Show HN: I made an app that consolidated 18 apps (doc, sheet, form, site, chat…) (nino.app)
Currently there are 18 apps (called "modules") on Nino:
- Database types: Sheet, Form, Calendar, Gallery, Board, Todo, List
- Composition types: Doc, Slide, Drive, Notebook, Canvas, Grid, Blog, Site
- Communication types: Channel, Chat, Meet
I want to improve these modules and build more. Your feedback is important!
FAQ: How is it different from Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, or startups like Notion and Clickup?
A: I think Nino has a better foundation to (1) consolidate a lot more apps than they currently do, (2) drastically improve speed with offline architecture, and (3) offer unmatched privacy and security with end-to-end encryption (coming soon)
Let me expand on these points:
1. Consolidation
In Nino, pages and blocks are interoperable with each other. Google and Microsoft still have mostly isolated apps. Nino is one (super)app that supports 18 modules, saving you time from switching and integrating between different providers.
2. Offline mode
This is actually more complex than it seems, but I ultimately decided it's worth it, not only for people who need to work without internet, but also for everyone else who want instant page load. Everything is saved locally by default.
3. End-to-end encryption (E2EE)
This is just a preview and not open to public yet, but is something I have been building alongside since day 1. In fact, it's likely not architecturally possible for existing products to add later on. Nino is built to offer both E2EE and cloud features (backup, search, collaboration).
One more thing: pages on Nino are also publishable! There are blog and site modules, but you can also publish other modules (i.e. sheet, board, canvas, etc.) on your custom domain or on a free nino.page subdomain.
Give it a try and let me know how it can improve. I want to hear from you.
268 comments
[ 2.2 ms ] story [ 275 ms ] threadI find that data sovereignty is very important to me (it might not be for everyone), which is why I ask about those points specifically ;)
Currently it uses GCP with data centers in the US, but when E2EE is rolled out, I don't think it would matter where it's located? There might be legal complications so I'm also thinking of moving the physical databases to jurisdictions like Switzerland, if it comes to that.
Given the complexity of the backend, I think a self-hosted version might not be possible in the short term. However, single tenant versions (like GitLab dedicated) is definitely doable.
Also the “too many tools” pitch sounds like an unhinged rant. There’s almost certainly a better way to phrase that, because otherwise the idea that the mere existence of a wide variety of tools bothers you doesn’t stand up to the “so don’t use them all” rebuttal. Maybe focus in the convenience factor, and the integration within your platform instead, as that is a genuine value-add.
Good luck!
On your second point: That's a good point, bad phrasing on my part. Thanks for the feedback.
This is just part of the difficulty of marketing; you can't please everyone. You have to figure out what problems the bulk of your possible user market are trying to solve that your app solves, and present that plainly and concisely. Flowery language tends to obfuscate; just plain simple "If you have problems XYZ, this will solve those", then link to greater detail about how each of X, Y, and Z, are solved.
It's hard to do this because we are so used to seeing mid level manager bullshit PR speak on every product page we look at; it seems like a requirement. I've had very refreshing experiences with product descriptions written by a technical writer who just did not give a fuck. Just wrote it up like he was sending an email about a bug report, published it, and it was fantastic.
What is your vision about email? I know, it's not an advanced nor modern technology but still the established backbone of office communication, especially if you want to conquer the given field. Despite MS365 has Outlook as default app working with emails in other contexts is still a pain.
I'm building something similar after spending 10+ years working with those numerous different apps day in and day out in quote-unquote "high stakes" white-collar roles. It's early days and I'm approaching it from a slightly different angle, but there's a certain amount of overlap between the two visions. I'm focusing on a smaller set of apps but more fleshed out set of features, aiming for feature parity with incumbents + my own features (which incidentally is why this is taking a while to build well...)
Curious to see how Nino progresses and we should connect later on when I have something tangible to show, if you're up for it
As a business user it's not clear how I would use it, and why I would care.
Your front page reads as:
> Nino is a collection of apps that can interoperate with each other on the block-level from one uniform interface. It has interoperable pages and blocks. It is flexible, extensible, and adapting to your needs as you grow, as Nino helps you consolidate tools and reduce costs. It has page sourcing so you can view pages in a different way. It has page embed, so you can sync page to another page. It has sync block to another page, but you can also block mirror and sync block on the same page.
A good comparison against your front page would be against monday.com or Asana who start with use-cases and practical application. See Monday:
> Monday - A platform built for a new way of working. What would you like to manage?
> * Work Management - Run all aspects of work
> * Sales CRM - Streamline sales processes
> * Dev - Manage product lifecycles
Then if I click any of those categories, it goes into the exact ways it can help me.
Was willing to spend 5 minutes on a walk. Tried the web app - ios safari is not supported :( downloaded the ios app and registered. Got a totally blank app - no onboarding, no template / samples, no obvious way to import from my existing google sheets to see how things scaled. I added a datasource and a few fields (which felt confusing) and my walk was over.
Antitrust regulation says what?
Sounds quite a bit like Notion. A comparison would be apt.
Also sounds a bit like OLE / OpenDoc on desktop, embedding an Excel sheet into a Word doc along with an Access form. If it can do that, it could make quite a demo.
But seems to have devolved into generic state synchronization library these days.
My initial thought was, this vision looks like what happens when a company realizes that their core product is less valuable than everything adjacent to it and starts growing their product a dozen different directions simultaneously.
But maybe there's something different about embracing this holistic vision from the start, as opposed to trying to be focused and then getting forced into scope creep.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4ZoJKF_VuA
I also suggest reading his book.
In terms of this theory you should communicate like this: Why, How, What
You are starting from your 'What'.
I haven't really grasped the core of your product, but to restructure it could be something like:
Stop wasting time looking up documents, e-mails and chats in different systems. Stop paying for 20 different single purpose services just to run your business.
By having everything in one place it is easier to find and share information throughout you business. Creating custom combinations of docs, chats, sheets, forms, etc will allow you to create the tool to support your own processes and ways of thinking rather than having to learn some app's way of thinking.
Nino allows you to quickly build your own custom flows using modular building blocks. Create the tools that you need and have all of your information in one place.
Thanks guys for the feedback. I think it's pretty clear what should be worked on next.
Have you thought about what sort of developers would develop modules? Have you made any efforts to engage the free software community?
Maybe I can see some use-case for personal use (big maybe), but right off the bat, you can't use this at any company (small startup or enterprise), for several reasons: Lack of functionality, lack of organization-based group and access control workflows, auditing, user provisioning/de-provisioning, lack of cross-organization document sharing and collaboration and compatibility, plugin support, email integration, domain hosting, etc. etc.
I'm not even sure a motivated individual contractor could use this professionally due to the need to collaborate with their customers. I'm not even sure you could dog-food this while managing Nino Inc.
>Nino is one (super)app that supports 18 modules, saving you time from switching and integrating between different providers.
Is that even a real problem?
Most places will use either Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace - those platforms are very well integrated internally. MS365 has all the apps you built except they are feature-rich and some are industry standards (like the Office suite), plus much more - and everything is very well integrated.
But that isn't enough. Sometimes users may prefer, for example, Confluence as a wiki instead of the MS365 Sharepoint wiki - the reason why is because they want to choose a 'best of breed' solution for their use case .. or it may just be a subjective preference. In that case, yes, the integration isn't as great but it is workable (there are plugins to allow deeper integration of external applications). Your solution won't be able to get away from that either. Even if I like your Todo and Notebook apps, I may prefer using Zoom for conference calls and Slack for chat .. what happens then?
I get the best-of-breed argument. Nino's thesis is that people will find more value if enough tools are bundled in one place.
No, they aren't. I'm not trying to be argumentative, but there is a difference between true support and a superficial check-mark.
>I get the best-of-breed argument. Nino's thesis is that people will find more value if enough tools are bundled in one place
I'd like to interrogate this a little more. Why would someone not go with MS365 or Workspace?
I can see your answer of: >Nino has a better foundation to (1) consolidate a lot more apps than they currently do, (2) drastically improve speed with offline architecture, and (3) offer unmatched privacy and security with end-to-end encryption (coming soon)
Taking this point by point: 1) Your ambition is to have more apps, but the reality is that TODAY, both MS365 and Workspace actually have MORE applications integrated, and those applications are much more feature-rich. 2) MS365 certainly has deep offline integration. Workspace, I'm not sure what their capabilities are. 3) Neither MS365 nor Workspace supports true e2e (though I seem to remember Workspace having some option to import your own keys for client-side encryption) - regardless, I'm not sure that's enough as a selling point. Also, e2e has many challenges around the UX of key management, rotation and sharing.
By the way, MS365 and Workspace are not the only games in town. If you want to see another example of a 'super-app' that supports a million 'modules' take a look at ZohoOne - they support everything under the sun for a relatively low price, and all of it is mediocre (at best).
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Another thing I can't gauge from your page is, what it means for one of your modules to be very well integrated against another. You have a chat app and a slide app .. how do those work together that puts MS365 to shame?
That said, there is an enormous amount of work required to match the functionalities of legacy programs: interoperability itself is probably not enough to compete with these. I believe the most viable route is some sort of open source solution. The amount of VC financing would likely need to be staggering for a solution like this to gain any major traction.
(That is, unless an LLM can be made to produce the whole thing over a weekend at some point in the near future ...)
Is it really 'interoperability' if it cannot integrate with any external applications?
what does a "block" mean in this context?
Can I suggest you include a dummy workspace in each user's account demonstrating the product to its full potential? Or at least give me an option when creating a workspace to make it into a demo. This might not only benefit the user, but you too, as you'll have to think about the purpose of the product and how it can be leveraged in a business context.
Good luck.
You say "Everything is saved locally by default", with full office support. Essentially you have built a "local-first" app, or about 10 of them!
I would definitely play on that for marketing, the local-first place is getting quite a bit of buzz. (I'm biased, but I think 2024 if the year local-first is going to go mainstream)
What tech are you using for conflict resolution for offline edits, I'm guessing you have generalised this in some way? Are you using CRDTs? And any particular local-first database tech?
Have you considered adding any real-time multiplayer features? If you've solved the offline edit problems, you are 95% of the way to real-time.
Noted on the "local-first" term, thanks!
I thought about doing CRDT in the beginning, but because not every block type is text, I simplified the implementation to last write wins. Note that every paragraph is a block, so it's not like the entire page is overwritten. CRDT is still doable though.
There are real-time text cursors and block selections, but I intentionally did not implement Figma-style floating cursors that people may expect in certain modules. I thought it looks cool but doesn't offer much value, especially when you can already see what other people selected.
Some feedback:
Who is the customer for this? Can you describe what their day looks like and how Nino helps them get their work done better/faster/cheaper? What are the top 5 problems that they face that Nino is clearly better than the competition? Be specific and show the workflows.
Where do they work? Who do they collaborate with? What are they collaborating on? Do the same exercise - SxS comparison with how they do things in existing tools and show how Nino is clearly better than their existing solution.
Finally, don't ever underestimate how difficult it is to get people to change from whatever they are doing today. Today is not 1990 - people have been using solutions to the general information worker problem for decades now. Why will they switch?
> With the formal commencement of the "Notes" project upon us, it seemed appropriate to set down a few brief notions about the project, its scope, and its strategic importance to Lotus. This material should be regarded as more than highly confidential.
https://web.archive.org/web/20180225100127/http://www.kapor....
Also discussed previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13168969
Everything you have listed here is very nice to have (offline mode, interoperability, …) , but MS (with O365) or G (with G Suite) are often available for free to students, teachers, and professors at critical stages in life.
Just look at Apple with their productivity suite (Pages, Numbers, Keynote). The market penetration is probably worse than LibreOffice.
The academic setting often carries over to the professional setting. Changing workflows is one of the pain points I would see in migrating to this.
I do think it looks nice and I do hope you succeed though! Good luck.
As a solopreneur you don’t have piles of cash to burn to make people use it.
So - crazy LLM idea for you:
Rather than NEW - give me a prompt box:
"make me a sheet of all my movies and grab the IMDB ratings and sort my library amd then give me a publishable page to my blog"
Such comments make your app more powerful.
HOWEVER - Making a new sheet is really FN confusing,
https://i.imgur.com/Pd64RUk.png
Am I supposed to create each FN cell?
What the F am I doing: https://i.imgur.com/U6Gx1nU.png
For the Sheet module, when you create a new field in the modal view, it'll be available to all other records too within the page, as you probably found out.
For anyone not in the 365 corporate world looking for office apps, you're unfortunately competing with https://workspace.google.com/pricing, regardless of the unique feature set you offer.
For anyone looking for a no-code solution, your pricing is very low for one person startup when compared to https://www.softr.io/pricing but would get pricey for a team of 5-10.
I am someone you should target because I help startups get started, with low/no code solutions. I also use many paid solutions personally like Cozi.com, Zoom, and ProtonMail for managing my life. I can see your tech is great and what you need is to figure out your place in the market. Where are you positioned in comparison to Zoho, HubSpot, and Zapier? How can I integrate you with Shopify? Also, you need a LOT of templates for https://about.nino.app/en/site
I applaud you for building what you've already built in such a competitive and demanding market. You need a hook - the one thing I cannot get easily from any of your competitors, which would make it easy for me to suggest you to a founder. I don't think offline mode or security cut it.
That's under their `Support` section (as in, they're offering support via email).
>The fastest way to build apps and automate work
>With Google AppSheet, you can build powerful solutions that simplify work. No coding required.
[1] https://about.appsheet.com/home/
I think that getting perfect PDF exports should definitely be up there on the priorities. Might help you hone the document model too.
The more I look at this app the more I'm impressed, though.
Side note: I did start implementing PDF exports, but for anyone curious, it's actually a lot more complex than imagined. There is no easy way to turn HTML to PDF (if anyone knows otherwise, please share) and there are font and language complications.
Personally, I’d love to do contract management with a system like this. Each clause could be a block with its own version control history. Easy to query a subset of them into a spreadsheet or slide deck. Main challenge is that all the lawyers will want it in MSFT Word for tracking changes during negotiations, so need to seamlessly interoperate with .docx
https://pandoc.org/
It's exciting to have more tools in this space, as I think it addresses a major use case across workplaces in today's world of remote-centric work: Asynchronous knowledge transfer and documentation, especially amongst non-technical workers and organizations. Extremely poor documentation of process and practices, largely because of poor documentation tools (just word docs and the like) is the biggest knowledge-hole I have observed within non-tech workplaces.
[0]: https://coda.io