Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Apply HN: Turn your spreadsheets into a complete webapp in minutes

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 40 posts

Re: Apply HN: Turn your spreadsheets into a complete webapp in minutes

#31

Post by singold »

osullivj wrote: post #26
singold wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the apps you mention, except for zoho creator, I feel like are all developer oriented (I can be wrong). In a way, what I want to do is to make apps using spreadsheets as the requirements for the app. What do you mean by 'start application first and not try to theorize it'? Isn't that I don't agree but I didn't understand it well and it looks like somenthing interesting to take into account.

Have you looked at spreadsheetweb.com and calcfusion.com? The former seems mature, with plenty of real paying customers. The latter is new, and I guess they're still working on getting traction.

Seems like my google-fu is a little rusty, because I didn't find this kind of companies that I assumed that existed.

This looks like real competition, what is good to validate that a market exists.

Thanks for the tip! I would look into them with more detail tonight

Re: Apply HN: Turn your spreadsheets into a complete webapp in minutes

#32

Post by singold »

osullivj wrote: post #27
osullivj wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you looked at spreadsheetweb.com and calcfusion.com? The former seems mature, with plenty of real paying customers. The latter is new, and I guess they're still working on getting traction.

Here's two more: karmaplatform.com and kdcalc.com. This whole area of converting end user produced Excel solutions to scalable systems does seem very promising. But no one has nailed it yet, and I suspect there are at least two reasons. 1) Over technical solutions that require a .xls to be converted into some other technical deployable eg kdcalc.com producing a .jar 2) The diversity of Excel based solutions eg spread…

The expectations management you mention is really important, I need to think how to communicate that clearly to customers.

In this case we are going to make it "cloud based" so there's no need to deploy anything. About the different kind of spreadsheet uses, the more use cases that we can found the better, also we are going to start with the more simple cases to reach a functioning product and then expand to the most complex ones.

Re: Apply HN: Turn your spreadsheets into a complete webapp in minutes

#33

Post by singold »

osullivj wrote: post #28
singold wrote: post #14

The sketch of the user flow for the first prototype can be seen here https://app.moqups.com/santiago.ingold@gmail.com/KCTLq4WnAL/... Again, comments are welcomed :)

I took a look at the mock up, and I think you're aiming for the same space as Karma Platform; converting spreadsheet-as-db to web app.

Yes, that is basically the idea for the first version, I will take a closer look to Karma Platform

Re: Apply HN: Turn your spreadsheets into a complete webapp in minutes

#34

Post by osullivj »

archlight wrote: post #29

If it can be solved beautifully, it would be cash cow. like the others mentioned, translating UDF (user defined function) would be a challenge. also in bank, it usually load quant library xll. It would be impossible to host quant library as service. nowaday i see bank just use spreadsheet as front end. a lot of logic are wrapped in code and fully tested somewhere else

It's not impossible to host a quant library XLL as a service. I've done it with the QuantLib XLL. My HN profile has links that detail how it's done.

Re: Apply HN: Turn your spreadsheets into a complete webapp in minutes

#35

Post by archlight »

osullivj wrote: post #34
archlight wrote: post #29

If it can be solved beautifully, it would be cash cow. like the others mentioned, translating UDF (user defined function) would be a challenge. also in bank, it usually load quant library xll. It would be impossible to host quant library as service. nowaday i see bank just use spreadsheet as front end. a lot of logic are wrapped in code and fully tested somewhere else

It's not impossible to host a quant library XLL as a service. I've done it with the QuantLib XLL. My HN profile has links that detail how it's done.

This is really cool. I tried a few c++ call as endpoint in a webservice. but i find it difficult to maintain state as you know market are in memory. I am also thinking to recreate dependency graph as futures in tornado but I gave up as it seems too difficult. eventually I just move xll out of excel process to make it s/s a bit light weighted and faster to run

Re: Apply HN: Turn your spreadsheets into a complete webapp in minutes

#36

Post by fafournier »

Hi lvp3, that use case is quite close to what we're building our platform for. It's still early beta and probably not ready for production yet but we are looking for feedback: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11491383.

Our focus is on the business logic of things so that the data input gets easier. Spreadsheets tend to become messy and require a lot of repetition of data and maintenance.

I am aware of a few "spreadsheet-on-line" that work wonderfully as well. With our platform (Simitless) we are trying to get away from the spreadsheet metaphor. We want to give niche businesses requiring custom apps but with little investment an opportunity to define their data app little by little. That way you can build it as it should be: focused on the input tool and the data exploitation.

Re: Apply HN: Turn your spreadsheets into a complete webapp in minutes

#37

Post by dang »

fafournier wrote: post #36

Hi lvp3, that use case is quite close to what we're building our platform for. It's still early beta and probably not ready for production yet but we are looking for feedback: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11491383 . Our focus is on the business logic of things so that the data input gets easier. Spreadsheets tend to become messy and require a lot of repetition of data and maintenance. I am aware of a few "spr…

We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11458280 and marked it off-topic.

Re: Apply HN: Turn your spreadsheets into a complete webapp in minutes

#38

Post by fafournier »

dang wrote: post #37
fafournier wrote: post #36

Hi lvp3, that use case is quite close to what we're building our platform for. It's still early beta and probably not ready for production yet but we are looking for feedback: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11491383 . Our focus is on the business logic of things so that the data input gets easier. Spreadsheets tend to become messy and require a lot of repetition of data and maintenance. I am aware of a few "spr…

We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11458280 and marked it off-topic.

Hmm, sorry about that , I really thought I was replying only to the sub-thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11458280. I would be willing to remove my comment but I cannot find how...

Re: Apply HN: Turn your spreadsheets into a complete webapp in minutes

#39

Post by petervandijck »

lvp3 wrote: post #4

This is a problem I have that I thought was near to impossible. I have a nightmare test case for you. I am a property manager of 1000 units. We have 40 properties each of which we track vacancies with a spreadsheet. They've got all relative property data on them as well. Let me know if you are interested. My solution was to build a web app for this completely out of spreadsheet land. But I've got some other things to…

Try Airtable.com, you might turn this into an "app" in an hour.

Re: Apply HN: Turn your spreadsheets into a complete webapp in minutes

#40

Post by jasoncrawford »

dang wrote: post #25
jasoncrawford wrote: post #24

Hey lvp3, this sounds like a good case for Fieldbook (my startup): https://fieldbook.com . It's as flexible as a spreadsheet, but with the power of a relational database. We've had a few real estate offices and property managers use us; you wouldn't be the first! If you send me your spreadsheet I can even get it migrated for you as a demo. jason@fieldbook.com

It feels disrespectful to hijack someone else's Apply HN application like this. We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11458280 and marked it off-topic.

Oops, my apologies. I only mentioned it because other people were mentioning alternate solutions on the same sub-thread.

Promoting an app when it's relevant seems common on other threads, but I can see how it would be rude on an Apply thread. Won't do it again.

Post reply on HN