Show HN: I made a Markdown editor that automatically publishes to custom domains

2 points by johndamaia 5y ago ↗ HN

Founder here. It's been a long way since the beginning [1]. We started as a "design to code" tool where we tried to automate the process of design hand-off. We had hundreds of converted projects and worked with great customers like IDEO, Zillow or DocuSign. The problem was that customers weren't coming back (even when we delivered the best code possible - we had human intervention to guarantee perfect outputted code).

We learned 3 points: 1) it's technically extremely challenging to get 80%+ conversion accuracy for all designs consistently; 2) we don't want to have a fixed cost (human validation) for every project delivered (we want to be 100% SaaS); 3) we don't want to be discardable - after getting the code our customers had no motivation to stay on the platform.

At this point we started talking to our customers (mainly web agencies and SMB owners) about what would be the easiest way to publish websites [2]. Many startups have questioned this and built great tools to help solve the problem (Webflow, Squarespace, Wix, etc).

This seems like a solved problem, right?

It turns out people want something simpler... like the document tool they use everyday for virtually everything [3]. This was the moment we decided to focus 100% on a new tool: a Markdown editor to help you create a personal profile, a landing page to capture emails, or something a bit more elaborate. Fully responsive and free.

To be honest the product is still in an early stage. There are basic features that aren't implemented (like version history, multi-page websites or collaboration).

Even at this stage I think this can help some people, so go ahead and check it out! [4].

We can now publish custom websites as easy as writing a blog post.

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[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20624140

[2] I'm happy to discuss our pivot decision

[3] We interviewed 33 customers. By the way, I was amazed and completely surprised about this conclusion.

[4] https://zecoda.com/

8 comments

[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 30.8 ms ] thread

mtmail 5y ago ↗

Clickable URL: https://zecoda.com/

The page doesn't seem to mention markdown, or show markdown syntax. So it's a more an implemention detail a user usually won't encounter?

johndamaia 5y ago ↗

Exactly. I'm customizing my copy for the audiences. For HN, anyone know what Markdown is and could be interesting to see a page builder using Markdown along with other custom integrations (e.g. web components). For my target audience it seemed confusing to add that is Markdown. Makes sense? I can definitely reconsider.

Yes, makes sense.

XCSme 5y ago ↗

I am confused, I checked out the landing page but it seems to be a landing page builder and saw no reference to markdown or markdown editing.

Ok, that's a good point. In fact the whole Editor is Markdown based but in the Landing Page - which is basically a marketing site - I assumed it won't add much by saying is Markdown (bc most of our target audience wouldn't know what that is anyway). Here in HN anyone knows what Markdown is. Were you able to give it a shot?

Well, you posted a Show HN thread about a markdown editor, but the link provider doesn't link to said markdown editor or shows it in action. I assumed it was a simple local markdown editor that allows you to publish articles/blog posts directly to your domain. I felt click-baited by the title.

But that's exactly what it does... Did you try it? I'd love to get your feedback.

I would try it, but it requires login, normally stuff on Show HN should be able to be tested without having to register.