
Show HN: My failed-wannabe-saas-startup project Beyondpad going open source - dzjosjusuns
https://github.com/artursgirons/beyondpad
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chandika
I'm curious to know how / at what point you decided it has failed? What
metrics helped?

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dzjosjusuns
It came down from two sides. I kinda burned out while working on Android app
and I was expecting much more users and engagement. And I didn't want to
create another note taking app - idea for BP is to be one unified place for
your data. And notes is only one form of casual-data. Sentiment was like this
- Imagine note taking app, calendar app, task tracking app, etc. as
destinations on a map. And to get to each of those destinations you need to
have special vehicle for each one! So idea was to try to state than notes,
calendar entries, tasks, fitness info etc. ar casual-data. And you can have
one tool that gives you mechanics to aggregate and manipulate those data in
one unified place. Where then you can slice, combine and get insights on your
data as a whole. And its is hard to pitch something so generic!

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bsilvereagle
I'm always sad when I see a startup/service 'fail' that I would've used had I
known about. I've been searching for something like this for a really long
time. I didn't think something existed and hobbled together a solution using
fedwiki.

Thanks for open sourcing!

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fiatjaf
Whoa, that seems awesome. I think it is too full-featured for me (also, I
don't use these kind of apps), but I would imagine people would be using this.
It seems much better and faster than Evernote or Trello, for example.

Why "data-driven"?

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dzjosjusuns
data-driven cause I want Beyondpad to be about casual-data. And notes are only
one form of casual data! Other forms could be calendar entries, task tracking.
Or for example when Ill add ability for tags to work as bi-directional data
adapters, you could create tag "hacker news", and under that tag, this feed
would show up! If this info would be something you considered for yourself as
data you are interested in.

~~~
fiatjaf
That's a thing I like. Did you get users doing this kind of complex data
manipulation? Or did them all just use the app as a simple note-taking app?

I've been making prototypes for a long time now to try to turn Trello (or make
my own Trello-like app) into a "data-driven" collaboration platform. I think
the idea is similar. My idea was to let people create magic Trello cards that
would behave like database queries, or mapreduce views, for example, a card
with some special instructions would show an aggregate value based on
properties of all other cards in the board, or list; another magic card could
show a list of links to some other cards, working as an index; that kind of
thing.

From what you say I imagine your app is probably better than what I am only
imagining for this Trello-thing. However, my idea was to have this for teams,
small businesses and projects. Since I'm not used to note-taking apps,
calendars, smartphones or anything like that I don't imagine a tool like this
for my own "casual data" (but the name "casual data" is a good one, maybe you
should use it more on your marketing efforts).

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rafaqueque
Did the same a few years ago:
[https://github.com/rafaqueque/responsly](https://github.com/rafaqueque/responsly)

It's always cool to give back to the community :)

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godzillabrennus
Thanks for open sourcing it!

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fiatjaf
Relevant thread:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8361258](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8361258)

Question: why did it failed?

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dzjosjusuns
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10491357](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10491357)

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fiatjaf
Demo: [https://www.beyondpad.com/demo](https://www.beyondpad.com/demo)

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NicoJuicy
Nice idea, but i suppose it's to featured for a "MVP"... I'm curious how long
you spent on this ?

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dhruvsachde
From the video,looks just like Google keep, does it have anything that is
better than Google keep ?

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dzjosjusuns
just to name few things - ability to create custom forms or templates,
different note lookup mechanics via tags and tag tree traversal, ability to
assign "logic" to tags and forms. Ide is to be more data centric than keep is!

~~~
benoliver999
Plus it's self-hosted which is always nice, especially if you are worried
about what data you are sticking in there.

