
Show HN: Founderkit – Startup tool recommendations from 1,000 YC founders - ryanmickle
https://founderkit.com
======
sixQuarks
Once again, a tool recommendation site that doesn't do anything different or
unique than what's been done or what's out there now. This is just like
BestVendor.com (site was sold a few years ago, but more of an acquihire).

There are tons of these types of review sites.
[http://www.stacklist.com/](http://www.stacklist.com/)
[https://startupresources.io/](https://startupresources.io/)
[https://stackshare.io/](https://stackshare.io/)

And they're all pretty much the same. They're mostly just a list of tools,
sorted by popularity or recommendations.

I'm sorry, but this is just not that useful for me. It still requires a ton of
time to look through and research the tools. Sure, it's useful just to help
start your research, but it ends there.

I've researched this space in-depth and have a solution that's different, but
way more useful. I'm just too busy working on other stuff to tackle it right
now.

\---------------

To give you guys an idea of what I'm thinking, here is a tool comparison that
is much more useful to me.

[https://medium.com/sketch-app-sources/five-app-
prototyping-t...](https://medium.com/sketch-app-sources/five-app-prototyping-
tools-compared-form-framer-origami-pixate-proto-io-c2acc9062c61)

It's ONE guy that researched 5 competing prototyping tools with a specific
task in mind. He lists the pros and cons of each, and goes into some detail on
each one and how they performed with his particular task.

I wouldn't be copying this exact format, but the takeaway here is that it's
ONE person that has researched ALL or most of the tools within a particular
category, and had an actual task to accomplish, so they have a much better
idea of what each does, its strengths and weaknesses. The problem with
founderkit and similar sites is that the reviewers have not researched all the
tools within a category, so they're only giving you their viewpoint on one
tool.

If anyone is interested in my idea, let me know. I may devote some resources
to it if I find the right people.

~~~
enknamel
It would be nice to see a review site modeled after Consumer Reports. They
tend to compare, with a well defined criteria, products in a category. It's a
professional unbiased review system rather than a crowdsourced low value
review system.

~~~
emrgx
I Was just thinking of something similar today. I was reading a blog tutorial
on a tool I am unfamiliar with but want to learn. The whole time I was
wondering if this author knew what he was talking about. It would be nice to
have a vetted list of tutorials that could be trusted to be utilizing best
practices.

------
minimaxir
This is obviously modeled after Product Hunt with similar rating/review
systems, and suffers from the same issues regarding rating/review quality.
Despite the emphasis on "unbiased" reviews, the reviews/comments (example:
[https://founderkit.com/biz/slack](https://founderkit.com/biz/slack)) boil
down to "I used it and it's good" which doesn't help _anyone_ , and is
essentially a manifestation of confirmation bias and makes the entire thing a
popularity contest, not a measurement of quality.

Also, giving each tool a ranking from 1-10 _when the only way to vote is Like
/Neutral/Dislike_ is misleading.

~~~
ed
I mean, no one is forcing you to use this product :) but I actually find the
ratings to be really directionally accurate, which considers them in
aggregate, and use this site all the freaking time. Yesterday I needed a
decent conference calling tool, I went with the first one I found and the
reliability was terrible - I know there are a million sites out there for this
but good luck googling "best free conference call." One founder kit search
later I jumped on uber conference and rescued the call. It didn't matter that
I was using the best, most deserving startup, I just needed something that
worked...

~~~
minimaxir
> I actually find the ratings to be really directionally accurate

That is the definition of confirmation bias.

> I know there are a million sites out there for this but good luck googling
> "best free conference call."

OK. [https://imgur.com/a/f9JQ4](https://imgur.com/a/f9JQ4)

(Which more or less further supports my point of this being a popularity
contest)

------
mtw
I hate how they force users to sign up. You need to give access to your
Twitter and LinkedIn. Who knows what kind of data mining they do.

Also: dude, you already have my twitter, why do you still need my email
address? Twitter already gives you that. What If I don't have a title? Why is
that required?

No thanks

~~~
andyfleming
It only required one of the connections for me. I used twitter, which in my
view, is better than Facebook and LinkedIn as far as privacy concerns.

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ares2012
Shockingly, YC companies are always at the top of the lists in the categories
they service. Smells like a growth hack to me.

~~~
ryanmickle
It's no secret that YC services are commonly used by YC founders, especially
since founders of the big startups are often super generous with credits, to
help founders just starting out. Nothing weird happening here, there are
several categories where the commonly assumed best YC solution isn't #1, or
even close. That made us realize we had something.

------
rrggrr
When I need a tool I check Zapier first. Why? Because I know I can easily
integrate with other systems and because I get almost the full lay of the
land.

That said... without knowing the size of the user base, how much cash these
companies have, etc. whose to say even 1/2 of them will be around 5 years.
These tools need to be used and integrated with great caution.

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netik
Is there any reason why there isn't a single security utility, aside from
password managers on this list?

It seems that security is an afterthought at most startups.

~~~
ihunter
People have requested it. Only now are there a handful of security service
startups as opposed to good ole devops service providers.

We split categories when we get enough companies to support it. Let me know if
you have a list and I'll happily get this in there, I'd love to have more
security products as well.

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kriro
"Beta tested and used by almost 1,000 YC founders"

Most things I have clicked on have about 10 ratings tops and one line reviews.
Even as a quantitative tool it's not that useful (yet). Would be interested in
seeing some stats. From a first glance I expect a correlation between number
of ratings and positive ratings. At least the subcategories I clicked through
all followed that pattern.

I'd also love a filter on the subpages like:
[https://founderkit.com/biz/optimizely](https://founderkit.com/biz/optimizely)
where I can filter the negative feedback to the top (especially once there's a
lot more data). I personally make most decisions after reading negative
feedback and only roughly browsing the positive feedback.

Edit: I'd also like to read a bit more on the reasoning of the ranking. Why
was this system (popularity, score, recency) picked over purely ranking on
score?

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sfrailsdev
I feel like reviews really need an A/B test at the very least, because someone
comparing and contrasting two products gives you an idea of the relative
importance of different features.

------
ghughes
Why do I have to sign up to see the reviews?

~~~
minimaxir
The copy is misleading and you do not need to sign up; you can just click the
link in the toolbar:
[https://founderkit.com/reviews](https://founderkit.com/reviews)

~~~
gumby
Classic antipattern. I don't really understand it: if you're willing to allow
unrestricted reading, why pretend you don't? It just drives away page views.

~~~
bbcbasic
Like ExpertsExchange "tired of scrolling?"

------
jorazzle
A real problem for startups. People waste too much time on routine stuff.

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lowglow
I think my biggest issue with all of these things is they tend to only serve
YC companies and not the multitude of other independent hackers out there
outside of that pipeline. I've just stopped sharing stuff like this because it
hurts the entire ecosystem long term. _shrug_

~~~
ryanmickle
Hey lowglow, it actually started/was tested by YC founders, but we just
onboarded several new founder networks in the weeks leading to launch,
including First Round, Slow Ventures, Social Capital, Fuel Capital. There are
many, many brilliant founders contributing (also note that ratings are hidden
while written reviews show by whom they are posted).

------
endlessvoid94
Finding tools is (unfortunately) not the hard part about being a founder.

------
funkyy
There is not enough data on review list. You need to click the product
sometimes to see what it does. There should be 3-4 sentence, non-biased, non-
advertisement description.

------
swah
The recommendation site I wanted to have was
[http://stackparts.com/](http://stackparts.com/)
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2993371](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2993371))
but nothing became of it...

Maybe there are just too many options nowadays for a visualization of possible
stacks to be useful.

cc @joshu

~~~
ihunter
This is a great idea. I think it can be done

------
johanneskanybal
I liked it. In particular the categories which I think a lot of really small
companies might find useful. Needs to be 40 times more users and less yc
backed bias but still ok.

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ravishah
Application error An error occurred in the application and your page could not
be served. If you are the application owner, check your logs for details.

~~~
ihunter
Thanks Ravi, seems we inundated the middle tier Heroku postgres servers.
Bumped up and site seems to be humming again.

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liveink
Great seeding network, resulted in a much stronger signal to noise ratio.
Definitely going to be using this!

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rahul71
Server error when I tried to register

~~~
ihunter
Servers are getting slammed, try again just spooled up more.

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baccredited
Why do they need my email address during signup? Isn't access to my twitter
account enough?

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rahul71
internal server error when I tried to add myself

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LisaQFetterman
omg!!!! Very cool. I need this.

