
Show HN: Ryeboard – Visual Workspace - tyherox
https://www.ryeboard.com/
======
ztratar
Is there a target set of customers for this product?

It seems well developed (minus the bugs folks are reporting), but I'm not
entirely sure why I would use this instead of a normal document.

The ability to move things around in this format seems somewhat useful, but
not particularly useful for any workflow I engage in.

When I create docs for work, I want to tell a story that is quite linear. When
I want to tell concepts of hierarchies, I'll make a chart and then paste in
the document.

I could see people perhaps storyboarding with this? Creatives?

I would encourage you to find all the types of people who are using this
organically and segment the customers, then engage in a vigorous set of
interviews on how they'd like to see it improved.

Some of the product decisions, too, seem quite strange. For example, why is
commenting something that I have to drag onto the page as well? Why is that
not integrated into each box with a click? Or why is that not generic to each
board -- 1 chat room per board? These features would ideally be developed with
specific customers in mind who say "I want it to work this way!"

This is one of those products that starts off "looking like a toy" but might
actually become super useful down the road as it evolves. Good luck!

~~~
emdowling
100% this. I think you've built something that has a lot of potential.
Speaking from experience, the biggest trap you'll fall into is trying to find
a feature set and a pricing model that caters to every segment who could
possibly be interested in.

Call/email/meet with a wide sample of users and understand the exact value
you're delivering for them. Then find people who aren't using it but are in
the same market as them and see if they find it valuable. If you have a hit
product, you'll find a market segment where you're delivering 10x value over
their previous solution. Once you find that, focus and go all in.

One-size-fits-all is rarely a viable strategy for SaaS tools.

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vijaybritto
The pricing page crashed on click and I found that its because of a js error
```document.removeEventListener(this.listener, "scroll")``` But in the next
refresh there was a fix with a console.log("fix please"). :D I'm glad someone
fixed the most important page of the site

P.S: It should be a static site

------
splittingTimes
Looks like a Miro (former realtime board) clone to me. What is the
differentiator?

~~~
chadlavi
Yeah I thought the same thing. This one does have a better homepage though, so
props to the design team/FE engineers/marketing team for that.

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giancarlostoro
Surprised nobody has mentioned it yet but please make it more obvious which
cards are premium, finding out after I drag them becomes frustrating after you
drag more than one. I would "disable" them and make a tooltip show up on hover
(alert is bad and better for critical errors).

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bachmeier
I feel like I bring this up on HN once a month, but here goes -

The pricing is IMO going to hold back adoption of this product. There's a free
plan, but with 3 boards and 50 cards, that's just a quick demo. There's no way
you could do anything serious with that. It's not even enough to seriously try
out the product.

Then it jumps to $60 a year. I know the standard line about a cup of coffee,
blah blah. That's a lot of money for most folks in a very crowded space. (I
won't comment on product differentiation.) For someone that uses this heavily,
I'm sure $60/year is a great deal. Very few people will, and they'll just move
on.

In my opinion, for this to have any chance of catching on, it needs either a
real free tier, or a low-price tier of maybe $20/year. Storage is a great way
to differentiate tiers because everyone knows storage costs money. 100 boards
and 10,000 cards plus 200 MB of storage for the free plan, upgrade to 5 GB of
storage for $20/year, or get the current basic plan for $60/year.

As someone that has evaluated many products in this space, I really think you
need to reconsider your pricing. You're using the wrong mindset if you expect
someone to drop $60 to try out your product.

~~~
sb636
$60/yr is nothing for a company thats more than one person.

~~~
bachmeier
That's the price for individuals. Cheapest teams price is $144/user/year.

And besides "$60/yr is nothing" is not how people decide whether to buy
something. There are thousands of products we can buy that are worth more than
the price.

~~~
sb636
You're right. My mistake

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athenot
This reminds me a lot of Apple's OpenDoc but reincarnated as a web-based SaSS
product. Key value is openness; I'm not sure how well that can be achieved in
a tighly closed ecosystem, but I wish them all the best!

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDoc](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDoc)

------
seism
The concept reminds me of
[https://jermolene.com/cecily/](https://jermolene.com/cecily/) \- open source,
own your data, hackable..

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diegof79
The home page style and screenshots look extremely similar to previous
versions of RealtimeBoard/Miro. To the point that I thought it was a product
from the same company.

Make sure to communicate the differentiator, perhaps change the visual style
of the home page. In the current state it looks like a clone.

~~~
Gene_Parmesan
Yeah, same here. We are trialing Miro and like it so far for sprint
retrospectives, but part of trialing is trying potential alternatives. I
wouldn't mind adding this into the mix for our team's consideration, but I
can't bring it to my boss without quickly being able to point out clear
differentiators -- and I don't have the time to just play around with it
myself until I find them.

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JDiculous
Just fyi clicking "Try Demo" didn't take me all the way to the demo (maybe
because that part of the page hadn't loaded yet) so I was confused how to
access it until I scrolled further down

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darekkay
I'm always interested in board-based projects as I am developing my own[1]
(although it's targeting a different use-case). Just a small note: The help
page looks broken on mobile, the menu overlaps the content (Android, Firefox)

[1]
[https://dashboard.darekkay.com/docs/](https://dashboard.darekkay.com/docs/)

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metalliqaz
This looks like the kind of product that shows up all the time in marketing
materials but isn't actually useful for real work.

------
ddtaylor
I don't understand the whole "folks from X use this" part. Can anyone put that
something is used by Oracle or Amazon?

~~~
ken
Someone at a big tech company once told me that they knew the one person (or
maybe they _were_ the one person) who used a particular product, and were thus
the rationale for that product to put their company logo on the front page.

It really says nothing about the product or its suitability for anything. They
just want an excuse to stick recognizable names/logos on their homepage.

~~~
linuxasheviller
I work at one of the large tech companies listed on the site. I've literally
never heard of this project until I found it on HN today.

It's funny to me, because just yesterday I was a having a conversation with a
colleague who asked me if we had a "corporate account" with another commons
SaaS PM tool that he has been using with his team. I think he was in shock
when I listed all of the project management and collaboration tools that that
I've seen used in our organization. There are no "standard" project
management, planning, organization, sharing, etc. tools at big companies.
There might be "official" ones, but then managers and directors just buy
whatever the hell SaaS they want on a credit card.

Shadow IT is a thing. No company avoids it. I'd assume most Global 2000
companies use just about every single popular tool you can imagine _somewhere_
within their organization.

~~~
mattrp
I was just about to start an ask hn on this topic. I’m surprised big tech or
anyone allows the use of logo and names in this manner but obviously it’s very
common to do this. It seems highly unethical to use the name of a company and
imply endorsement of that company when all that’s happened is someone from
that domain has registered. As many of you have, I have been through the
formal PR battles with big tech to do press releases — and even simple things
like including their logo in a PowerPoint. I’d be surprised all of these logos
agreed to a de facto endorsement with a company that doesn’t even have an
about us on its website. So I guess the question is - what are the rules here?
Do these companies actually endorse this product, did these developers
actually get permission?

Ps - separate topic but I have a hard time signing up for anything without
knowing who the underlying owners or the company are and who the company is -
legal entity, investors, headquarters location... never mind I could use a
throwaway email address and password to register, what’s the point of putting
my working documents on a service that can’t establish basic trust. Talk about
rogue IT... what does it say about the organizations on their website that
individuals used their company email address and possibly the same credentials
that they use to login to their IT department? Never mind placing of
potentially confidential information on an unknown SaaS?

~~~
Remnant44
Very much this! I have a small business and my product has a lot of "big name"
users, but consistently it's pretty much impossible to get sign-off to use
their name or logo.

I don't know what the legality of just putting them up there whether they want
to or not is, but obviously the social proof of doing so is huge.

How do people navigate this?

~~~
mattrp
Excellent questions indeed. I started an Ask HN in case anyone wants to
comment there.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22004803](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22004803)

------
20191224234044
This looks pretty nice for one-off design work. But for those who want to
maintain something like a knowledge base (and a desktop app), check out
Scapple and iMapping. In particular check out 0:13 in this video
([https://youtu.be/bTQWL5wmdZY?t=13](https://youtu.be/bTQWL5wmdZY?t=13))

------
_august
my $0.02: I would make the section "A Flexible Workspace for Everyone" the 1st
main section, didn't really get what the product was until the 2nd and 3rd
sections (the first one now just has generic blocks)

Tried out the demo:

\- couldn't write in text blocks (chrome 79/mac)

\- drawing went above cursor

\- fullscreen / new page would be better

~~~
manmademagic
Writing appears to be fine for me (Chrome 79 on Win 10)

The drawing above the cursor looks like an issue with the iframe

The iframe url is
[https://app.ryeboard.com/board/demo](https://app.ryeboard.com/board/demo),
which works well

------
Robin_f
I've worked for a company that released a product exactly like this. They went
bankrupt 6 months later.

I hope you'll have more success, but at this moment I cannot see anything in
there that makes it better than the product that the company I worked for was
working on..

------
blowski
I love it! I could see myself using it to document event storming sessions,
impact maps, Wardley maps, etc.

That said, I found it a little buggy at the moment. A couple of bugs I noticed
were that scrolling too quickly to the right produced an error, and the 'flag'
box rendered some of the text outside of the box. A tiny usability improvement
for me would be if the buttons behaved more like Photoshop or Omnigraffle,
where I can select the tool and then apply it on the canvas, rather than
dragging the tool to the canvas. I'd also like to try out all the different
tools before paying - the checklist box, for example.

~~~
codebeaker
Not to take away from OPs product announcement at all but recently I ran a
remote event storming workshop using [https://miro.com/](https://miro.com/)
with a standard "whiteboard" and their regular postits feature.

The sizing and color options, the simple way some small things in the UX works
to make grabbing a postit fast, and coloring it correctly was really, really
surprisingly nice

------
injidup
Looks like OneNote.

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fsargent
This just makes me miss Google Wave.

~~~
bhl
This along with Google Reader makes me think smart engineers are good at
building the future but not at the right time.

------
mikaelmorvan
When I share a board with a link, the shared board is read-only even if the
shared user can interact on board.

Good product anyway, I'll use it later I think

~~~
tyherox
Yup, this was an intentional design choice we made! Thanks~

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dmitriid
No screenshots on the main page. The embedded video isn't clickable on mobile
(iOS Safari). Fluffy marketing speak throughout the page.

What is this exactly?

~~~
MayeulC
Agreed: I was hoping for a succinct description of the product, but only found
empty marketting words. I am not yet interested in who uses the product, but
in what the product is. Don't try to tell me it will change my life before I
actually know what it is.

Granted, I only skimmed the page, and the website made the experience painful,
as it is full of fade—in animations, so I felt like I was scrolling an empty
wwbsite (mobile Firefox). The experience was annoying, so I left.

I would likely have stopped scrolling had I encountered a screenshot or a
relevant section title. I feel websites like this are super common nowadays,
and generic enough to be applied to many different products.

~~~
lallysingh
I read the page top to bottom. I don't know what it is. Is it an online
OneNote?

I don't know what the things you build with it are for.

~~~
thelazydogsback
Yeah, and there already is of course the on-line onenote from MS...

------
lowercased
I would strongly suggest spending the extra $10 or so and getting wryboard.com
before someone else does... and getting @wryboard twitter handle.

Looking at your twitter, I see this is based in Seoul. No doubt English is
known thing, but 'wry' and 'rye' are sound-alike words, and the moment I read
'ryeboard' I also heard 'wryboard'.

~~~
lowercased
and... now it's gone... :/

------
ManDeJan
I right now use Google sheets for the same usecase, what advantages does this
have over a spreadsheet?

~~~
jeromenerf
Google sheets are « good enough » to serve as a scratchpad for ideas
(comments, some styling, multiple tabs, scripting ...)

They are not quite engaging for creative users however.

I find the « messy infinite desktop » where documents and webpages are not
only links but viewable widgets really attractive but rapidly limiting.

For ideation / brainstorming, I still prefer gathering people in a room and
writing / sticking stuff on the walls.

------
91edec
Please add middle mouse to pan if you're going to have horizontal boards.

~~~
monkeynotes
I like holding space bar to grab and then pan with the mouse.

------
foobaw
There's something wrong with drawing..It's drawing above my cursor.

~~~
tyherox
Sorry about that! There's a bug at the moment with the iFrame...

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throw293
Which is the font used in the logo? Looks nice.

Also, did you design the animations?

~~~
tyherox
Yup, animations were done in-house by my co-founder and the font is Lato I
believe.

------
GiorgioG
How is this better/cheaper than OneNote? Serious question.

~~~
tyherox
We're trying to build a platform where content can easily be exported &
imported (hence the cards) and free spatial information can augment
brainstorming / communication activities (hence the boards). I know the price
isn't for everyone but I believe we've made a unique product that has
connected with many people. But as you probably can tell by the rest of the
comments here, we currently have a problem communicating these qualities and
we will work on clarifying our message based on the feedback on this thread!

------
howmayiannoyyou
I like it and may use it. Needs an API and Zapier integration.

~~~
tyherox
Zapier integration is definitely on our to-do list!

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polyterative
Wanted to build something like this for years. Looks great. GG

~~~
tyherox
Thanks!

------
Ace__
Hello Tyherox.

I'll be taking into account some of your responses to other members.

A. So, home page:

Anything, Anyone, Everyone. You feed everyone, you nourish no one. You have a
rough idea of who your target customers are, but are holding off... until
numbers are more statistically significant.

At your stage, that could be a while, and frankly shows a: 1\. Lack of
direction 2\. Lack of properly segmenting whatever groups you have looked at
3\. Lack of clearly defining early adopters 4\. Lack of positioning 5\. Lack
of relevant copy addressing pain points, motivations, objections, reservations
6\. Lack of initiative 7\. A few other things, which is somewhat worrying.

I am of course willing to update my initial thoughts upon more information. I
don't ignore the fact it takes time, a lot of time, it's an organic evolving
path, and I make the same mistakes many times. But for now, that is what I
think. Instead of taking the long way round, why don't you take the shorter
way, which is to clearly define:

B. 1\. Who this is for 2\. Early adopter disposition which makes it more
relevant to them than the rest of the market 3\. Reach out to them and find
out what they think. If you are looking for signals, this is the quickest way.
4\. Pain points addressed, benefits, goal, end-goal, etc, etc.

I am not actually saying you haven't done these things, what I am saying is
based on information shared, and the website, that I don't see it. To be fair
to you, points B. 1 -4 should really be questions. If you want to answer in
private to me, by all means. To also be fair to you, due to the versatility of
your product and the many use cases, you do have many markets you could
target. However when time, money, resources, focus, etc, are severely limited
you can't go after them all.

Furthermore, there may well be competitors known and unknown who can service
some of the markets better than your solution, who have honed and refined
their features to either be more suitable for them, or have segmented features
based on various factors to do so. Which again leads me back to, pick a
target, see if you can hit it or not, because at the moment, it is a case of
we are waiting to see which target to aim for.

C. Ok, back to the home page. When you say Work with Anything, Share with
Anyone, I read This Might Be For You, Maybe. That's no way to greet a
newcomer. You either very blatantly let them know, This Isn't For You At All,
or This Is Seriously For You.

Secondly, early stage startup (pre-seed pre-revenue), describe your product.
You have nothing in the memory bank, no previous touch-points, don't create
confusion and promote a lack a clarity in visitors. Very simply for now, what
are you, what do you, how do you do it, what's in it for me, why should I
care. All within tight positioning. You can't create a fire within anyone, but
you can surely fan the flame. And your early adopters, their fires are
burning.

D. I know this is the current trend with startups especially, inappropriate
usage of customer logo's, as in way too soon. Trust, social proof, are
important, but not at this stage. Just like in the funnel when it is further
down, so it should be the same on the homepage. Instead of talking to your
potential customers, instead of building bridges, creating resonance and
relatability, usage of customer logo's is basically saying, let my customers
speak for me. The onus is on you to speak to your customers, and not to shift
that responsibility. I haven't made up my own mind yet at all, so what do I
care what others think?

There are other issues further down the page, but I don't like to come across
as too harsh, plus I need to get back to work.

Good luck, Ace.

~~~
tyherox
Hello Ace!

First of all, thanks a ton for taking the time to give me this detailed and
candid feedback - it is exactly what I needed to hear to plan out my next
steps. At the moment I admit the product is a bit too general to survive in
the harsh SaaS market and will need to find a market fit in order to survive.

I will reevaluate the direction of this project and what this product should
be.I am grateful for all this interest in Ryeboard and thanks again for taking
the time to write out this very detailed feedback!

------
jerieljan
This app immediately reminded me of Plectica/Kingfisher when I saw that
landing page and all the cards and its controls.

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mrnotcrazy
Are there any similar open source projects that are offline? I had difficulty
finding the right keywords to search this.

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throw293
Does anyone know of similar products for organizing notes/text snippets in a
visual board?

~~~
IOT_Apprentice
Check out scapple.

------
mrnotcrazy
Is there anything similar to this but offline and open source?

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pjmlp
Visually it looks nice, good luck with the product.

~~~
tyherox
Thanks!

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tudorw
Looks nice, is there a way to export my data?

~~~
tyherox
You can only download individual cards at the moment. We will be supporting
exporting by PDF or images soon!

~~~
udkl
PDFs are non editable even if probably easy to develop for you. Are there
plans to export as HTML ? I don’t want my data to be locked in.

------
jenhsun
Alternative to pinup.com I think.

