Ask HN: Review My Startup - Butter Camp
buttercamp.com
buttercamp.com
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.
You expect people to put down $10 on an app that appears to be nothing better than a text entry that you have to calculate yourself? </incredulous>
If not, then as the parent says, try to put some feature details into your landing page.
My thoughts:
I would use this as a native app on BB or iPhone if it were very, very easy to use. I see the use case being you whip it out after you make a purchase and update it. That means it would have to load fast independently of network conditions. I don't really want a webapp for that. At best that would be browser -> bookmark -> login? Ouch.
If you're targeting budget minded people, which of those would tolerate a recurring fee? I would probably pay 10$ 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.
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.