

Ask HN: What should we do? - alexk

I've developed this: www.ird.me/tour.html.
But I'm the single developer and the project is getting too big and complex. What options to sell/quit/change you are aware of? Do you have an experiences of overweight projects that you can share?
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fauigerzigerk
Why do you want to quit even before you have a signup form? It's going to be
much easier to sell if you have customers.

By the way, you should spell check the home page. easilly = easily

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alexk
Thanks for the notice. Our problem is that I've tried to build lot's of
features at the same time. The app became too big, it eats a lot of my time
and it's still far from being completed - it's still not ready to be released.

~~~
Caprica
Release early, release often. Once you have some users, they will be the best
to guide you to what is working, whats not working and what needs adding. If
you specify its beta then they can hardly complaing (espically if you offer
some beta testers a discounted rate after release, positive motivation on both
sides wont hurt)

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alexk
Clickable link: <http://www.ird.me/tour.html>

The longer version is here: <http://3words2years.blogspot.com/> it was already
posted, but no one seemed to be interested.

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oldgregg
You want out. That's really understandable. This was a really ambitious
project that quite a few companies have failed at... Last year I worked on a
startup by for about 6 months and just got fatigued and scrapped it. I know
the pain of working on a project when the momentum starts to evaporate. But
what really stands out to me from your extended post is that it seems like
you've learned a _LOT_ from this whole experience. Succcccesssss!!! :) Best of
luck.

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fauigerzigerk
After reading the long version of your question I want to say that my own
experience with generic application generators is very similar to yours. Users
want functionality and wording that is very specific to particular tasks.

Therefore any generic framework can only ever serve as a basis for you to
create specific applications. The question remains whether a generic framework
or generator actually makes that task any easier. I doubt it. I tend to end up
building one generic framework per application :-)

So what could you do? One thing you should include in your thinking is that
CRUD/OLTP + simple reporting is not the only thing people do, and it's
probably the most crowded market.

The other thing people do is analyse data. In order to analyse data they have
to integrate and clean it first. It's a horribly messy affair, but what it
involves is a generic database and user friendly transformation rules.

I know I'm not being very specific, but I think it could useful for you to
think a little more about decision support, analytics and data integration.
It's what I do as well, so I'm biased.

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csomar
Your application is big; here's the point. What happened to you is exactly
what happened to me 3 year ago when I made a barcode application.

I carried on growing the application until it become so big that I can't
control. The read problem is that you "don't know how to solve overweight
issues".

I got a solution, but I'm not sure if you'll go for it.

Decompose your website into parts, I don't know how it can be. But for me it
was a windows application built with the Dot net frame work. I decomposed it
into several namespaces and classes and placed those classes in "DLL" files.

Now the program is much more tinier. I don't care about the DLL files, I just
call them to get something ready. Like calling a class, giving information
about a barcode and getting back a picture. In reality it's more than 400 line
of code to do that. but with OOP and DLL, in few lines I can do it.

Now you have to explore the possibilities of your programming platform.

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pavlov
The screenshots look good, but the terse homepage had me slightly confused
about what the product actually does. (Admittedly I'm probably not part of the
target market either.)

The one-line description of the product -- "Online web database" -- seems to
contain a tautology: if it's on the web, doesn't that imply it's online?
Besides, I'm looking at a web browser, so I'm primed to expect a web
application.

What's left is just the word "database". Is your product very similar to an
established database application, say, FileMaker? If not, then you need to
come up with a better description.

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ktharavaad
My suggestion is to chop it up and develop it piece by piece.

Looking at your app, it seems to do a lot of different things such as:

\- Form Editor

\- Calendar

\- Permission based file access system

You could build just one of these components and get it out of the door and
see how the market responds to your product and then evolve the product from
that point onwards. Chances are that what you will end up with will look
nothing like what what you have in mind.

Good luck on your venture.

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terpua
What are you trying to build and who is your target customer? It looks like an
online db but why a calendar?

Read _everything_ on <http://startuplessonslearned.blogspot.com>

That will help you flush the product more clearly.

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jacquesm
Interesting concept. It reminds me of a product from the mid-80's called "data
ease".

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ErrantX
Give a shot at release early release often.

Get some users on there using it, breaking it, enthusing about it - and you
might feel a bit more attachment :)

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bigbang
Open source it you cant sell.

