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Ask HN: Got rejected this time, here is my application

9 points by vgrichina ↗ HN
See my application on following link, everything is the same as submitted (except few items marked as REDACTED and typo fixes):

http://spreadsheets-on-steroids.tumblr.com/post/82903500034/my-failed-application-to-yc-summer-2014

BTW, here is also somewhat relevant discussion about crazy/clever ways of using spreadsheets – https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7363824

15 comments

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tokenadult
Did you not have a co-founder? That appears to make quite a difference.
vgrichina
Unfortunately I don't have a co-founder yet. Started working on the idea not so long enough.
sithu
Hi, thanks for sharing your experience. I think when proposing anything, it helps to be able to clearly express your idea in such a way that anyone including non-technical people like myself can understand and relate to. I think this aspect could be improved. Other things: (1) I don't have a strong idea what pain point you are addressing. You mention features extensively, but could say more about the problem you are solving. (2) You mention 50$/mo but no idea how many potential users/market size. (3) The way you've described it, your idea seems more like a research project suited for a university than an actual product that can be sold to consumers. Need to make it easier for people without expertise in the area to understand what exactly your product is.
vgrichina
Got your point about being less technical. Also I agree that project is currently more about research than building actual product.

(1) There are 2 main pain points: 1) for programmers it is building and debugging systems in non-interactive way; 2) for non-programmers is building contraptions using Excel and bubble gum – see some discussion on that here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7363824

(2) Potential market size is around 20 million exiting software developers, based on e.g. this post http://www.quora.com/Ruby-on-Rails-Professionals/Where-can-I... Around 0.05% of that market needs to be captured to have reasonable ROI I guess.

(3) Agree with you. BTW, may you detail what is your background?

chriscool
About (2) I think programmers don't buy development tools any more. They use open source or maybe free tools. Only Microsoft might still be able to have people pay for Visual Studio (but that's because they own Windows).

Either your project should be open source or it should be aimed at non-programmers like finance or accounting people.

I think the best plan might be to create an open source tool first and then, when the product start to be good enough, sell special packages around it for finance/accounting.

EpicEng
I think you are using a massive brush to paint all "programmers" here. There are many types of programmers working on many types of software. Many if us buy dev tools. There are not open source equivalents for everything
s0x
What are some essential dev tools you've purchased that lacked any sort of open source equivalent?
vgrichina
I think even more important question is "what essential dev tools you've purchased that had some sort of open source equivalent".

As for me, last thing I remember – I've purchased http://theolabrothers.com/sip/ when is wasn't free. And it is just a simple tool I don't require at all (any image editor can be used instead), it is just much more convenient than any other alternative.

vgrichina
My current plan is to make runtime platform open-source, but sell hosted development tools as SaaS.

While software developers don't usually buy platform stuff like compilers, libraries etc – they are usually more than willing to buy products that make things simple. Otherwise companies like GitHub or (my own product – Hosted CI) won't get any revenue.

chriscool
Tell us when you make it open source. I would be happy to have a look and maybe help.
ravensley14
hey how can i request my application?
vqc
I recall some kind of notice indicating that if you wanted a copy, you had to save it yourself; there was no way (or no resources) for them to give you a copy.