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Show HN: We've open-sourced our bootstrapped startup, ShareLaTeX

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Re: Show HN: We've open-sourced our bootstrapped startup, ShareLaTeX

#31

Post by ivanca »

primitivesuave wrote: post #8

You're doing a great thing by making your platform open source. Even though you make it incredibly easy to get set up with a well written readme, I'd much rather purchase this service because it's not expensive and I know I'm supporting good people that care about contributing to the open source community. Plus, your product is awesome.

@beck5 is banned (?) but here is his answer:

>Thanks, we were a bit worried that people will stop using the site but we hope everyone is wise like yourself! I think overall the main people who will set up there own versions are those who want to work on a private network which is an group of people we have been unable to help so far.

Re: Show HN: We've open-sourced our bootstrapped startup, ShareLaTeX

#33

Post by jpallen »

bookworm101 wrote: post #29

Well, i have been working on something similar for a little while, what is the biggest challenge when getting started with this type of SAAS? what do you wish you knew when you were getting up and running? Would you recommend anyone to try out the same venture you guys have done? Is there some worry about what this might do to revenue? or was there already some evidence this would do nothing evil to your business mod…

Phew, lots of questions :). I've only really done this once (with ShareLaTeX), and it feels like a constant challenge in many ways. I think I'd have to try it a few more times with other products to understand which challenges are the important ones. So no big insight there, sorry.

I'd definitely recommend trying to start a business with monthly recurring revenue. It makes things quite stable and predictable, and watching it grow is like crack.

We're not that worried about this impacting our revenue. Most of our value that people pay for comes from being a hosted service.

Re: Show HN: We've open-sourced our bootstrapped startup, ShareLaTeX

#35

Post by yrochat »

Congratulations James & Henri! I'm very happy that my lab has been financially contributing to your work for nearly a year :-)

Anyway, I'm currently writing my thesis and I've had to stop using your product. The dropbox sync is lame (I know that the problem is on their side) and working on three different computers (usually two at the same time) is a problem. But in case of collective writing, then shareLaTeX is the most useful tool. Thank you for that and for your move!

Re: Show HN: We've open-sourced our bootstrapped startup, ShareLaTeX

#36

Post by jpallen »

yrochat wrote: post #35

Congratulations James & Henri! I'm very happy that my lab has been financially contributing to your work for nearly a year :-) Anyway, I'm currently writing my thesis and I've had to stop using your product. The dropbox sync is lame (I know that the problem is on their side) and working on three different computers (usually two at the same time) is a problem. But in case of collective writing, then shareLaTeX is the…

Thank you for your support! There is a danger of sounding like a broken record, but when it comes to Dropbox sync: We're working on it, I promise! :) Dropbox recently released a new API end point that allows for long polling which should allow us to do instant synchronisation both ways. It's on our todo list!

Re: Show HN: We've open-sourced our bootstrapped startup, ShareLaTeX

#38

Post by gjuggler »

jpallen wrote: post #2

James from ShareLaTeX here. I'm hanging around all day today ready for the barrage of pull requests that we're about to receive(!) so feel free to ask me any questions.

Really cool to see this! I'm sure the effort required to make it open source will pay off in fostering an active technical community. Given the target market I'm sure you have many highly skilled users who would love (at the very least) to fix their favorite bugs.

On a related note, recently at http://paperpile.com/ we've been thinking about ways to help our users connect their reference manager with web-based writing environments like ShareLaTeX. We've had some ideas about how to do this simply and cleanly, but I suppose now we could show you guys (via pull request) rather than tell now. :-)

Re: Show HN: We've open-sourced our bootstrapped startup, ShareLaTeX

#39

Post by hootener »

jpallen wrote: post #2

James from ShareLaTeX here. I'm hanging around all day today ready for the barrage of pull requests that we're about to receive(!) so feel free to ask me any questions.

Great work, James. I think I'll fork this code and give it look-see.

I manage the dissertation/thesis template for my department on github. The assembly and dissemination of this template is a purely student-run effort. Typically the task of managing it gets passed to a new student when the previous manager graduates.

The problem I've found with managing it this way is that I'll invariably get a slew of emails from students throughout the semester wanting me to troubleshoot their LaTeX installs to make the template work. 99% of the time the problem is on their end, 1% of the time it results in something that actually improves the template somehow. It would be awesome if I could just point them to your service where a hosted (and guaranteed to work) version of the template resides.

Can I just shoot you a github link[1] to get it incorporated or is there some other process I should go through? (e.g., would you prefer me to send you a zip? I figure what's the point since it's already on github, but if you prefer that approach I can get you a zip)

[1] https://github.com/hootener/LaTeX-Vanderbilt-Dissertation-Fo...

Re: Show HN: We've open-sourced our bootstrapped startup, ShareLaTeX

#40

Post by cliveowen »

writeLatex.com offers a live preview and it's faster overall. I really hoped this would be a better alternative because I'm already a bit disappointed in writeLatex.com's performance.

An online version of Latex sure beats the hell out of setting up a local installation though.

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