
Why I am building a product with a tiny market - tsergiu
http://www.debuggex.com/firstblogpostpermalink
======
jdnier
I fed it a favorite regex... Bravo. Unfortunately, the permalinking fails with
this particular regex, or I'd include it here. The visualization is so large,
it more than fills my large screen. Still, pretty cool to see it render
instantaneously and to watch it match example text. The regex is described
here: <http://www.cs.sfu.ca/~cameron/REX.html> It will match either text or
XML markup (it's used to tokenize XML), so try example text like '<div
id="123">abc' or 'abc<?xml target?>'.

The JavaScript form of the regex follows: [^<]+|<(!(--([^-] _-([^-][^-]_ -) _-
>?)?|\\[CDATA\\[([^]]_]([^]]+]) _]+([^] >][^]]_]([^]]+]) _]+)_ >)?|DOCTYPE([
\n\t\r]+([A-Za-z_:]|[^\x00-\x7F])([A-Za-z0-9_:.-]|[^\x00-\x7F]) _([
\n\t\r]+(([A-Za-z_:]|[^\x00-\x7F])([A-Za-z0-9_:.-]|[^\x00-\x7F])_ |"[^"]
_"|'[^']_ ')) _([ \n\t\r]+)?(\\[( <(!(--[^-]_-([^-][^-] _-)_
->|[^-]([^]"'><]+|"[^"] _"|'[^']_ ') _> )|\?([A-Za-
z_:]|[^\x00-\x7F])([A-Za-z0-9_:.-]|[^\x00-\x7F])_(\?>|[\n\r\t ][^?] _\?+([^
>?][^?]_\?+) _> ))|%([A-Za-
z_:]|[^\x00-\x7F])([A-Za-z0-9_:.-]|[^\x00-\x7F])_;|[ \n\t\r]+) _]([
\n\t\r]+)?)? >?)?)?|\?(([A-Za-
z_:]|[^\x00-\x7F])([A-Za-z0-9_:.-]|[^\x00-\x7F])_(\?>|[\n\r\t ][^?] _\?+([^
>?][^?]_\?+) _> )?)?|/(([A-Za-
z_:]|[^\x00-\x7F])([A-Za-z0-9_:.-]|[^\x00-\x7F])_([ \n\t\r]+)?>?)?|(([A-Za-
z_:]|[^\x00-\x7F])([A-Za-z0-9_:.-]|[^\x00-\x7F]) _([ \n\t\r]+([A-Za-
z_:]|[^\x00-\x7F])([A-Za-z0-9_:.-]|[^\x00-\x7F])_ ([ \n\t\r]+)?=([
\n\t\r]+)?("[^<"] _"|'[^ <']_'))*([ \n\t\r]+)?/?>?)?)

~~~
habosa
Wow. How the hell do you (OP) get it to render so fast? That was instantaneous
as far as I could tell. I've seen websites take 5x as long to add a <li> to a
<ul> ... I'm really amazed.

~~~
tsergiu
Heh, your browser does most of the hard stuff :) I'm not quite sure what
others are doing that it's slow.

------
asimjalis
Regarding business model and monetizing, here are some ideas:

1\. You could sell tutorials and ebooks on regexes. People who use your tool
might want to understand why their regexes are not working.

2\. You could license your debugging code/technology.

3\. You could sell a corporate license to use your site. Corps’s regexes won't
be shared publicly. Others might be. Corps paranoid about people stealing
their regexes might be interested in your product.

4\. You could ask for donations to support the site.

5\. You could make it social. Have people vote on regexes. Have another
complementary site where people contribute test-cases for common regexes like
phone numbers, dates, email addresses. You could hold competitions in
different categories.

6\. You could offer a cloud-based regex parser. I know it sounds a bit absurd,
but I want to throw this out there in case it leads to other neat ideas.

7\. You could save regexes and have people vote them up. You could have
discussion threads around regexes.

~~~
downandout
_4\. You could ask for donations to support the site._

If you learn nothing else from Wikipedia, learn this: Begging annoys users and
isn't particularly successful. He is far more likely to make money selling a
premium subscription to corporate users. He can even just say "site is free
for personal use, and corporate users must pay $495/year". You would be
surprised at how many businesses are paranoid enough about compliance that
they will voluntarily pay even if it is unlikely that the site owner would
ever find out about their unauthorized corporate use.

~~~
icebraining
_If you learn nothing else from Wikipedia, learn this: Begging annoys users
and isn't particularly successful._

As far as I know, Wikipedia fundraising efforts have been very successful.
They got $25 million dollars just last year.

[http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/Wikimedia...](http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/Wikimedia_Foundation_raises_25_million_in_2012_fundraiser)

~~~
downandout
Yes, and as the fifth most popular site in the world, that is a pittance. They
could be making billions with unobtrusive advertising. Given their traffic,
the fact that they only raised $25 million last year means that nearly all of
their users ignored their pleas for help. Further, when they do their begging,
it is very obtrusive and disruptive to the user experience. Where alternative
revenue models are available, begging shouldn't even be a consideration.

~~~
Peaker
What revenue models? Advertising could skew/bias Wikipedia

~~~
billnguyen
why would advertising skew the factual information presented in wikipedia?
Advertising is based off content, content isn't based off advertising.

~~~
jcrites
One concern I saw mentioned was that after receiving advertising revenue,
Wikipedia might become reliant on it, which would allow an advertiser to exert
influence over the organization, such as demanding for articles to be removed
that are negative to the advertiser's interests, with a threat to pull
advertising funding.

But yes, I agree, it seems possible for WP to accept advertisement without
compromising on its core values. Decide in advance never to give in to such
demands, and do not take the funding for granted.

Deciding not to accept advertising might be short-sighted. With enough years
of advertising revenue, Wikipedia might be able to work toward financial
independence (where returns on investment exceed costs), and build an
endowment like the sort that powers top universities.

~~~
mseebach
They could set up a separate non-profit organisation (that donates its
proceeds to the wikimedia foundation) to sell and manage the ads. Place the
organisation in a city far from any wikimedia presence to counter casual
contact. Put in the charter than there can be zero personnel overlap between
the businesses at any level and that nobody at the ads company is allowed to
edit any article on wikipedia or any reason, much less hold any admin
credentials . Embrace openness: Publish as much as is practical about every
deal, and make sure all ads on the sites are directly referenceable back to
the deal in which they were purchased. Publish the names and resumes of all
account managers.

~~~
gnud
... if they can get by with donations, that seems a tad simpler.

Also, I don't have to watch any ads! Hurray for Wikipedia!

~~~
mseebach
You seem to have missed the bit where they ran massive, obnoxious ads for
months begging users to donate. And all for a pittance in donation revenue.

------
nhaehnle
Side note about debuggex.com itself: The "Phone Number" example is a bad idea.
Please either remove it or otherwise relabel it to warn against using it.

Rationale: Almost everywhere in the world outside of US and Canada, phone
numbers do not look like that, and interacting with websites that assume they
do is frustrating. Even USians or Canadians may want to enter a phone number
with an extension, which would get rejected by that regular expression (a
colleague of mine got frustrated to no end by websites and bureaucracy
assuming the 3-3-4 style of phone numbers when she moved to Canada, because
she prefers not to use a cell phone too much, and her work number has an
extension).

~~~
mseebach
Even better: <https://code.google.com/p/libphonenumber/> Extensions still
needs special-casing, though.

------
littleidea
Nothing about what has been built or blogged makes me believe this person
really understands products or markets.

The logic of the points that are being made is flawed, starting with
repeatedly conflating building a product for a small market with solving a
small and simple problem. These are not the same.

In general, solving problems for small markets is just as hard as solving
problems for big ones.

My advice is, at the level that you understand what to build to get to market,
go after the biggest fastest growing markets you can.

~~~
tsergiu
There's no need to be so aggressive.

I think you misunderstood my argument. That may have been entirely my fault;
I'm still learning to write.

Small and simple problems are rare in large markets because everybody is
chasing after them. The low-hanging fruit get picked very quickly, and you
need to produce more to reach the bleeding edge.

By contrast, smaller markets have more low-hanging fruit simply because there
are not as many people picking them.

~~~
littleidea
My apologies if you were offended, I didn't think that I was particularly
aggressive.

Certainly not compared to what is possible...

I think I understood your argument, I just disagree with what you are
asserting and your conclusion.

There is plenty of low-hanging fruit in big markets, because it is a
proportionally bigger tree.

If you add the constraint that you want to do everything on your own, then the
markets and problems you can reasonably approach are smaller, but I still
argue that from a return on investment perspective, you should be looking for
the largest market opportunity that you understand enough to build.

If you care to discuss in person, I'm on twitter with the same name. @ me and
we figure out the best way to facilitate a discussion.

------
petercooper
Sometimes building an excellent product or service in a tiny niche can also
result in that tiny niche becoming bigger (by either a little or a lot). The
MP3 player market was relatively tiny until the iPod blew it apart, ditto for
tablets and the iPad, but I'm sure there are more niche examples.

------
ConceitedCode
I tend to target niche markets because the odds of me succeeding are much
higher. It's much easier to be the best of a small niche and like the article
said everything happens on a smaller scale, so less risk. Most the wealthy
people I personally know made their money from owning a small niche.

~~~
notahacker
It's easi(er) to own a niche market, but it's also more likely that anyone
decently positioned to compete with you can wipe out your profits with small
changes to their product or pricing strategy

Not all niche markets are small in terms of revenue/cost either: there are
product niches worth millions (or even billions) whose actual feasible
customer set barely makes it into double digits. But when the niche is that
small in terms of customers you find that despite the lack of threat from
competitors it's actually the _customer_ that owns the niche....

~~~
Paul_D_Santana
That is true, but something else to focus on: with smaller niches, the
_learning_ that takes place is often much higher and faster, and that is
invaluable too.

My app is the absolute niche of niche (
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pauldavids...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pauldavidsantana.timecalculator)
), but I learned _A LOT_ , especially about the official Android publishing
process. I don't care if it doesn't get used by many people, because my target
market was literally 1 person: my girlfriend.

In addition, the process of making this app was fun. Learning _AND_ fun; a
goal that ALL of us here are striving for, right?

~~~
scribu
I think most people building products (as opposed to OSS) are striving for
profitability.

------
apinstein
That's one awesome regex debugger!

Going after such a small niche is a great idea as long as you know that the
market is big enough to provide good ROI in both percentage and nominal terms.

I don't think the worry from a competitor "adding a feature and crushing you"
is a very likely threat. As long as you can stick it out for a few years to
build a brand name and continue to keep in front of the indefinite stream of
people learning regex you should be fine.

------
imechura
I don't think I am in your target market based on your current positioning,
however I am in a position where I would be involved in the decision as to
whether my company would pay money for something like this.

The company I work for (as an SOA architect) uses regex heavily for many
mission critical applications. It costs me 100s of Ks in testing effort when a
back-end format experiences major change. We usually don't find a lot of bugs
in testing but each missed parsing requirement could mean millions to the
bottom line thus justifying the investment in man hours.

If you think support of regex is a tiny market, I am not sure you have
considered all of your angles or fully understand your market.

~~~
tsergiu
I'd love to learn more about your use case and what's important in such large
scale operations. Can you please email me at debuggex@toarca.com?

------
randlet
OP. Thanks for making debuggex! It has certainly changed the way I write
regexes...I now reach for debuggex _before_ I start writing a new (non-
trivial) regex. Fantastic tool.

One think that I would really love is to be able to used named capture groups
like in Python.

~~~
tsergiu
Hey Randle,

I read your blog post, and have kept named groups on my mind. Support for more
languages is planned. However, I should note that it will be a premium
feature.

I really appreciate the continued support.

------
buro9
I would love to see support for Re2:
<https://code.google.com/p/re2/wiki/Syntax>

I mainly use Go and am used to Go Playground <http://play.golang.org/> for
testing very small snippets and sharing them with others in IRC for
education/debugging.

Debuggex is already part of my workflow when I write regular expressions, I
was using it just yesterday to test some pre-processing of Markdown.

The value to me is already there, but right now it's something I could also do
without... but if the regexp engine on Debuggex is the one that is in use in
the language in which I wish to implement the regexp, then that does change
everything. The value then becomes very high to me.

Debuggex can get you the first 95% of the way, but that last 5% of working out
why something is not quite as you expect is where most of the pain is.

I generally find that the last 5% is implementation specific features and
syntax (I have only settled on Go recently and tended to work in several
languages at a time for the past 5 years, so most of my regexp pain comes from
context switching languages and libraries).

Being able to select the exact implementation is the tipping point for me to
reach into my pocket and pay.

------
johnnyg
Good: The top left logo on your blog links to your website.

Bad: The first and last mention of Debuggex in the body text should be a link
to your product.

~~~
tsergiu
This was somewhat intentional. I had a larger plug at the beginning initially.
I decided it did not seem genuine enough, and would take away from the
content.

~~~
johnnyg
You are clearly genuine, but also a little naive business wise.

Please give this a read and let me know where the right place to link is, if
not here.

1\. You are giving me quality content about your business experiences and
decisions.

2\. You are giving me this information on a blog supporting a product which,
by the way you've crafted the blog post, seems likely to be professional and
loved.

3\. I'm a person who makes and uses regexps, a HN reader and I want to check
out the product. I want to do this easily. The web uses links to do this.
You've earned the right to link. It is exactly when you should. It is directly
relevant and it is in "your home".

If you are in business, this is why you wrote the blog post. You've got me
right where you want me. I'm interested and I have money. Make the path
between "he should have my money" and "he has my money" as easy as possible.
Link.

Let me use a crude dating analogy:

1\. Meet interesting person.

2\. Invite person to dinner.

3\. Groom, clean, prepare, cook, present, share dinner.

4\. Goes well, clicks, everyone is interested.

5\. Interesting person leans in for kiss.

6\. You back away, saying the kiss would take away from the lovely evening.

The kiss, and the relationship it hints at, is the point of the evening.

And since I see the horse, while on the ground, is still kicking somewhat and
not all the way dead:

You are in business or you are not. If you are, know this and live by it:

Do the prep work, then ask, ask, ask. The worst that happens is no.

You've got a great product. Good luck.

~~~
tsergiu
Ok, I am convinced. I'll add the links :)

~~~
alepper
Anecdotal confirmation: I probably wouldn't have clicked through (or found it)
if the only link was the blog image - despite the first thing I did being to
look for the link to the product. (Which is great, and might replace my
current 'go-to' for this!)

------
guilloche
As a small market pursuer, I had to say that a tiny market is different from
tiny effort.

I developed torapp guilloche designer (<http://www.torapp.info>) for security
printing industry, which is definitely a tiny market. But it did not mean less
competition, and it is in fact much more complicated than a regular graphic
editor like adobe illustrator and coreldraw.

Besides regular editing facilities in AI or coreldraw, I spent tremendous
effort to handle all possible math formulas/curves as comupter algebraic
system (CAS).

I would recommend people to pursue as big market as possible.

------
_lex
I don't think a visual regex debugger is a tiny market- it's every programmer
who doesn't totally understand regex, or who will have regex that he needs
help decoding. This is probably close to 99% of programmers.

~~~
patrickyeon
If his market is "programmers who will pay for a regex debugger", it's
probably much smaller than 99% of all programmers (and as a sibling comment
pointed out, "programmers" are a much smaller market than many other).

~~~
_lex
Programmer market is ~12M. I agree that very few will pay though.

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/453880/how-many-
developer...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/453880/how-many-developers-
are-there-in-the-world)

------
warmfuzzykitten
The problem is monetizing a small-market product, esp. an online product. If
you go the advertising route, you have to get your page views _way_ up to earn
anything; you can't do that with just one little server. If you go the
subscription route, pricing is really tricky. If you charge just a little, in
my personal experience a) most programmers won't pay anything, so you lose
most of your market right there, and b) you'll go broke collecting a pittance
from the few who will pay.

~~~
derefr
It feels like this is the quintessential "feature, not product" startup. The
goal of these _should_ be either:

A. to acquire a huge customer base and then pivot into satisfying them with a
larger "suite" offering which includes your original service as a feature,

or B. to _be acquired by_ another company with a huge customer base... and
then integrate your feature into their suite. :)

I could see, for example, Github buying this (and other things like it) and
launching a featureful, language-agnostic online IDE that compiles against
Travis-CI.

------
sspiff
> "Why isn't my regex doing what I intend it to?" I've found that question to
> be by far the most frustrating and time-consuming issue with developers I've
> talked to

While I would totally use this tool, this statement indicates to me that he
talked to a specific subset of developers.

I know that's kind of what the article is about, but still, this sentence
makes it sound like he has solved the biggest time-sink for software
developers.

------
amenghra
I wrote a regex tool a while back: <http://regexp.quaxio.com/>

It's open source so feel free to "steal" from it :)

------
anthonylebrun
Admittedly I haven't spent too much time testing your product, but I just
wanted to point out a few free tools that have been around for a while (which
I use often):

<http://www.gethifi.com/tools/regex> (js regex tester) <http://rubular.com/>
(ruby regex tester)

Have you heard of/tried these before?

~~~
hipsters_unite
That was exactly my first thought - I use rubular all the time and it's a
great scratchpad for regexes.

------
uokyas
i can not say the same about my product <http://onetimepost.com/> ... but it
only took me a Saturday morning so ... it wasn't like something huge was lost
xD

~~~
polymatter
well, how did you market it? looks pretty neat to me.

~~~
uokyas
shared the link on some few powerful websites like this .... truth is, very
few people has an immediate need for that.

------
saejox
I once spent an entire month developing a very niche product. I figured about
100 people would be interested in it. Turned out only 11 were. :) I earned no
money, gained no fame. Still i am happy i did it. It was challenging enough be
fun. Sometimes challenge is all we need.

I don't think your product has a tiny market. Everybody uses regex and nobody
actually understands it.

------
orangethirty
_In a smaller market, everything happens on a smaller scale._

No. Scale has nothing to do with market size. Though you picked to build
something (not yet a product) that seems to lack a market (defined as people
willing to pay for it).

 _In a smaller market, you can demonstrate expertise._

Its actually easier to demonstrate expertise on bigger markets, due to its
density. A small market can only have so many experts.

 _In a smaller market, you can iterate faster on non-programming skills._

This is more of an attitude than anything else. Its not a big vs small thing
itself.

One question I have to ask is why are you trying to develop a new kind of
product on an untested market, when you can improve on an existing product and
just focus on selling? You are still picking the most difficult choice. And
the one that usually tends to deliver a failure.

Once again for everybody: Don't build new things in new markets. Take old
things and improve them.

------
crazycog
I just build things for myself, and I am part of the smaller market.

------
pbiggar
Very cool! Two suggestions: show the examples more prominently (and my add a
regex for email, cause it looks cool), and allow people to link to specific
regexes.

------
nickknw
Checked out the debuggex tool. Impressive!

------
rgovind
Interesting arguments...But apart from IDEs like visual studios, How much do
individuals and companies pay for developer tools? Like say a better debugger
or a code coverage tool? How about VIM plugins or better editors? I too have
some ideas for a better debugger that I have been working on.

------
droithomme
Wow, this really is the best regex checker I've seen. Great work dude, you
must be Russian or Romanian.

------
mistercow
Interestingly, it seems like a lot of this is essentially a generalization of
the advantages of B2B.

------
daninfpj
Great product, I loved it but I'd be in great trouble trying to monetize, hope
you'll nail it.

------
ajtaylor
Others have mentioned it too, but I was blown away with the speed of the
renderer! By the time the return key sprang back up, the visualisation was
displaying on my screen. How did you do that?

------
Gmo
Hi tsergiu,

May I ask you what you used for doing the layout ? All coded by hand ?

Good work anyway !

~~~
tsergiu
Thank you! Yup, it's currently coded by hand. I'll find a more scalable way as
more pages need to be added to the site. You can see that e.g. the blog post
is just a page with a unique link.

~~~
Gmo
I meant more, the layout of the regex diagrams :) (but I guess it's also "by
hand")

------
k4st
This reminds me a lot of the regular expression reAnimator:
<http://osteele.com/tools/reanimator/>.

------
znmeb
I'm in the same boat - building something I really want to build and use
myself, not really caring much about product-market fit or any of that other
stuff.

------
kiallmacinnes
One of these days, JS regex will support look behinds.. All my dodgy regexes
that this would be useful for use them :(

------
raawlls
Interesting perspective. And regarding debuggex.com itself... Awesome. I'll be
using it in the future. Nice work.

------
mehrzad
I love niche products. The popularity of "things for everyone" (like
iPhone/Galaxy) somewhat worries me.

------
dleskov
You can make an Eclipse plugin and sell it to corporations and/or OEM license
it to IDE/tool vendors.

~~~
pmgmendes
+1 on this idea. I would even consider targeting web development editors like
Sublime Text 2 or Brackets.

------
futhey
That's a really cool little tool, and I think you're building a very lucrative
audience.

------
ganarajpr
Just FYI.. This is built with AngularJS. One of the coolest product built with
it too.

~~~
tsergiu
I've loved working with angular. My only complaint is that the current docs
are somewhat lacking, but it seems that will soon be addressed:
[https://plus.google.com/112439678898563138768/posts/LfWvcFfq...](https://plus.google.com/112439678898563138768/posts/LfWvcFfqjXA)

------
pkamb
Will you be charging for this?

~~~
tsergiu
Yes, I am planning to monetize. I have a few ideas for to do that as it
approaches the end of beta, but I'd love to hear any suggestions you have.

~~~
michaelwww
Debuggex is a very well done and useful site. It reminds me of
<http://www.colorzilla.com/gradient-editor/> in terms of utility and slickness
of design. Alex Sirota of that site uses a sponsored area that is not
obtrusive.

------
peaceprayer
great product, thanks!

------
OGinparadise
Why? Because you don't need to make 1 cent off each tomato sold in USA to be
successful. Even taking a cut of every water pump of a certain car is more
then enough--for most of us.

