[HN Gopher] Launch HN: Exams, tasks, K8, eCommerce, cell sites, ... ___________________________________________________________________ Launch HN: Exams, tasks, K8, eCommerce, cell sites, health, data quality, travel This is the inaugural "Meet the Batch" post that we discussed a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27877280. There are 8 startups in this thread. I've attempted to squeeze a reference to each in the title above. The initial order is random. Direct links to each startup: Portao 3 (YC S21) - Corporate travel for Latin America - https://portao3.com.br/, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27930563 Sitenna (YC S21) - A marketplace for wireless cell sites - https://sitenna.com/, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27930564 ContainIQ (YC S21) - Kubernetes observability based on eBPF - https://www.containiq.com/, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27930569 Appollo (YC S21) - A single API for launching to eCommerce platforms - https://www.tryappollo.com/, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27930570 Beau (YC S21) - Automate repetitive client-facing tasks - https://beau.to/, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27930568 Telm.ai (YC S21) - Real-time data quality monitoring - https://www.telm.ai/, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27930566 Filadd (YC S21) - Online courses for LatAm university - https://courses.filadd.com/, entrance exams https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27930567 Shimmer (YC S21) - Online video support groups for mental health - https://shimmer.care, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27930565 You are invited to share your questions, thoughts, feedback, and experiences in any of these spaces! Simply reply to the founder's post you want to discuss. Author : dang Score : 154 points Date : 2021-07-23 13:44 UTC (9 hours ago) | foobarbecue wrote: | K8, with no "s," eh? I've been seeing this more and more... | dang wrote: | Oops I forgot the 's'. It was fortuitous, though, because the | current title is exactly 80 chars and HN doesn't allow 81. | beaugunderson wrote: | > Beau (YC S21) - Automate repetitive client-facing tasks - | https://beau.to/, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27930568 | | get your own name! >:[ | [deleted] | tamasnet wrote: | Just gotta say: I was really expecting to not like this batched | format but actually it seems kind of okay. | dang wrote: | Thanks for saying so. We're going to iterate on it so | suggestions (from anyone!) are most welcome. | | There are so many S21 startups wanting to launch on HN before | Demo Day that I think we're going to be doing a lot of these, | at least for the time being. | [deleted] | [deleted] | fnfilho wrote: | Hi HN, we're Bianca and Fernando, founders of Portao 3 | (https://portao3.com.br/). We help companies in LATAM (Latin | America) with their corporate travel, expenses and payments. We | traveled a lot to visit clients in our previous companies, and | realized that the corporate travel market had a lot to evolve | technologically. Latin America didn't have a startup helping | companies and work travelers with a real all-in-one experience. | Our software includes features like a timeline that recaps the | entire trip and a BI for 100% control at the end. We make it easy | to understand expenses and manage them. B2B companies in LATAM | like CredPago and Junco are using Portao 3 and reducing costs | significantly (as in 30%). We founded Portao 3 in 2020 and are | currently growing at 40% MoM (month over month). | tucaz wrote: | Congrats on your launch! I'm just another Brazilian here | cheering for more companies to be part of YC. | | Wish all the best and success to you! | hluska wrote: | Hey friends, congratulations on your launch! I really dig what | you're doing and enjoyed reading your website. Excellent work! | fnfilho wrote: | Thanks for the support hluska! | vcoelho wrote: | As a fellow brazilian I'm happy for you guys. I don't know very | much about corporate travel, but I loved the idea behind | Anywhere Office. If it's any help, there's some text color | issues on your website header, and the language dropdown is | breaking on larger options. | fnfilho wrote: | Hey Vini! Thank you for the kind words. That actually helps a | lot, working on it now. | gmontanola wrote: | Congratz! It's really nice to see fellow Brazilians featured | here. | | I'm very skeptical about most startups business models but | looks like you folks check two important boxes of my imaginary | list: | | [x] solving a real problem | | [x] plenty of room to grow (generalist b2b) | | I hope to see more of Portao 3! Best of luck for you :) | fnfilho wrote: | Hey Gabriel! Thank you for the kind words and wishes! Bianca | and I actually suffered from this exact problem and that is | why we decided to build it. | 101008 wrote: | Congrats on launching, it is always nice to see more startups | in LA. The first question that came to my mind seeing your | landing is that it's everything in Brazilian Portuguese. Your | market now is only BR? Because the rest of the countries in LA | speaks Spanish (with a few colony exceptions). | | Are you planning to open to the rest of the countries? Have you | already customers in Chile, Argentina, Mexico? | | Thanks! | hluska wrote: | Hey pal (and anyone else having a similar issue)!! | | If you look at the top right hand corner, you'll see a globe | icon. That icon handles translations - the site is available | in Brazilian Portuguese, English and Spanish. | fnfilho wrote: | hluska is right, you can use the globe at the top to change | languages. | | I have to say this is not intuitive and we actually purchased | new domains for other countries yesterday and we will have | dedicated websites for a lot of countries coming this | weekend. | | But yes, we do have customers in Brazil where we were born, | but Chile, Argentina, Mexico, Colombia and Peru too! | 101008 wrote: | Thanks for answering! I noticed that after my posted my | comment - the dedicated websites for each country (or at | least language) sounds great. Congrats again! | XzAeRosho wrote: | Congrats on the launch! | | As a previous corporate traveller, I agree with your value | proposition. As a software engineer I was astounded by the very | lacking systems we have here in South America. Most of the | travel stuff was managed via email!! I absolutely hated every | single second of having to manage my travels while working, | since it meant digging through emails and even spam folders... | | On another note, I'm based in Chile, and already have good | connections with managers in key companies that may be | interesting for you. If you're looking to expand to Chile, let | me know so we can setup some talks ;) | | My linkedin is in my profile. | fnfilho wrote: | Hey XzAeRosho! Bianca and I did a lot of corporate travel | too, so we do feel your pain as well. I'll definitely reach | out to you now, thanks for all the kind words! | DanielCampion wrote: | Hey HN! We're Daniel and Brian from Sitenna | (https://sitenna.com/). Sitenna is a marketplace connecting | wireless carriers, tower providers and real estate owners. Think | booking.com for telecom cell sites. Currently, it takes wireless | telecom carriers up to 24 months to deploy a site because the | process is based on screenshots, maps, emails, PDFs and | spreadsheets. This is a particular issue with the advent of 5G | which requires x6-10 (depending on which analyst you believe!) | more cell sites in the network. | | We use maps and workflow tools to reduce the time it takes to | deploy a new site by up to 75%, saving tens of thousands of | dollars. Wireless carrier radio planners can easily search, | identify and acquire sites for deploying antennae whilst the | tower providers and real estate owners can market and monetise | their assets to the telecom market. | | I (Daniel) have worked in telecoms my whole career and worked in | more than 30 countries. The same issue exists in every market so | there is a rather big opportunity ($40B is spend on wireless | infrastructure globally per year!) if we can get some solid | product market fit. We'd love to speak to any of you that are | curious about what we're doing or if you have any | ideas/challenges for us. | jedberg wrote: | My house happens to sit right next to a freeway and a mall, and | would be the prefect spot for a tower. Can I sign up as a | landlord if the land I lord over is a small tract home? | DanielCampion wrote: | Thanks jedberg. You can submit you land to the platform and | our radio team will assess it for viability. All going well, | you can absolutely manage one site or an entire portfolio | apayan wrote: | Hi Daniel. I'm probably just overlooking it, but I can't | find a link on your site to submit my land for assessment. | Should I just send an email to info at sitenna? | briansexton wrote: | Hi Apayan can you send the details to sales at sitenna | dot com | aresant wrote: | Awesome idea - we own ~44 commercial sites in dense / infill | locations and growing quickly - how do we get in touch? | | For HN this is a great idea because today the process of | engaging cell operators is an absolute black box - literally | fill in your contact info in a modal and hope for a call back. | | Zero transparency, totally inefficient and the companies | themselves are a giant pain in the ass to deal with. | DanielCampion wrote: | Delighted to hear you agree! It's been a pain for operators | in every market I've worked in so it's not a small problem | but starting on HN is a good first step. Send me a DM and | we'd love to chat. We've launched in the UK and gathering | supply/demand for US so let's chat and see how we can help | aresant wrote: | No DM on Hn? And getting an error on your website form | briansexton wrote: | Odd. The form appears to be ok after some testing. Can | you send an email to sales at sitenna dot com | interrealmedium wrote: | Good luck. Yours is the only one in this batch that made me go: | "Hey, that's a smart idea." | briansexton wrote: | Thanks. We appreciate that. We have some big plans for the | company | jamestimmins wrote: | This looks awesome. For potential real estate investors, how | feasible is it to use Sitenna to identify sites that are likely | to work well? | XzAeRosho wrote: | Hi Daniel, congrats on the launch! | | Is Sitenna US only? My FIL works on the telecom industry in | South America doing location scouting for antennas, data | centers, etc. He would really love something like this. | briansexton wrote: | Hi XzAeRosho Brian here Im the Sitenna co-founder and CTO. As | you can see this is a worldwide problem that we want to | solve! We will be expanding globally but the initial rollout | is US and UK focused. We would definitely love to hear from | your FIL on what he is working on at the moment to see how we | might be able to help. | jonxwang wrote: | Shimmer (https://shimmer.care) offers guided video support groups | for people struggling with their mental health. Shimmer matches | members with shared identities and experiences and places them in | small groups that meet for weekly support sessions along with a | qualified peer coach. During the rest of the week, members have | access to our Community Platform (a mobile app and web app) to | leverage resources like community events, mood tracking, and | gratitude journaling. | | 79% of young adults with mental health issues do not have access | to care; the most common alternative, teletherapy, is expensive | ($150/session), has significant churn (40% drop off after first | visit), and lacks diverse representation (average age of 51 and | 80% white). We've developed a curriculum incorporating material | from expert group therapists at UCSF. This has led to a number of | great outcomes including: providing care at a fraction of the | cost of therapy ($50/month or $12/session), an 80% 4-month | retention rate, and a diverse set of highly experienced | facilitators that members can relate better to. If you're | interested in trying Shimmer, you can sign up for a consultation | call or a wellness workshop (both for free) directly on our | website. Shimmer is led by three founders with extensive | experience across healthcare and engineering. Having seen | firsthand the severe effect that mental health issues have had on | loved ones, we left previous roles (graduate programs at Berkeley | MBA/MPH, UCSF MD and Salesforce SWE) to dedicate ourselves to | improving the accessibility and affordability of mental health | care. | brudgers wrote: | Is Shimmer a health care provider? | jonxwang wrote: | No, we are not a health care provider in the traditional | sense. | hijinks wrote: | $50 a month is a lot of money for a lot of people with mental | health issues. I get it's a lot cheaper then normal care by | going to see a professional but I was expecting the student | pricing I guess | jackson1442 wrote: | From an American viewpoint at least, this is actually very | reasonably priced. Paying < $20 for a session of medical | services is essentially unheard of. I paid $30 as copay for | PT every two weeks with rather nice insurance, and every time | I walk into a doctor's office it's _at least_ $30. | | I have never pursued therapy but I'm sure it would be a | minimum of $30 per session with insurance, if not more. | | Not to say it couldn't be better, but at first glance this is | a _great_ improvement from the status quo. | jonxwang wrote: | Yeah it's really unfortunate how few people have access to | insurance for therapy too. | jonxwang wrote: | I agree. For now, we offer financial aid for those who can't | afford the sticker price. | gwbas1c wrote: | Long-term: Maybe insurance or government equivalent can help? | | Short-term: Every new invention needs to start somewhere. | There are plenty of rich, middle class, and even lower- | middle-class families that easily have $50 a month to help | out a struggling child / sibling / cousin / ect. | | Remember, new businesses need to start somewhere, and that | somewhere is often selling to a very tiny segment of the | market that they intend to serve. [Edit:] Many times this | means starting at a higher price, and then lowering the price | as the company streamlines itself and can handle more | customers. | jonxwang wrote: | Yeah we're thinking insurance or B2B as potential avenues | someday. Also will definitely be doing some streamlining as | we build up :). | nullspace wrote: | I have some personal experience with this. I think what you are | trying to do is commendable. Group therapies are also pretty | expensive and not accessible for most people except in extreme | circumstances. | | The thing is if you're having say, 10 people for a 1 hour | session, that gives each person about 6 minutes to share. But | really more like 4 - 5 minutes after overhead. I think that is | still worth _something_ (12 dollars per session sounds about | right, edit: you may be able to go a few dollars higher), but | you are basically trading off quality and cost here. It's going | to be hard to actually build a connection and make it | meaningful. | | (edit: to be clear - the cost here isn't necessarily the lever | - whether you charge 5 dollars per session or 25 dollars per | session - you will need to make the 1 hour meaningful for the | 10 people who are in the meeting, which will be the hard part | IMO) | jonxwang wrote: | Good points! We've thought a lot about this and how to make | the 1 hour as meaningful as possible. Three things that may | help with this: | | 1) we do breakout rooms so members have more time to talk | with one another. 2) groups are capped at the 8 person mark. | 3) depending on the week, not everyone is always hoping to | chat/share, sometimes members just wish to listen that day. | hluska wrote: | Hey friends, you're working on something extremely important | and it's a real honour to be here for your launch thread. I'm | celebrating my four year anniversary of getting out of a | cardiac ward and to be blunt, I wish this had been invented | four years ago. | | Seriously folks, wonderful work - this is really cool. | jonxwang wrote: | thank you <333 | shafyy wrote: | This is really great! A friend of mine recently stayed a clinic | for two weeks for a mental health issue, and she said the best | part was that she could talk to others in the group who had | similar problems. | | The best of luck! | jonxwang wrote: | Awww thanks! I'm glad your friend had the support she needed | at the time <3. | japhyr wrote: | This looks great, and clearly addresses a serious need. I'm | curious about your plan for scaling. It seems like finding | qualified group leaders would be a limiting bottleneck. | | How will you continue to find and supervise good group leaders | as you draw more users? | jonxwang wrote: | Currently we've adopted the requirements and interviewing | strategies from leading support groups such as Mental Health | America. | | Surprisingly there are a lot of thoughtful people out there | with solid experiences facilitating discussions/conversations | and this has not been a bottleneck for us! | mona_rakibe wrote: | Telmai (https://www.telm.ai/) is a real-time data quality | monitoring platform that can automatically detect and investigate | data quality issues as data is getting ingested. Our tool uses a | statistical and ML engine that helps data product owners | understand data anomalies and intuitively define correct versus | incorrect data. These definitions are then used to proactively | monitor and alert on data quality problems. | | We have decades of experience with enterprise data and find that | this approach towards data quality addresses a huge gap in data | platforms. Detecting and investigating data quality issues is | extremely tedious, time-consuming and expensive. Using Telmai, | companies like Dun & Bradstreet and Myers-Holum are able to find | and resolve such issues across millions of records in minutes. | Ask us anything! | citilife wrote: | Telm.ai (YC S21) - Real-time data quality monitoring | | Looks interesting! I worked on | https://github.com/capitalone/DataProfiler | | We are looking to monitor correlation changes over time, see if | sensitive data gets entered, track schema changes, etc and see | the impact of down stream modeling, etc | | I'm curious how heavy the input is? because usually these | systems take a lot of effort to setup. Any idea? | maxlukichev wrote: | Thanks for your feedback and the link, it's indeed a very | nice open source profiler. The complexity of initial analysis | of the data in search for anomalies was one of the main | drivers for us. Our approach is based on providing | interactive experience through which you can see the impact | of various statistical distributions, ML suggestions, narrow | down the important criteria and explore actual data | associated with it. All this helps in building much more | accurate models of data correctness to be applied for the new | data. And do it much less time. However as of now we don't do | data classification, it's one of the future topics of | interest | XzAeRosho wrote: | Congrats on the launch! | | I wanted to give some feedback on the pricing page: it's very | vague, to the point I don't know how much I will end paying if | I go over the 500k values (is that the free tier?). | | Also, this is only for data monitoring, or can be used for | stuff like server monitoring too? | mona_rakibe wrote: | Thank you so much for this feedback. Regarding the pricing | page we will tighten it and also add calculator, please stay | tuned. For now the way it works is after first 500K values we | charge $150 per 1M attribute values/month. | | We dont monitor server or any infrastructure, we are designed | for data quality monitoring we can flag issues like missing | data, volume drifts, schema mismatch and where we stand out | is monitoring actual accuracy of data at record value level. | Example : We can flag anomalous titles, emails , | overrepresented phone numbers etc | joaquinolmedo wrote: | Hi HN, we're the founders of Filadd | (https://courses.filadd.com/). 80% of students in LatAm (Latin | America) need private tutoring classes to prepare for university | admission exams. The system is centralized and extremely high- | stakes: exams only happen once a year and based on your score on | the exam you can basically choose your university. If you don't | get the desired score, go home and come back the next year. So | there is a huge market of private coaching for these admissions, | and lots of academies that give face-to-face classes like a | school. We offer online courses that include one-on-one tutoring | to students who are preparing these exams. We have a revenue | share business model with the teachers who work with the students | --not a common model in the region. We also use Data Science to | identify how well students are performing and we offer them the | exact content they need to study. | XzAeRosho wrote: | Congrats on the launch! | | Fantastic website by the way. How are you planning to reach out | to students in high school? The Pre-U market in Chile at least | is brutal, and there are so many competitors that I imagine it | might be hard to get some market-share. | joaquinolmedo wrote: | Hey, we have been operating in Chile for the last year, and | we aquire users mostly with ambassadors. They refer our | product and earn a commission. Most of our ambassadors are | followers in IG (https://www.instagram.com/filadd.cl/). Most | of our competitors are Tradicional academies that are losing | more a more share with new Covid Paradigms | agucova wrote: | Always great to see more YC startups from LatAm and Chile! | joaquinolmedo wrote: | Great opportunities in LatAm | kyrilku wrote: | Beau (https://beau.to/) is a no-code tool that helps businesses | automate customer interactions and onboarding. Customers use our | software to collect documents, manage payments, send messages and | more. For example, tax advisors use Beau to collect documents and | send reminders, and immigration consultants use us to automate | repetitive client-facing processes. Currently, businesses use a | mix of form builders, website builders and CRMs to build this | kind of thing. We launched Beau to make it easy for non-technical | people to use just one tool to automate their onboarding | workflows. We are a small team of 3 founders with an art, design | and engineering background. We needed something like Beau when we | were onboarding clients to a design agency, and realized we had | to build it ourselves. | rubyron wrote: | Just some quick feedback on your mobile site with iPhone | Safari: | | "Send a clients" typo on home page. Client should be singular. | | Pricing page: not clear I could swipe plan cards to right. When | attempting to swipe, could not get second card to come into | view. Recommend letting them flow beneath. | kyrilku wrote: | Thank you for the feedback! Will fix this shortly | motoxpro wrote: | Incredible design on the landing page! | kyrilku wrote: | Thank you so much! | arkitaip wrote: | I absolutly love the art direction, such a nice break from | Corporate Memphis. | [deleted] | paulgb wrote: | > immigration consultants use us to automate repetitive client- | facing processes | | Yes! I couldn't believe how inefficient the process of sending | dozens of documents over email to my immigration lawyers was. | Glad to see someone working on that problem. | | Beautiful landing page, too. | kyrilku wrote: | Thank you, glad to hear! | NWMatherson wrote: | We are building ContainIQ (https://www.containiq.com/)! We | provide Kubernetes native monitoring instantly with pre-built | dashboards and easy to create monitors. A one-line install that | takes 5 minutes to set up and it just works. By using eBPF we're | able to correlate kernel-level metrics with Kubernetes objects. | Our current users are using our product to track and get alerted | on things like p95/p99 latencies, Kubernetes jobs failing, pod | evictions, among other things. | orf wrote: | Why choose Containq over Datadog? | NWMatherson wrote: | Good question. | | - ContainIQ just works. Comes pre-configured and you don't | need a degree from DD University to know how to use it. | | - We are only focused on K8s. | | - We have differentiated features, easier setup and we take | less time to maintain (ex our latency features like service | latency and latency by URL path don't need to be instrumented | on each application) | | - transparent pricing. We are a flat rate of $250 per month | up to 50 / nodes. You don't have to worry about insane bill | spikes. | gregwebs wrote: | How does this compare to using metadata (eBPF bases metrics). | NWMatherson wrote: | Could you expand on what you mean a little? We're a full | service platform that collects, stores and visualizes the | data for you. | sidcool wrote: | Congrats on launching! | | One question about containiq though which I could not figure | out with the skimming of the link. How it compares to (istio + | prometheus + grafana)? | NWMatherson wrote: | Thanks for reading! Our goal was to create an out of the box | solution that didn't require on-going maintenance. Another | goal was to make something that all engineers on the team | would know how to use. | | The amount of 1/2 broken prometheus/grafana setups we see is | crazy. | | From a feature perspective there is some overlap (ex pod/node | CPU and memory). But we have features that you can't get from | the solutions you mentioned (ex service latency, latency by | URL path (coming soon!). And have a lot more in the roadmap | too. :) | | We are also housing and managing the data for our users. | sidcool wrote: | Thanks for the reply. Is it available to self host? Or self | manage in public cloud? | NWMatherson wrote: | Currently no, not yet at least. | debarshri wrote: | Half broken setup is a people problem. Prometheus and | grafana is integrations is actually pretty solid and quite | simple if you follow the docs [1]. | | If you are out there to replace existing monitoring stack | like ELK, Prometheus-grafana, victoria metrics, i think it | will be an uphill battle proving your value because there | is high switching cost. | | Also, In most of the organisations, core resources that | people care about are well monitored. Just my 2 cents. | | [1] https://grafana.com/grafana/plugins/grafana-kubernetes- | app/ | bogomipz wrote: | Congrats on your launch. Your site was a little light on | details. Could you say how your product compares to Pixie which | is also Kubernetes-native and uses eBPF? | | https://pixielabs.ai/ | NWMatherson wrote: | Thanks so much! | | The initial version of ContainIQ is in a similar space to | what pixie has built, but our eventual vision has a few | differentiators. I believe Pixie was built using BCC (an | assumption based on the 2GB requirement and their BPF trace | tooling) which requires llvm and the kernel headers to be | installed on every node. This ends up requiring a lot of | ephemeral storage. Since Kubernetes is most commonly used for | stateless applications this ends up being a problem, because | the default node storage allocatable is relatively low. We're | in the process of migrating out from BCC to libbpf which | should alleviate a lot of the issues associated with the | larger storage/memory footprint of BCC. We also have a few | unique features in the pipeline that I believe are unique to | our product (EX: P95, P99 http latency by microservice | endpoint). | theptip wrote: | Sounds interesting! | | I'm on GKE. How does this compare against Cilium and the new | Dataplane V2? | https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/containers-kubernetes... | | Sounds like you have more work curating dashboards at the | least. And maybe this bolts on to the standard kube-proxy | dataplane so folks don't need to change that? | NWMatherson wrote: | Cilium has traditionally focused more on the security and | performance side of Kubernetes networking. Cilium's Hubble | product more closely aligns with what we are trying to | achieve, but with ContainIQ we simplify visualization, setup | and host the data for you. Hubble currently sends the data to | Prometheus, but we wanted to remove the headache of managing | your own monitoring platform. | | Exactly we bolt on to the standard kube-proxy setup. We put a | lot of effort into ensuring that everything works right out | the box. | Robrechtlr wrote: | Hi YC, We're Darrell, Jibril, and Robrecht, the co-founders of | Appollo (https://www.tryappollo.com/). Appollo is a single API to | launch your app to all eCommerce platforms. Appollo enables you | to create 1 app with our APIs and launch it to all the eCommerce | platforms while also letting you maintain it as 1 app. | Previously, you had to create and maintain an app separately for | Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento, BigCommerce, Square, Wix, | SquareSpace, Etsy, etc. Before Appollo, we were working on a live | stream application for eCommerce stores, which was how we were | confronted with this problem. Looking forward to your feedback! | [deleted] | pbreit wrote: | I'm wondering what sort of "app" would be deployable to all | these platforms? Any examples? | callmeed wrote: | Looks really great. I have 2 ecomm side projects I'd like to | start using this in right away. | | BTW what happened to the live stream application/idea? | Robrechtlr wrote: | I'll follow up with you over email! Long story short, | customers only used it once and didn't come back to the | product. We also were more interested in working on this | problem that we faced ourselves while working on the live | stream application. | Darrelladjei wrote: | Hi! We actually came across the idea for Appollo whilst | trying to distribute the live-streaming app to ecommerce | stores. It looked like too much effort so we built what we | wish had existed. This new market seemed a better | founder/market fit and had much stronger customer "pull". | dangrossman wrote: | You have a pricing page but there's not a single dollar sign on | it. I have no idea what this costs. | | I also took a quick look at your API documentation, and I | couldn't figure out how I'd use this. | | I run several popular Shopify and WooCommerce apps right now. | Their primary integration point with the store is via injecting | a script tag into all pages, using Shopify's ScriptTag API or | WordPress's wp_head hook. | | I couldn't find how I'd do this using Apollo. | Darrelladjei wrote: | Hey, We are adding script tag support very very soon! | alex4864 wrote: | Hey! As someone who isn't super familiar with this space, I'm a | bit confused about who your target user is. At first I thought | it was for people who have a mobile app and want to publish it | on a bunch of stores, but the APIs are all about querying | products and customers, so I guess it's for integrating with | eCommerce platforms? A concrete example use case on your | website would help explain this to me a lot! | throwaway744678 wrote: | Browsing a bit through the doc I believe this is targeted to | developers that build "apps" that online merchants can (buy | and) use on their e-commerce website. I agree with alex: a | sample app would probably make it more clear! | Darrelladjei wrote: | Thanks guys! Yes correct! we are targeting developers that | are building apps/extensions for the website. Great idea | about the sample app, will add! | skeeter2020 wrote: | advice from someone ina similar area: STARTER app not | SAMPLE app. The former gives your clients a starting | point to build production applications; the later is | usually some throw-away sample code that quickly goes | stale and causes nothing but support headaches. By | extension, you will need to dedicate ongoing resources to | keep this up to date; that's what you expect of your | clients, so I hope you enjoy dog food! | fuzzer37 wrote: | Doesn't the name kind of clash with some already existing, | relatively well known software? I was sort of confused when I | saw the name of your company. | | https://www.apollographql.com/docs/react/ | Darrelladjei wrote: | Hey, haha yh good spot! We picked appollo because we help | people launch (apollo bit) apps (app bit). | kgraves wrote: | this is the first time I have heard of 'apollo graphql', | doesn't seem to be well known really. | [deleted] | jacobn wrote: | Hi, I run clippingmagic.com (a SaaS to clean & prep ecommerce | product shots) so this could be a great fit for us - we've | talked many times about integrating with the platforms, but... | | A few comments & questions: | | 1. https://tryapollo.com fails to provide a secure connection? | | 2. Viewing https://docs.tryappollo.com/docs/introduction on | mobile leads to the sidebar getting hidden - may want to copy | your ToC into the How To Use This Doc section to not make it | look like you have three doc pages total ;) | | 3. https://docs.tryappollo.com/reference#fetch-products - do I | provide a "cursor" or a "page"? | | 4. The "media" object type is not separately documented. Based | on the "Create a product" form it's {src:string, type:string} - | what are the valid string values for "type"? | | 5. When I update a product, do I have to include all fields, or | can I include only those I wish to update? | | 6. How do I append another product photo? How do I insert one? | How do I remove one? | | 7. https://docs.tryappollo.com/reference#fetch-variant goes to | the wrong spot on the page, it goes to Collections API section. | | 8. Ditto all questions for products also for variants (page vs | cursor, media & how to do narrow updates to it). | | 9. https://www.tryappollo.com/pricing - your pricing page has | as of right now no clear indication of your intended business | model. Charge a fraction of revenue? Fixed $x/install? | Something else? | | 10. Continuation of service: building an app is a non-trivial | commitment. What happens if things don't work out for appollo? | | Thanks! | Darrelladjei wrote: | 1. Thanks! we'll fix that! | | 2. Thanks for the feedback! | | 3. Yep! it is a cursor that we return to you after your first | query | | 4. Thanks, we'll better document that! The type values are | IMAGE & VIDEO | | 5. No only the newly updated values | | 7. Ah weird, which browser you using? for me it works. | | 8. Ditto all questions for products also for variants (page | vs cursor, media & how to do narrow updates to it). | | 9. Atm we are discussing pricing based on customers needs, on | a direct call with them | | 10. We are committed to making this work. If not we are open | to many arrangements including helping customers run Appollo | on-prem. | | Phew! Thanks for all the questions haha! | jacobn wrote: | I keep misspelling your domain, https://tryappollo.com/ (two | 'p's, your site) fails to provide a secure connection, | https://tryapollo.com/ (single 'p') works fine but is a | completely different website. | Darrelladjei wrote: | Yh good catch! We'll fix that! | harrisonjackson wrote: | At first I thought this was so you could sell retail products | through all these different platforms. | | I was thinking.... WHY?! | | But it is actually for ecommerce plugins/apps/add-ons and the | customers are those companies making shopify plugins so they | can develop once and deploy everywhere. | | Echoing other comments - a more clear description / example or | word other than "App" might help. I think Add-On or Plugin | might be more clear in your one liner when referencing all the | platforms. | | Good luck on the launch! Hope the "meet the batch" thing | doesn't flop. | skeeter2020 wrote: | Disclosure: I work for an established (maybe?) competitor to | this idea; I say maybe because it's really not clear what you | do until I read most of this thread, nor how you do it (or | what's planned vs. available). | | First, Welcome! This is a huge arena and I think there's a | million, nuanced areas for companies to tackle and really | focus on amazing merchant experiences. THis is a very big | (and growing) pie. | | Second, I think you'd benefit from trying to increase the | clarity of what you do and the value proposition, plus how it | all works. For example, I'm not sure how you can provide | broad-based api support for 3rd party developers without | script injection or strong webhook support, but maybe you've | got a new approach? I also admit to being skeptical when you | mention a feature as surpassing platform rate limits; we have | a continual pain point with shopify, query cost calculation | and throttling as an example. | | Third, we also use a platform-agnostic solution, but then | build internally on this before exposing client-facing | services. After several years we don't support nearly as many | platforms as you; how do you stay on top of all these | unilateral changes? Just shopify keeps us on our toes, and | some of the ones you mention have little critical mass making | them unattractive. | | Finally, it would probably help adoption if you _at least_ | gave some indication of what your pricing is going to look | like, even flat rate or %, or totally custom... You 're | asking people to build solutions on top of your product | without any sort of idea of what the long term ramifcations | look like. That's a hard sell. | | Good luck with the venture! | Eiriksmal wrote: | What are some competitors in this space? I would be a | customer of one of these businesses. | Robrechtlr wrote: | Great point, we have ran into the problem that people | misunderstand our product before, especially when they are | not familiar with the eCommerce app stores. I'll start | testing out plugin/add-on and see if that improves it, | apprecaite it! | rsstack wrote: | I love this. Now that you have a working version, what's next | on your road map? | Darrelladjei wrote: | Thanks so much! We are building out more API endpoints so | more customers can start building their app with our APIs. In | particular some folks have asked for Front-end functionality | e.g. to change the theme on the target website. If you have | any suggestions of things you would like would love to hear | about them!! ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-07-23 23:00 UTC)