Apply HN: Turn your spreadsheets into a complete webapp in minutes
Most businesses have important information registered in spreadsheets, those spreadsheets generate a lot of problems like loss of files, versioning, loss of information, lack of accountability in changes, etc. Some of those spreadsheets start as something small but end up being pretty important for its users. To substitute those files with custom software is difficult because in medium or big enterprises IT departments work on the most important things and can’t develop software for “small things”. On the other hand outsourcing that development can be difficult and/or costly. For smaller business without IT departments the problem is the cost of developing custom applications.
SOLUTION
Let users upload a spreadsheet to our platform and transform that into a custom web app, adding useful functionality like search, filtering, reports, security, users, permissions, etc.
BUSINESS MODEL
Basically we will have two products the hosted app (recurrent revenue) and the downloadable app to host on your own server (as a premium product). As a business strategy we need to have affordable prices so that medium management can approve the purchase. Also our apps need to be functional, with good usability and good design (in that order).
VISION
In the long run we want to make great software for any kind of companiess. To do that we need to enter the market with smaller and less risky applications because “no one ever got fired for buying <big enterprise software company>”
MARKET
Every business that uses spreadsheets for long term work (need to work more on this)
TEAM
Right now it is only me, but I am looking for co-founders. I have a technical degree on software development and experience in various non-IT areas of a bank (first hand experience of what I call the “spreadsheet hell”).
PROGRESS
I have a sketch of the application and am developing the first working prototype
Any kind of questions, opinions, etc. are welcome.
Thanks in advance!
39 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 75.5 ms ] threadI think you need to clarify more about your USP. Becoming more specific about your functionalities such as what kind of security or what kind of user permissions, etc. might help you gain more attention.
People already have such apps/web apps available. So, you need that one wow factor to make the users jump from one service and come and use yours. Try to think more from an user's perspective and try to redesign the way your web app is going to work or help companies/individuals in handling spreadsheets with ease. Good luck! :)
In other words the idea is that you upload a spreadsheet and we make a CRUD-like app for you with the information that you already have in your spreadsheet.
The purpose is not making spreadsheet management better, but make spreadsheets "obsolete" for some kind of uses.
My solution was to build a web app for this completely out of spreadsheet land. But I've got some other things to tackle first. Either way good luck!
I would love to see that spreadsheet (or a part of it with fake or no data obviously), my email is in profile, feel free to contact me.
However it seems to me that doing this would be very difficult for at least 2 main reasons.
First spreadsheets can be organized in essentially arbitrary ways and there is no standard way of defining the semantics of data in them. There can also be all sorts of references between data items and unlike SQL there is nothing to explicitly define the nature of these references. How could a program take an arbitrary collection of spreadsheets and transform them into a webapp that has significantly more functionality than just loading them into Google docs ?
Second spreadsheets often use macros and other programming constructs so I think you also have the problem of building a general translator from macros/VB/Excel functions to javascript/whatever backend language you're using. This again seems like a fairly difficult problem to tackle in general.
About your first point there are two important things, first that we are going to start with simple spreadsheets and then evolve to more complex ones. And second that we are going to have some user interaction, because there is a lot of information that is in the user's head that we can't infer only from the data.
About the second point, the first "simple" spreadsheets are going to be (probably) without macros, etc. (anyway at the start we can do ThingsThatDontScale(TM)). I think that making a transpiler from excel functions to a programming language shouldn't be that difficult, but the macros are a totally different beast.
Thanks for your reply!
Again, comments are welcomed :)
What are your thoughts on the following:
Flex.io zapier.com Blockspring Zoho Creator Domo
If you build this platform I think you have to start application first and not try to theorize it.
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.
For example, I see from your submission history that your are probably a biochemist [1] and also that you know what is a regular expression [2] so I guess that you know how to program to some degree, and that if you wanted you probably could make your own crud app.
The majority of people that I imagine using my product dont't know nor want to know how to program, let alone what a regular expression is.
BTW, im still interested on what you meant by 'start application first and not try to theorize it' :)
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10863718 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11024116
So when you say "convert a spreadsheet into a web app", it means many things to many people. Which is a real expectation management challenge!
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.
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
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
We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11458280 and marked it off-topic.
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.
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.