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I keep turning my Google Sheets into phone-friendly webapps

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Re: I keep turning my Google Sheets into phone-friendly webapps

#181
post #170
post #138

Founder of Glide (YC W19) mentioned in the article — thanks for the recognition. This was not an ad from us, we were surprised by the coverage. Glide’s customers are businesses building software for internal use. During YC we called these “dark apps” but since then we call them “apps for work.” We wanted something usable by IT and operations staff (not developers) that emphasized design and UX. Glide started as a sim…

I know a few people who started to use glide for personal apps and were put off by the price. ($200/mo for over 3 personal apps is a bit tough). They showed me what they were doing and that was absolutely incredible for people without programming experience. They integrated with spreadsheets and llms and their PDF collections of manuals for devices etc. But as lower-income people they were stopped in their tracks and…

I’ve had the same experience. I really want something of this quality that is accessible to hobbyists or folks managing non revenue generating things — any kind of social organization could really benefit!

Re: I keep turning my Google Sheets into phone-friendly webapps

#182
post #170
post #138

Founder of Glide (YC W19) mentioned in the article — thanks for the recognition. This was not an ad from us, we were surprised by the coverage. Glide’s customers are businesses building software for internal use. During YC we called these “dark apps” but since then we call them “apps for work.” We wanted something usable by IT and operations staff (not developers) that emphasized design and UX. Glide started as a sim…

I know a few people who started to use glide for personal apps and were put off by the price. ($200/mo for over 3 personal apps is a bit tough). They showed me what they were doing and that was absolutely incredible for people without programming experience. They integrated with spreadsheets and llms and their PDF collections of manuals for devices etc. But as lower-income people they were stopped in their tracks and…

I second this. I'm guessing you're limiting access at a lower price point because you're worried too many business customers will opt for the lower cost plan when they should be on the higher priced one? I would pay somewhere in the neighborhood of $10/mo or so for a personal plan that had more than your free tier and less than the business one.

Re: I keep turning my Google Sheets into phone-friendly webapps

#183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're fine with Google seeing complete information about your income and spending? I'm not one of those truly paranoid, but this seems like a bit too much.

What’s your risk model here? Google are not manually or automatically inspecting the contents of your spreadsheets in order to profile you and show you better-personalised ads. Not enough people have such a spreadsheet for it to be worth it for them, I’m sure - and they also probably already know approximately how wealthy you are. Unless you’re under investigation for fraud or something, I doubt the government could…

We’ve learned over and over that tech companies do things which seemingly make no sense to us, but do to them. Not being able to imagine it is not sufficient. Nothing is deleted anymore as well, in hopes it will be useful later.

That said I don’t see a huge risk here, unless combined with lots of other data. Would probably avoid though.

Re: I keep turning my Google Sheets into phone-friendly webapps

#184
post #162

The idea is neat but holy SaaS, the price for what it offers is ridiculous. It’s not even about having the money, it’s just that $828 p.a. price of entry to build a spreadsheet front-end is objectively a bad buy/business decision. Most people would just learn to code at a boot camp for $828 so they don’t need codeless.

You and I have a very different idea of “most people”

Re: I keep turning my Google Sheets into phone-friendly webapps

#185
post #162

The idea is neat but holy SaaS, the price for what it offers is ridiculous. It’s not even about having the money, it’s just that $828 p.a. price of entry to build a spreadsheet front-end is objectively a bad buy/business decision. Most people would just learn to code at a boot camp for $828 so they don’t need codeless.

This comment reminds me of the infamous Dropbox comment :)

Re: I keep turning my Google Sheets into phone-friendly webapps

#186
post #138

Founder of Glide (YC W19) mentioned in the article — thanks for the recognition. This was not an ad from us, we were surprised by the coverage. Glide’s customers are businesses building software for internal use. During YC we called these “dark apps” but since then we call them “apps for work.” We wanted something usable by IT and operations staff (not developers) that emphasized design and UX. Glide started as a sim…

I remember when you launched your product on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19163081 I favorited it back then. Glad to see it's doing well, it looks like a cool product. I haven't found a reason to use it yet but that's also because I have slowed down on coding personal projects after work in general.

Glide was cool when it launched but they never made that product work. Right now they have moved to an agency model and that is their product.

Re: I keep turning my Google Sheets into phone-friendly webapps

#189
post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I only care about humans seeing my data. Most big tech companies very rarely/never let a human review private customer data. Therefore I'm fine handing all the data over to big tech companies. I don't really understand any other point of view - if you're worried about a machine seeing your private stuff, why did you type it into a keyboard in the first place?

> if you're worried about a machine seeing your private stuff, why did you type it into a keyboard in the first place? Who owns that machine is important though. I don't mind putting my card details in via my phone to buy something because there's a level of trust in the whole system (it's my phone, I have a level of trust that google is not going to steal my card details via android, and a level of trust that the sh…

I don’t care that much about card details. If I see a fraudulent transaction, I dispute it and it’s done. But my personal financial details/etc — that’s much different than a payment mechanism.

Re: I keep turning my Google Sheets into phone-friendly webapps

#190

During COVID, I built a quick no-code solution to help ‘all-inclusive resorts’ in Cancun and Punta Cana. It started with guests scanning a QR code, filling out a short form, and scheduling their Antigen/PCR tests. Over time, it evolved to help nurses manage operations, streamline test results, and send certificates via email. What began as a DIY project during lockdown scaled quickly to Mexico City, the Dominican Rep…

This is very impressive considering the real-world complexities surrounding it, but you've taken that complexity and turned it into a fairly simple work-flow with minimal coding. I've been developing software professionally for nearly 20 years and I find these kinds of projects to be fascinating. I started out my career with a mixture of coding and non-coding "integrations" (hacks) with other software. Over the years I've fallen in the typical "how can I build this from scratch" trap, but in many cases - as you've proven - that's not always the best decision. Kudos and thanks for sharing!
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