HN Explorer

Ask HN - Rate my startup: Struc.to

31 points by skevvis ↗ HN
http://struc.to

After working for a few startups and a few years as a freelance web developer, I noticed that I was repeating many of the same tasks all the time.

So I'm building a cloud service where you can define your full data schema, and get a full embeddable form/REST API. We handle the boring business logic.

I'm going to have the developer-ready beta in the next couple weeks, but the idea + landing page alone is starting to receive some traction. Would love to hear your thoughts!

28 comments

[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 160 ms ] thread
randall
So just going to put this out there...

Initial thought #1 -- How can we rate your startup if all you have is a landing page? It's a good way to generate interest, but I can hardly rate anything that I can't, well, use.

Thought #2 -- Wufoo? As part of the marketing-for-dummies crash course, think "why me, why us, why now" when addressing your customers. Why me: because I need forms, why you? Because you provide forms... which Wufoo also does (your target market is likely aware of them, so you'd prolly need to differentiate directly, think the "iDon't" campaign from VZW) and why now: I can't use your service, so I definitely don't need it now.

Also, you have "watch the video" which might have made me watch, but that's a dead link. Right now, in my mind, you're suffering from over promise and under deliver, even with your slickly designed site, which does show some promise.

alnayyir
>How can we rate your startup if all you have is a landing page?

Because clearly some kind of deity hates us and tortures us with frivolous requests for reviewing 'startups'. I think it's just part of startup culture to be over-preening.

> Wufoo?

Yeah, I don't know either. They definitely didn't have anything on the landing page that screamed, "BETTER THAN WUFOO", which should be a primary target.

> "watch the video"

Any website that requires I watch a video, I leave. Immediately. I read @ 900 WAM, I am not going to listen to some hamfisted audio dialogue. Period.

Come out with a product for us to test!

Edited for quality.

skevvis
Randall - Thanks for your thoughts -

1) Right now I'm looking for impressions on the landing page + idea. Right now that's the MVP that I'm pushing, to gauge interest on. 2) Yes, differentiation is important. I love Wufoo and its great for non-developers to easily create contact forms and such - this is a more powerful service for full web applications. 3) Fixed the video link. Apologies.

nopassrecover
This seems a lot more extensible than what I've been told about Wufoo.
peterhi
The link to the video just goes to the home page (at least for me using Safari on my Mac)
skevvis
Thanks - had a small bug pop up! Fixed that.
sajid
I don't think this solves a problem any developer has. It's fairly trivial to process web forms.
sajid
On a more constructive note, you're better off providing a service like this to non-developers. It's a much bigger market and the product has already been validated by startups like wufoo.com
bdickason
I am not a developer so I can't comment on the usefulness of your idea.

I can, however, tell you that the landing page didn't really offer a picture of what the software does and the video is a bit out of the way. I would suggest adding a shot of how the software makes code simpler or an example form or an example API call or something along those lines!

skevvis
Thanks, I appreciate that feedback!
tunaslut
so, at the risk of sounding facetious it's like hosted scaffolding?
mdolon
I think I get the idea but I wouldn't trust any critical information (esp. user info) with a 3rd party, at least other than my host. If this product is supposed to be like Wufoo that's fine, but if it's meant to replace the primary database used in your web application then I don't think this is viable. I'm sure latency will be an issue, as well as security and privacy.
skevvis
This is a cloud service, so a developer would have to be comfortable relying on external services, including data storage. As this is becoming a trend among developers, there is more comfort with having your infrastructure external.
mdolon
Another fear I have is that you could change your terms or your prices at any time and I'd be stuck, as all of my user data would be on your machines (unless of course I could export them). Personally, I'd rather have full control over my database, though I'm sure a few others would be OK with this setup.
skevvis
mdolon - I completely understand where you are coming from - having been in that situation myself many times. Being a developer, I am planning to have this completely open - download your data at any time, either via REST APIs or a full export.
jeffepp
I'm not a dev, so most of this is over my head. +1 for using Ridonkulous and the design itself looks great.
rguzman
This seems like django with a prettier interface. As a developer, I can see the value of something like this to get something simple off the ground quick. However, in my experience, projects become complex enough to warrant actual programming in a real language sooner rather than later. Given that I'm a developer, I would not use this because I'd be better off using django/rails which will only be a little bit slower but far more flexible down the road.

The branding and graphic design are really good. Did you do it yourself, or did you hire someone? If so, who?

skevvis
rguzman - I appreciate your response! Send me a message at dominate@struc.to and I'll happily refer you to my partner who did the design!
lhorie
Initial thought:

- Dead links everywhere.

- Content below > flying robot.

- Code or it didn't happen.

RKlophaus
Glad to see a DC based startup! You should join the HN Readers of DC Meetup group (if you haven't already). We just had a meetup last night where a bunch of startups gave elevator pitches and got feedback. Would love to have you pitch Struc.to at a future meetup. Apart from good feedback, you will likely get a few beta users as a result.

http://www.meetup.com/Hacker-News-NOVA-DC

mitjak
>You can now rest easy, as you don't have to worry about scaling your database, thats on us

that's

Aegean
Sounds good. I need some web application but I won't do it precisely because it will be a nightmare to set up a webserver, data backend etc. etc. all the crap required for web development. I will never use a web framework because they are all too complicated. IMHO If you build something very simple to use and minimal, it will get some traction.

Zillions of web startups but the web development problem is yet to be solved.

skevvis
Thank you, I appreciate it!
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
norova
I know you're looking for more than proofreading feedback, but I just wanted to make you aware of a small typo on the main page.

Just above the email input box, it says this text: "Get in our our beta service." I'm guessing you didn't deliberately put "our" twice! :)

Now on to some real feedback! I'm super excited to give this service a try. It will certainly take the monotony out of many projects and allow my brain to focus on innovation rather than repetition. Thumbs up!

[dead] asyncnet
remove the robot, replace it with useful screen shot or process pic or something like that
mgkimsal
If you're aiming at developers, I can say that as one, I'd much rather have control over my own data on my own hardware, however nice the tools are. That said, having your tool generate out a full running app which I can then install and build on would be great. Build in structo, then output for Django, Rails, ZendFramework, Grails, ASP.NET MVC, etc.

I would pay a per-use fee for something like that - the 'per use' meaning the generation of the code in whatever framework format I wanted. It's going to save me a fair amount of setup boilerplate time, and I can then take it and continue to do whatever custom integration and extension work that I need to do.

Let me design out the conceptual app I want as a non-developer, then find someone who can implement my project. I can give that person/team a starter kit with my core app fleshed out in whatever tech they're comfortable with, and they can take it from there.

As nice as those frameworks are above, there's not a true drag/drop interface for the bulk of the mundane project setup work (well, possibly for the .NET side of things).