> doesn't change the fact that Excel is a 2D grid

Or 3D if third dimension is tabs.

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