

Leftronic (YC S10) Dashboards Optimize Your Data Displays - bwaldorf
http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/24/leftronic/

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pmjoyce
Welcome to the space guys, it looks like a great product, I've signed up for
the beta and I'm really looking forward to checking it out. What follows is by
no means meant as a slight on the creators of the product, it looks like
they've done a sterling job and I wish them every success.

I launched an almost identical product (in terms of functionality)
<http://geckoboard.com> into private beta a little over a month ago and have
been steadily improving it since then (adding a bunch of new APIs including
Freshbooks, GitHub and an API with the ability to load custom data to your
status board). Despite being first to market, accumulating a couple of
thousand beta testers and reaching out to TC we only get a one line mention in
the article. Getting on Techcrunch et al. is not the be-all and end-all but as
a single founder outside of Silicon Valley situations like this reinforce the
notion that you're swimming against the tide.

It's inevitable that sort of thing happens but it really does go to show one
of the prime benefits of joining YC; the exposure and access you get is second
to none and the best leg up a startup could hope for.

~~~
nedwin
This kind of surprises me. I had naively assumed that it wasn't all that
difficult to get an article on Techcrunch.

How did you "reach out"?

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nedwin
I'll also add that I've been looking for something like this for a client so
I'll make sure I check both products out FWIW.

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dotBen
I spent some time working on a dashboard project (with the view to it becoming
a start-up). I wanted to blend Panic style eye candy with something you could
throw in a load of api keys (pivotal tracker, git hub, Google analytics, etc)

I abandoned the project mainly because the size of the addressable market is
too small. I don't think Startups will spend $hundreds a month on this and
there are only so many companies even interested in dashboards.

~~~
wensing
The addressable market is small? Doesn't every Fortune 500 company use
dashboards in their operation and control centers? The market is ripe.

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dotBen
Fortune 500 companies tend not to use Pivotal Tracker, Git Hub, etc.

The money they spend is because they want custom integrations but that's not
the company I wanted to launch. I wanted to build an 'off the shelf' dashboard
you plugged in yourself.

And it is true that many startups don't care about dashboards - I'm surprised
at the number I know who don't really have any visualization or tracking of
their velocity, Constant Integration failures (if they even do CI), unit test
fails, code commits, server health, etc.

~~~
farhan
I can't speak for companies that are using those tools internally (you can ask
@danpodsedly who's using Pivotal Tracker in-house for example).

I know that for our development projects (www.xtremelabs.com) with F500
companies, we do use Pivotal Tracker and Github, and they are typically ok
with it.

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dongle
Before we joined Y Combinator, my co-founder and I had plans to build a Panic-
style status board. Then we realized that status boards were not our core
competency and we dropped the board completely to focus on our primary task at
hand. I love that I can pay Leftronic for a fully customizable, fantastic-
looking board – this way we can make our product and track it, too!

BTW, I've seen one of these boards in person and they're really slick. I can
think of a hundred ways these could be hugely motivating (have a dial tick
down based on bug-counts, have a meter showing avg user engagement, etc).

~~~
sonofabell
Thank you very much for your vote of confidence!

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Timothee
I'm not quite sure what they're offering besides "software that makes it easy
for companies to aggregate data" and “People pay hundreds per screen for our
visualizations.” I could imagine that it's a subscription-model for the web
service that gathers and displays the data? But hundreds per screen sounds
high

Is the professional services part a significant one? The mention of
YCombinator, Cloudkick and WePay make it sound like they setup the whole
thing.

Anybody has more details on that?

~~~
wensing
_hundreds per screen sounds high_

Given the value of seeing your key metrics in a continuous display, hundreds
seems low to me.

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atldev
We have a number of big screens hanging in our office. We loop an ugly
powerpoint with stale messages. Regularly, I walk by the screens and wish we
had a Panic-style dashboard for key metrics. Of course, we could build our
own, but we always seem to have more important priorities (like our own
products). Even thought about a startup opportunity in this space- if we would
like it, we're probably not alone.

I've signed up for the beta and I'm very interested in the product details.
Wish them the best of luck.

~~~
jyotindra
Thanks. We received an overwhelming response and we are actively sifting
through all the signups. Please be patient and stay tuned for a response from
us.

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iamclovin
We demoed a similar product we are using internally at gameplanapp.com called
fergie and demoed it at the Singapore ruby brigade meeting a couple of months
ago. Definitely not pretty but it has a plug and play architecture for
different stats to track.

[http://www.slideshare.net/mobile/gameplanapp/gameplans-
panic...](http://www.slideshare.net/mobile/gameplanapp/gameplans-
panicinspired-stats-dashboard-called-fergie)

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statictype
The article is short on details. Does Leftronic provide hardware + software or
just software?

Does it run on the company's network or via the internet?

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jyotindra
We make software that drives the displays. The dashboards are fully
customizable through our website. We have a simple API for collecting the data
that needs to be monitored.

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ajju
What kind of hardware displays do you support? Is there a min or max
resolution and display size?

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sonofabell
We are hardware-agnostic. Our visualizations are inherently vector-based, so
screen size/resolution will not be an issue.

~~~
ajju
Cool! Is the "hundreds" quoted in the article, per month or per year?

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lachyg
What does one of these cost on average? Are they affordable to the average
startup guy?

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maxawaytoolong
I have a nearly identical startup on the east coast but it's more of a side
business at the moment. Almost any good programmer has the chops to make one
of these, it's just really hard to turn it into a business. Pricing is the
hardest part. So... I'm guessing they aren't going to let you know. As far as
the average startup guy, it's probably not affordable. I only sell to places I
know have money to burn.

~~~
wensing
_Almost any good programmer has the chops to make one of these_

Except the making it beautiful part, right?

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maxawaytoolong
I hope so. My background in art and design is my only competitive advantage.

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inovica
Whats your URL :) ?

