
Apply HN: Turn your spreadsheets into a complete webapp in minutes - singold
PROBLEM<p>Most businesses have important information registered in spreadsheets, those spreadsheets generate a lot of problems like loss of files, versioning, loss of information, lack of accountability in changes, etc. Some of those spreadsheets start as something small but end up being pretty important for its users.
To substitute those files with custom software is difficult because in medium or big enterprises IT departments work on the most important things and can’t develop software for “small things”. On the other hand outsourcing that development can be difficult and&#x2F;or costly. For smaller business without IT departments the problem is the cost of developing custom applications.<p>SOLUTION<p>Let users upload a spreadsheet to our platform and transform that into a custom web app, adding useful functionality like search, filtering, reports, security, users, permissions, etc.<p>BUSINESS MODEL<p>Basically we will have two products the hosted app (recurrent revenue) and the downloadable app to host on your own server (as a premium product). As a business strategy we need to have affordable prices so that medium management can approve the purchase. 
Also our apps need to be functional, with good usability and good design (in that order).<p>VISION<p>In the long run we want to make great software for any kind of companiess. To do that we need to enter the market with smaller and less risky applications because “no one ever got fired for buying &lt;big enterprise software company&gt;”<p>MARKET<p>Every business that uses spreadsheets for long term work (need to work more on this)<p>TEAM<p>Right now it is only me, but I am looking for co-founders. I have a technical degree on software development and experience in various non-IT areas of a bank (first hand experience of what I call the “spreadsheet hell”).<p>PROGRESS<p>I have a sketch of the application and am developing the first working prototype<p>Any kind of questions, opinions, etc. are welcome.<p>Thanks in advance!
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tgflynn
This seems like it would be a great idea if it can be done because the market
for it would probably be very large.

However it seems to me that doing this would be very difficult for at least 2
main reasons.

First spreadsheets can be organized in essentially arbitrary ways and there is
no standard way of defining the semantics of data in them. There can also be
all sorts of references between data items and unlike SQL there is nothing to
explicitly define the nature of these references. How could a program take an
arbitrary collection of spreadsheets and transform them into a webapp that has
significantly more functionality than just loading them into Google docs ?

Second spreadsheets often use macros and other programming constructs so I
think you also have the problem of building a general translator from
macros/VB/Excel functions to javascript/whatever backend language you're
using. This again seems like a fairly difficult problem to tackle in general.

~~~
singold
I agree with you that it is a difficult problem to tackle and I've been
thinking partly on what you say.

About your first point there are two important things, first that we are going
to start with simple spreadsheets and then evolve to more complex ones. And
second that we are going to have some user interaction, because there is a lot
of information that is in the user's head that we can't infer only from the
data.

About the second point, the first "simple" spreadsheets are going to be
(probably) without macros, etc. (anyway at the start we can do
ThingsThatDontScale(TM)). I think that making a transpiler from excel
functions to a programming language shouldn't be that difficult, but the
macros are a totally different beast.

Thanks for your reply!

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palakz
We already have Google spreadsheets and many more such apps/web apps. Why
would someone jump to this?

I think you need to clarify more about your USP. Becoming more specific about
your functionalities such as what kind of security or what kind of user
permissions, etc. might help you gain more attention.

People already have such apps/web apps available. So, you need that one wow
factor to make the users jump from one service and come and use yours. Try to
think more from an user's perspective and try to redesign the way your web app
is going to work or help companies/individuals in handling spreadsheets with
ease. Good luck! :)

~~~
singold
Maybe I didn't explained myself well or maybe I didn't understand your comment
(or both :).

In other words the idea is that you upload a spreadsheet and we make a CRUD-
like app for you with the information that you already have in your
spreadsheet.

The purpose is not making spreadsheet management better, but make spreadsheets
"obsolete" for some kind of uses.

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lvp3
This is a problem I have that I thought was near to impossible. I have a
nightmare test case for you. I am a property manager of 1000 units. We have 40
properties each of which we track vacancies with a spreadsheet. They've got
all relative property data on them as well. Let me know if you are interested.

My solution was to build a web app for this completely out of spreadsheet
land. But I've got some other things to tackle first. Either way good luck!

~~~
singold
You will probably not be my first client :P but I love a nightmare test case.

I would love to see that spreadsheet (or a part of it with fake or no data
obviously), my email is in profile, feel free to contact me.

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kumarski
This is already happening on a lot of fronts, I've built entire apps on
zapier.

What are your thoughts on the following:

Flex.io zapier.com Blockspring Zoho Creator Domo

If you build this platform I think you have to start application first and not
try to theorize it.

~~~
singold
From the apps you mention, except for zoho creator, I feel like are all
developer oriented (I can be wrong).

In a way, what I want to do is to make apps using spreadsheets as the
requirements for the app.

What do you mean by 'start application first and not try to theorize it'?
Isn't that I don't agree but I didn't understand it well and it looks like
somenthing interesting to take into account.

~~~
osullivj
Have you looked at spreadsheetweb.com and calcfusion.com? The former seems
mature, with plenty of real paying customers. The latter is new, and I guess
they're still working on getting traction.

~~~
osullivj
Here's two more: karmaplatform.com and kdcalc.com. This whole area of
converting end user produced Excel solutions to scalable systems does seem
very promising. But no one has nailed it yet, and I suspect there are at least
two reasons. 1) Over technical solutions that require a .xls to be converted
into some other technical deployable eg kdcalc.com producing a .jar 2) The
diversity of Excel based solutions eg spreadsheet as DB vs. spreadsheet as
calc engine vs spreadsheet as reporting dashboard.

So when you say "convert a spreadsheet into a web app", it means many things
to many people. Which is a real expectation management challenge!

~~~
singold
The expectations management you mention is really important, I need to think
how to communicate that clearly to customers.

In this case we are going to make it "cloud based" so there's no need to
deploy anything. About the different kind of spreadsheet uses, the more use
cases that we can found the better, also we are going to start with the more
simple cases to reach a functioning product and then expand to the most
complex ones.

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kevin
Can you provide a link to the sketch or anything showing what you've done so
far?

~~~
singold
I've added a sketch of the user flow here:
[https://app.moqups.com/santiago.ingold@gmail.com/KCTLq4WnAL/...](https://app.moqups.com/santiago.ingold@gmail.com/KCTLq4WnAL/view/page/ad2107be8)

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archlight
If it can be solved beautifully, it would be cash cow. like the others
mentioned, translating UDF (user defined function) would be a challenge. also
in bank, it usually load quant library xll. It would be impossible to host
quant library as service. nowaday i see bank just use spreadsheet as front
end. a lot of logic are wrapped in code and fully tested somewhere else

~~~
osullivj
It's not impossible to host a quant library XLL as a service. I've done it
with the QuantLib XLL. My HN profile has links that detail how it's done.

~~~
archlight
This is really cool. I tried a few c++ call as endpoint in a webservice. but i
find it difficult to maintain state as you know market are in memory. I am
also thinking to recreate dependency graph as futures in tornado but I gave up
as it seems too difficult. eventually I just move xll out of excel process to
make it s/s a bit light weighted and faster to run

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singold
The sketch of the user flow for the first prototype can be seen here
[https://app.moqups.com/santiago.ingold@gmail.com/KCTLq4WnAL/...](https://app.moqups.com/santiago.ingold@gmail.com/KCTLq4WnAL/view/page/ad2107be8)

Again, comments are welcomed :)

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osullivj
I took a look at the mock up, and I think you're aiming for the same space as
Karma Platform; converting spreadsheet-as-db to web app.

~~~
singold
Yes, that is basically the idea for the first version, I will take a closer
look to Karma Platform

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tzm
Hey there, I created an app called spreadsheet.io that did something similar
(Google Refine + Fusion Tables). I have no bandwidth for dev, but am open to
partnership.

~~~
singold
I would like to see what your app is about, but spreadsheet.io returns a 503
error, can I see something about it on another place?

~~~
tzm
Yea I took it offline. I'll update this thread with a link to details.

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jasoncrawford
Hey lvp3, this sounds like a good case for Fieldbook (my startup):
[https://fieldbook.com](https://fieldbook.com). It's as flexible as a
spreadsheet, but with the power of a relational database.

We've had a few real estate offices and property managers use us; you wouldn't
be the first! If you send me your spreadsheet I can even get it migrated for
you as a demo. jason@fieldbook.com

~~~
dang
It feels disrespectful to hijack someone else's Apply HN application like
this.

We detached this comment from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11458280](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11458280)
and marked it off-topic.

~~~
jasoncrawford
Oops, my apologies. I only mentioned it because other people were mentioning
alternate solutions on the same sub-thread.

Promoting an app when it's relevant seems common on other threads, but I can
see how it would be rude on an Apply thread. Won't do it again.

