

Ask HN: Review My Startup - Butter Camp - thecombjelly
http://buttercamp.com/

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ericz
I want to try it out but there doesn't seem to be a way of signing up without
inputting my Paypal info.

The most annoying criticism people often have is "Why can't I do this in a
spreadsheet" and right now the front page only conveys enough features such
that one could say "Why can't I do this in notepad". Perhaps more engaging and
unique features should be the highlight of the frontpage.

~~~
thecombjelly
You make a good point about trying it out, although it seems that the trend is
to require payment first. Thanks for the suggestions.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
>the trend is to require payment first

You expect people to put down $10 on an app that appears to be nothing better
than a text entry that you have to calculate yourself? </incredulous>

If not, then as the parent says, try to put some feature details into your
landing page.

------
thecombjelly
You can also read a blog post at <http://thintz.com/essays/butter-camp-
launch>, which details how I went from nothing to launch in about a day.

~~~
mbenjaminsmith
I've coded a few things in 24 hours or so. It's really fun. But that doesn't
mean you've got an interesting product on your hands.

My thoughts:

I would use this as a native app on BB or iPhone if it were very, very easy to
use. I see the use case being you whip it out after you make a purchase and
update it. That means it would have to load fast independently of network
conditions. I don't really want a webapp for that. At best that would be
browser -> bookmark -> login? Ouch.

If you're targeting budget minded people, which of those would tolerate a
recurring fee? I would probably pay 10$ once for the software (if the UI was
really good), but I can't imagine paying $120 a year for something that's
supposed to save me money.

To put it in perspective, you can get basic quickbooks for $120 a year. No,
it's not simple, but will buttercamp do my taxes? It would have to have real
utility to charge that much.

~~~
thecombjelly
For me I don't need anything to do my taxes. Quickbooks requires way too much
effort for me. I have a hard time sticking to a budget when I need to put
forth a lot of effort to do it. Thanks for the feedback though.

~~~
mbenjaminsmith
I agree. I don't use software for personal finances. My point is that you can
get a lot of tool for $120 a year.

I too would probably use a tool like this if it were simple, very mobile and
cheap(er). But I would definitely want to be able to do something with all of
that data since I've taken the time to type it in. What about having a few
export formats? It would be easy enough to dump it to xls or csv on demand.

~~~
thecombjelly
Good idea. I hadn't really thought of that. Although I was going to add some
analytics. Exporting to csv would be even simpler. Thanks a lot.

