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Ask HN: what do you think about this startup idea?

3 points by trez ↗ HN
Hi HN,

I quitted my job and would like to focus on building my own startup. My idea is the following and I'd like to get some feedback on it.

IN ONE LINE: API to customise PDF templates with data

FULL SUMMARY: It's really hard and costy to build your own print customisation process(without the hassle of using PDF librairies) and especially for a small website unless you are ready to spend $120 000 (XMPie) to get an old style java/.net library to integrate it with XML message as a way to submit data. Why would you need that? Let say you manage a website for a designer. Each artwork is at the moment sold only once. Now the designer would like to take an already created artwork and use it for different customers. As an example, let's take a business card PDF. Customers visiting would be able to fill in an HTML form with name, address, title and phone number and get a PDF produce automatically with these information updated, without having any more integration work (for the designer). We provide: a web interface to configure and manage templates, a widget to add into your website to automatically create the form and an API to send directly the data if you don't want to use the snippet. Languages used to define the customisation config would be CSS and JS/JSON. Business cards, posters but also payrolls or any PDF related file could be easily produce or sold many times. Moreover, you pay by request.

7 comments

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mapster
I am not aware if this already exists, but this sounds valuable! Can you create a minimum viable product (prototype)?
trez
We are actually working on it. You can be the first follower of @stamplinAPI if you'd like to hear more. Thanks for your feedback.

Have you ever had this kind of needs? Would you find a usage in your actual job for that?

jlengrand
Is that the kind of template you are talking about ? http://www.goodprint.co.uk/landing/business_card_f?ref=k&...

the idea might be valuable (simplifies people's work), but you probably want to avoid eating the huge market of business cards. There are dozens of them. Plus, you may want to validate your idea first. I'd be cautious about the fact that customers are ready to have the same template than others when they call a designer. :S.

Other than that, I find the idea seducing

trez
Thanks for your feedback. There is many reasons you would like to reuse the same template. Indeed, some customers might not want to have the same design, but some don't care if they pay less (small companies), some websites already have a list of available templates. The other main reason would be reordering, another one would be to avoid some revisions (like change in the job title).

About validating my idea, it's what I am trying to do, quite a tricky task :/. Any advices on how to do that would be really appreciated.

danielstudds
Congrats on quitting the job! Now... down to the real work!

Find your customers first. If you know who they are, then you've got a chance to validate the idea. If you don't, then you can't.

jlengrand
Well, in your case I would be tempted to say that your API should send you mails about job to do.

Your customers will fell like they are modifying template, but behin you are doing the job yourself. :) You could set up some taskrabbit stuff for that.

In your case, I would also go to customers as soon as possible to avoid doing something that wouldn't match their needs :).

Good luck, and keep us updated!

trez
Thanks a lot. That would be a bit expensive but might get the idea validated.

If you want to be stay posted, you can follow @stamplinAPI