

Ask HN: Review my startup, reportminers.com - abvjav

I have just launched a startup that offers a service to convert .pdf, .txt, and other report files into Excel Spreadsheets.  I would love to see what the Hacker news community thinks.
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drewcrawford
Not in your target market, so take my advice with a grain of salt...

Page design is really good. Lots of people fail here--you are not one of them.
I clearly understand what your business is and does.

Samples are excellent.

It's not clear if you magically OCR the PDFs (i.e. PDFs made with a scanner
and some paper), or if you only accept texted PDFs. In the latter case, you
might want to explain that to your non-technical audience. In the former case,
you're probably good already--the less mumo-jumbo, the better.

Pricing seems a little high to me--but then again, I'm not in your target
market, so...

You seem to be shooting for the non-technical people here. In that case, you
might want to focus more on the benefits of having digital data, which might
not be immedidately obvious to your target market.

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Angostura
Now, I'm sure you are a splendid, law-abiding 100% legit operation.

However from a potential customer point of view and without additional
information this could look like a brilliant scam designed to phish for
various types of high-value, possibly company-confidential information.

In your FAQ you have:

Q: Are my files and data secure?

A: Yes, your files are uploaded using a secure SSL encrypted transfer service.

To be honest, if I were using such a service, transmission to your servers
would be the least of my worries.

This may be something that you could address, perhaps by beefing up the how
does it work section. Do you have a little sweatshop somewhere with people
retypring data?

~~~
abvjav
That is a really good point. I'll think about ways to beef up the How It Works
section and possibly the FAQ's. I'll also think about ways to assure the
legitimacy... perhaps registering with the Better Business Borough, et
cetera... No sweatshop yet with people retyping data, just using a variety of
tools and software to do it in house for now.

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puns
I've worked for a market consulting firm and so have experience working with
many reports and large spreadsheets and I think this is definitely something
that can be valuable to many firms.

My two biggest barriers for using the service would be your price and time. I
understand this isn't a fully automated service, which is why it's expensive
and time consuming -- but this is exactly the problem. If this was an
automatic conversion app that took a few seconds to do the work and cost $20 a
month it would look very appealing. As it is, $200 or $100 per report is too
expensive in my opinion.

But these are just my thoughts -- I'm not part of your target market anymore
so cannot honestly comment whether I would use this or not.

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Dilpil
Pretty cool business idea, your solving a real problem in a way that generates
actual revenue.

Also, since your already writing software to process pdf data, you might want
to leverage that to start a side business providing spreadsheet info on SEC
filings. Alot of traders and businesses pay good money for that kind of data.

~~~
abvjav
Excellent idea, I'll definitely think about that.

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Harkins
Your page titled "How it Works" does not actually include any information on
how it works.

~~~
siong1987
Maybe he means "How To Use" here. Are you outsourcing all those conversions to
India or China?

~~~
abvjav
I plan to do all of the conversions myself for now using a variety of tools
and software. The How It Works page and the whole site are from the
perspective of the non-technical clients who need a simple solution to
converting their reports.

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dmix
I thought this would be really valuable, especially if it had an API. But then
I looked at the pricing and "How it Works" and started to realize its not an
application but a service. Is that correct?

~~~
abvjav
Yes, you are correct, it is a service.

~~~
bprater
Make that clear then. I thought it was automated as well.

