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Ask HN: review my webapp starter project

24 points by kaffeinecoma ↗ HN
Hi HN, I'm looking for feedback on a project I've been working on. It's a kind of webapp starter project- the code is the product.

http://armhold.com/quick

The target customer is an entrepreneur/dev that wants to get a basic webapp up and running quickly. It doesn't do anything novel or earth-shattering; it's just a project shell that gives you some common basic features that you can use to build out your site.

I often see jobs posted to sites like oDesk or Elance asking for a basic website with these kinds of features. The idea is to sell this code as a starter project, so you can get your webapp running faster and not have to worry about implementing boilerplate stuff like:

* totally automated user accounts (sign-up/login/change-password/forgot-password, etc)

* login via Facebook or use local account (uses BCrypt for storing pw hashes)

* drop-dead easy "you must be logged in to access this page" annotations

* "contact us" with CAPTCHA protection

* smart https/http switching for secure/insecure pages

* uses H2 as an integrated database, so it also saves you the hassle of setting up MySQL (though it's a simple change if you do in fact want to use an existing DB).

Again, none of this is rocket-science, but it can take a surprising amount of time to get these basic things working properly.

The main downside to this of course if that you're subject to my choice of tech (Java, Wicket, JPA/Hibernate).

Do you think this is worth pursuing? Do you think it's worth $199? Would you like to use it to build your next project? :-)

All constructive feedback appreciated, thank you.

18 comments

[ 9.4 ms ] story [ 76.9 ms ] thread
euroclydon
I don't think people pay money for this type of thing. They do for CMSs or hosted solutions of any type, but no so much for starter kits.

I think it will be a long road to get traction selling this, but if you want, you could promote and give away the starter kit for free, then sell add-ons that tackle difficult tasks. You could make money this way.

Again, I think there are easier ways to make money, but my first steps would be to promote the heck out of this free starter kit. Then solicit suggestions from your user base for additional features or custom work. You could do this with a forum. Pick the feature requests that you think would be the most difficult for your users to do themselves and that also provide value to their business (bonus points for value easily identified with dollar signs) and then make them as add-ons to sell.

kaffeinecoma
Not a bad idea. I'd be more than happy to give the kit away if it meant I'd get some consulting work out of it. Thank you.
[deleted]
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mfieldhouse
The only way to truly find out if it sells is to start selling it.

Sometimes, the people who give feedback on your idea are not the same as your target audience.

What would people search for in Google to find something like this? SEO and throw some money at PPC.

kaffeinecoma
My motivation for this was seeing that people regularly pay freelancers on oDesk/elance hundreds of dollars for this kind of thing. Or perhaps they're paying way less than that, but they're waiting weeks just to get that first buggy 1.0 version deployed.

So I think there is real value here for someone who wants to get their basic webapp 1.0 version out as quickly as possible, and not have to pull their hair out over stupid things like signups, or Facebook integration.

I am in fact sitting on some Adsense ads for this, but first I wanted to get some basic feedback on whether I'm totally off-base or not with the idea. Thanks!

garethsprice
Thing is, it's not like a non-technical person is going to download this and say "Awesome, no need to pay a developer to build this now - all I have to do is implement a few SQL tables and forms and I'm done" - they'll still need the developer, just now they can get more done for their small v1.0 budget.
gotrythis
At first glance, it looked like something you might sell on codecanyon.net
catshirt
perhaps the java ecosystem is different than what i'm familiar with, but in my experience you have to really sell your framework- even if it's free. $200 is enough to make me close the page before reading the features.
dshipper
My first thought is that this is definitely not for a developer. I can get a site similar to this running in Rails in just a few hours for 100% free besides time spent.

What it's really for is people who are looking to build websites but are doing so from the business side. The people who want to have a site up with the minimal amount of coding possible.

kaffeinecoma
You're correct- it's more targeted for an entrepreneur who's trying to hire someone on elance to build such a thing. You can build this in a few hours in RoR? I was thinking it'd be more like maybe a weekend of work to replicate, but perhaps I've underestimated the power of Rails. Thanks!
clark-kent
I think the text on the homepage is too technical for your target audience. Try listing the benefits and features in a way a business type person can understand. You can don't have to include the part about being written in Java... Only developers care about that. Overall this could be a good service.

I agree with others, you can make this kit free and charge for a monthly fee for support/maintenance. Just something to consider. Your niche is in an area where business users will be happy to pay for support.

garethsprice
As an entrepreneur:

That Java is what powers major companies (including Google) would be interesting to know.

What's the benefit to installing this? If I install it, how am I going to find someone to work on it? That is is based on industry standard, easily modifiable Java that I can easily hire developers to work on would be good to know. Maybe even pitch it as a first round product to build a prototype or proof of concept rapidly. Would need to find some target customers and ask them what they want, though.

How many developer hours am I saving? Showing that "most developers estimate around 100-200 hours to set up the basic framework for a new application" lets me work out in my head how much I'm saving.

I don't care about HTML or CSS or BCrypt or SQL, but that I can save X00 hours reinventing the wheel and get straight into implementing just the logic of my app is a big draw.

If it were me, I'd probably give this product away - you have nothing to lose. The target audience will have no idea how to use it anyway, just that it can save them money. And that's where they contact you for help, as the World's #1 Quickstarter expert. Worst thing that can happen is that other developers download it for free and start building products on it, in which case you've built yourself an ecosystem.

Case study: Wordpress (Wordpress.com), Drupal (Acquia), all built themselves into multi-million dollar companies on this model. For a smaller case study, Lovdbyless.com is a free RoR social network framework that some friends of mine gave away and that led to millions in consulting work.

euroclydon
What' the legality of the distribution for all that OSS software?
kaffeinecoma
Good question. It's built with Maven, so technically I am not distributing the libraries with the downloadable product.
jaz
Have you considered including code for linking up to popular payment gateways? You should also take a look at the SaaS starter kit for rails [1] - it seems to be similar to what you're doing and might give you some new ideas.

[1] http://railskits.com/saas/

kaffeinecoma
I did in fact consider adding some hooks for payment gateways, but in the end I felt that it would be too specialized to do in a general way. A simple site can start easily and add a Google Checkout button (like I did) with a simple blob of HTML. Of course that's not a solution for everyone.

One possibility I thought of was adding support for payment verification callbacks. So you can create single-use digital downloads that are only authorized after payment is verified. If I ever get traction, that's definitely on my list for a future feature.

Thanks for the link to to the Saas starter kit- I'll take a look.

garethsprice
No more features! Give it away to the first 5-10 people in your target demographic you can find who'll take it, and see what they do with it. If they don't end up using it, why not? If they do, what is it missing? Stick to those 5-10 like glue and they'll tell you exactly what you need to build your business. (Read: Four Steps to the Epiphany)