Show HN: I've been building an ERP for manufacturing for the last 3 years

My dad has been a solo fabricator for most of my life, and what has always struck me was the way people came to him with jobs. Sometimes they'd show up with drawings and detailed designs, but mostly they'd just ask him to come look at something (or bring a photo), and describe the problem. He doesn't know CAD, so the drawings he makes are mostly just on napkins. The customers quite literally didn't know what they were getting before they got it, but that is fine, because they don't know what they want either.

I wonder if there's an analogue to that for software. A freelance local software developer these small businesses could go to if they had a process problem they'd like to solve.

The problem for small businesses is ownership and tailoring/complexity. Self-hosted solutions sound great but you need someone that knows how to run it.

Cloud solutions sound great and every VC-funded startup (there is plenty) would love you to buy-in, but that's a massive operational risk to a small business that would become entirely reliant on it. That's on top of every ERP having different workflows and either having to adapt to one or customize it to match your small business. Small businesses often don't exist by copying the ideas and workflow of another company as several industries can be highly competitive and the smallest of "custom steps and processes" can eek out a tiny niche.

And then there's the "big brand, never going away solutions", but they cost a fortune beyond what any small business can afford and likewise need developers just to customize it.

So, with many small business owners, who most likely are not a HN user nor have a github account and work on stuff that has nothing to do with the web. They will look at the ERP offerings, look at their spreadsheet and say "yea imma just go with excel"

What is the plan to monetize and support.

You'll never get market share without support, and that takes money. Support contracts. SLA's. Any company larger than 10 people aren't going to bother with something that doesn't provide support.

> Edit. Sorry. Had to click around a bit. 90$/Month for business. > Probably light. If business is 1000 people, this could be 1000$/month.

I have to add, I think all of the current tools that do have the market share, are not very good. So I do want something like this to succeed.

here's a little bit about me, and why i decided to build this: https://carbon.ms/#memo

re: sage, i'd say that sage is well-known as being a great general purpose accounting software for multi-location, and multi-entity businesses. but i don't know of many manufacturers running on sage.

re: erpnext, also great. i love their open source model, their developer ecosystem, and great documentation. i'd say the major difference is the data model and the UI that it begets. in erpnext, i think everything is a "doctype" where with carbon things are more bespoke. each ui has it's own specific tables, and specific ui

re: erp