WorkFlowy (YC S10) launches a better way to organize your brain | Hacker News Reader

WorkFlowy (YC S10) launches a better way to organize your brain

techcrunch.com

172 pointsjessep188 comments

Annoyance from the homepage: I don't want to have to watch a video to figure out what you do. Watching a video for me is one step of engagement after I've figured out if I have some basic interest. If I can't establish that immediately, I'll just close the window. Videos can be great for more in depth info, but why not use the space taken up by "A better way to think" (which says nothing) to give a one-line description of what it the product is?

I guess on a similar note, I also don't want to sign-up with my e-mail to use and then consequently decide whether I do or do not like another GTD tool.

It would help to have a demo visitors can play around with in realtime.

I would respectfully say just the opposite. In a 45 second video, they showed the product, I saw someone using it who already knew how to use it and I had no more commitment than clicking "play".

In my book, they got it exactly right.

A video is great but many people aren't going to bother with it if they aren't otherwise interested.

"A Better Way to Think" means nothing to me and is the only other thing to grab my interest. I would have clicked away in about 2 seconds if I didn't come across this on HN.

EDIT: Why not something like "Your Brain. Organized. Everywhere." for a headline? It doesn't seem to be "a better way to think" but a way to "organize things the way you naturally think" [from the video].

I can definitely see myself using this and almost passed it up.

Oh, I like these suggestions. Yeah, tagline should change. Perhaps we'll use "Organize things the way you naturally think". Need to put more thought into this.

So, we decided on "Organize your brain." Simple but also seems to get the point across.

I live in a country with one of the slowest Internet connections out there, I'd really rather read a 2-line paragraph description than watch a 45-sec video.

Besides, YouTube is blocked in most offices - like mine.

Point most definitely taken. We're going to put up a few descriptive paragraphs.

Another option would be to just use vimeo instead of youtube. Or better yet, justin.tv, since they are also a yc recipient.

I would suggest, even better would be a really well thought out picture/diagram that tells the story. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words, and it is far more likely it will be "read".

If you live in such a country do you expect free internet services to target you? At my startup a country with horrible internet is a country I do not care about, sorry but there's just too many other people to target and other things to worry about. The sense of entitlement to free services also bugs me.

I know there's stuff out there that I won't get, like Google Voice or anything with SMS notifications, but all I asked was a 2-line description.

I wonder where you got "entitlement to free services" from.

Having a video is a good option but shouldn't be the only one. See how dropbox is doing it.

Dropbox.com is pretty much a blank page with a video in the middle and a massive signup button. At the bottom there are links to the blog and whatnot. Is that what you mean?

We technically don't have a blog or any additional info yet, so we can't exactly link to that stuff. A few sentences of additional text we can and will do though.

I am pretty sure Dropbox used to have a link right under the video saying "If you'd rather read a text than watch a video, click here"

I rarely watch videos like this; if I'm in a shared office environment I don't want to distract others around me. If I'm at home I'm probably browsing while my family watch TV so again, the noise of the video will be distracting. Without anything on the page to make me think it's worth reaching for the headphones, I'll move on.

Agreed. I didn't get passed the homepage.

1. Why not have an anonymous demo page to play around with before asking us to sign up?

2. Why not have a big "Log in with OpenID" button so people can just link in with Google/whatever?

People use OpenID?

EDIT: I know people 'Login with Google' and 'Connect with Twitter', but I don't know anyone who dives at 'Login with OpenID'.

It's not like we are offered the option very often.

Google is an OpenID.

http://openid.net/get-an-openid/

I used it for signing up with stackoverflow and tend to use it when I begrudgingly sign up for something, if it's an option.

We'll set up Facebook Connect for those that don't want to register directly. Reason we don't have anonymous demo page yet is that it would take significant work to get the data to port to your actual account if you choose to sign up. It'd be a bad thing for someone to spend 10 minutes entering data into the demo and then lose it on signing up. We actually had that before and it was a problem.

We want to do this, but for purposes of launching more quickly we haven't done it yet.

One compromise would be to have the instructions/intro entered into a demo page that people could interact with but not save - it would encourage exploration of the interface without encouraging/requiring people to enter their own info. TaskPaper for Mac does something like this in an appealing way, and has almost the same interface as WorkFlowy.

Yeah, that's a good idea. We messed around with that, but didn't quite get it right. People got too engrossed in that and never really got around to creating their own stuff. The jury is out on it, though. We're definitely not happy with our onboarding process as it currently stands.

Why would anyone using a demo page be under the illusion that they would be able to save their data? To wit: It's a demo page.

I agree with the above sentiment that not offering a means of trying the product out before registering is a blocker for many, many people( myself included ).

One bit of data: seems like we've had a conversion rate approaching 50%, so we're definitely doing well.

Yeah, good point. We've found that conversions are pretty good with a super stripped down site, but we're probably going to add some descriptive text too.

On mobile, neither video nor signup are appealing. Pitch first, close later.

Just to offer another data point: I almost never watch videos but was interested enough to do so in this case. It was brief and offered enough to convince me that this might be my go-to application for managing my projects and tasks.

After playing with it for a few minutes, I am excited by its simplicity and ease of use. I've bounced around from Google docs to omni outliner to paper and pencil with just about everything in between, but I'm glad to have this tool at my disposal.

Nice, thanks for the positive feedback! I hope it continues to be helpful.

Is this a good space to compete in? There are zillions of sites like it, it's really easy to duplicate, and hard to make money off of? Nevertheless, best of luck to you.

I don't mean to be cynical but honestly to me this space is an analog to self-help books. Todo/notes/productivity apps probably can hook people for a few weeks but beyond that I imagine most people won't put forth the effort to keep up with it.

Me and a few other people use Things.

I hear Omni has a good business going, as well.

Simplenote, Evernote, & friends seem to be doing alright.

There's always room for something better.

After using quite a few of these different systems myself and paying for many, I've found many people have the wrong philosophy. It's not about fitting your life to a system, but finding a system to complement your life.

Most importantly, when your life changes, change systems. I constantly switch between different combinations of apps to keep my life in order based on what's going on in my life at the time.

Point taken, but a big aim of ours (I'm one of the founders) is to help people do what they're already doing in a better way. I was creating tons of Google Docs full of lists before I started using WorkFlowy. They were pretty unmanageable, but they were the best thing I had at the time.

I hope you guys do well, it just seems like a risky area to get into.

My guess is yes. I think it's worth trying, at least.

There may exist zillions of sites, but that in and of itself doesn't matter. If they can build a better product that can draw a large enough audience, that's important. I have personally looked around for tools like this, but haven't found anything that really kicks ass. Playing with their tool makes me optimistic -- they may be on to something.

I don't think they have to worry much about duplication. Building the product isn't the hard part, getting users is. Not sure if they'll be successful here, but if they fail it'll probably not be because of a clone.

Good point with the money, that almost certainly be tough. However if their product is useful enough and enough people use it they'll have an opportunity at making serious money.

I used to pay $10/month for Backpack by 37s. I'd gladly pay that $10 for this.

Short answer is YES.

My app Noodles (see: makeramen.com) was just another todo list on the Android market, and somehow -to my surprise- gained some very solid traction.

The amazing thing about the productivity software space is that everyone wants their app to do something different. It's also much more of a designer's space. I've seen countless apps that have all the "features," but the actual interface and interaction is so awkward you end up spending more time fighting the system than using it.

As many people have noted about 37signals, people realize the benefits of software like this almost immediately, and will easily spend money on it. Contrast that with other social sites where people are just not culturally incline to pay for services that connect you with friends. But you start talking about productivity, and helping people work faster, better, and more efficiently, and they see benefits immediately, which means they'll reach for their wallets immediately as well.

To-do, organization and project management are glaring unsolved problems that humans have been trying to solve for the last 2 million years. Yes, zillions of sites. But none, yet, are satisfactory solutions. Yet.

Woah. I get a very 37signals-esque feel from this. You know, the feeling when you've found something really awesome that could really help out your daily organization? I used to use backpack from 37signals, but ended up favoring my Moleskine.

I signed-up for WorkFlowy and created 5 lists and I think I could use this on a daily basis. Simple and to the point. Help me remember the random things that go through my head while keeping me on track to get things done.

That being said, there are a few things I'd love to see:

(a) Search (b) Linking between items. I keep daily lists that may have sub-tasks of items that are in a larger project list. I'd like to be able to link the things in my daily list back to the project. Even if this is a full URL, I just don't want to be clicking around to find it. (c) Mobile/iPad support (haven't tested to see if this already works or not)

Great job guys.

> I used to use backpack from 37signals, but ended up favoring my Moleskine.

Would you be interested in doing a video testimonial for 73primenumbers.com ? :-)

Did you make that site? Thank you, thank you, thank you.

For anyone who hasn't seen it yet, please do yourself a favour - http://73primenumbers.com.

Thanks, glad you liked it; I had fun doing it.

The best joke on the site: "Jason Boiled"

This one not too bad either:

"Trailer Park is the first product I have seen that is truly project management for everyone." -Jim James, former Product Project Manager for Microsoft Project Product Management Products

Hi Chris! Thanks so much for the support :)

Search, linking and mobile are all high on our list of things to get done soon. Mobile is definitely the hardest problem so could take the longest, but we're definitely getting on it!

Good to hear. Definitely don't expect it all right away.

Can't wait to watch the incremental growth.

From the "How to Use WorkFlowy" box that you see after signing up:

> Type like you would in a text editor.

What percent of the population is comfortable with the term "text editor"?

Of the people who would be using a tool like this? I'd say ~100

Really? I know plenty of people who use Evernote that do all of their text editing in Word or Google Docs.

I doubt there are many people using Evernote that couldn't figure out what "text editor" meant.

Still.. which part wouldn't they understand or be confused by: 'text' or 'editor'?

"Type like you would in MS Word" might be better.

Maybe we should use: "Type like you would in a word processor."

How about "Just type in anything you want"

Seconded. Word processor isn't any better than text editor.

Hrm, good point.

Well, i love it. Its a great way to organise my endless daily mind jottings.

I have made it into a quick little desktop (fluid) app with some minor css changes to help it blend in a bit

Heres a screenshot: http://www.webnibbles.co.uk/dropbox/workFlowyFluid.jpg

If you are interested in running this standalone (OS-X) you can get the app here: http://www.webnibbles.co.uk/dropbox/WorkFlowy.app.zip

Or you can get fluid from here and give it a go yourself: http://fluidapp.com/

Awesome, man! We'll have to get on that ourselves.

Two notes I did not see below:

* For a site that launched a few days after FireSheep was announced, and that wants me to put in (somewhat) private data, I think that at least having an SSL option is necessary.

* Re: demo page: Is it really that hard to save it tied to a temporary cookie, and copy all the data on the backend to a permanent account if a user signs up? I would not even call that a "demo page": just have the editor widget be right there on the front page, letting the user play with it (keeping the video to the side).

I understand the value of launching quickly, but adding a Gmail auth/Facebook connect option, adding an SSL option and adding better "try-before-I-have-to-give-you-my-email-address" are all things I would consider a must.

[Edit: fixed formatting.]

I am sorry to be negative, but can someone explain to me why this is a YC startup and not a weekend-project ?

So here's something very similar i launched recently http://www.knowcase.com (works on ipad & mobile too)

Interesting side note:

I watched the workflowy video in the article, thought "meh". Then I came back to HN to read the comments, and clicked on your app. Tried the demo, got intimidated by the interface and left. Came back to HN to read more comments, decided to check out workflowy's site afterall. A simple sign up, validation from Matt Cutts, and the fact that its a YC company persuaded me to give it a try.

tl;dr - Validation does matter. Convince the people who your target market trusts, and the rest will follow.

Interesting. As one of the founders, it's good to hear the psychology at work here.

Just played with it. I like it, except in the 30 seconds of playing around, wasn't obvious if I'm creating a new list when I do an entry, or if an entry is a list. It's nice and snappy though.

You might want to take screenshots of a few use cases, skitch them up and post that on a more....link for those who want to learn more.

Looking forward to this. I love the parent-child relationship for organizing my thoughts. It is feels very natural to me.

clickable sign-up: http://www.workflowy.com

When marking a task as completed, all the subtasks should automatically be completed, too.

And conversely, when all the subtasks are completed the parent should automatically be completed.

Maybe as an option. But I made two lists right off the back, Work, and Life. I put two things in Life and then checked them off..

Why not label it as an outliner? It would help more technically-oriented people to quickly understand what it is.

Also, Dave Winer would be all over it. :)

Most people don't know what an outliner is, so that's why we decided not to use it. We're really approaching it as text editor designed for lists, even though that ends up being an outliner.

For tech people, you're definitely right. For most people, this really is a new category of thing.

Tasks need to have dates I think for this thing to be both a brain organizer and a productivity tool, which I think is ultimately what it is going to have to be to be successful (and it is names workflowy).

I have used mindmaps before, which is basically the same idea with a different interface.

I'd like each node to have a "due by" or "do on" date, and maybe a simple color coding.. just a way to arbitrary label things into one of a few sets for later polling.

This is young so no one has built up huge maps of their brains and their lives, or imagine an organization using this.. it could get huge and cumbersome. To solve this you'd need to be able to pull all the 'purple' items from deep in the tree into it's own list, or get a list of everything that I said needed to be done today, or by friday.

In any case, I think this is a great tool, and I have been looking for a seamless way of keeping track of things, and this just might fit the bill. I will be giving it a try.

Curious how this is going to be monetized as well, I hope I don't get addicted and end up with another cellphone bill.

Yeah, lots of this is right on. Dates: need to do it. Taggin/Labeling and filtering is super key and one of the next big things we're going to work on.

Regarding monetization, we're thinking that we're going to have a premium option above a certain number of lists/items. We're, of course, going to grandfather in early users.

I hope that you don't sacrifice the simplicity here. Instead of actual fields or clickable options for setting tags and due dates, let me type them in and then display them as needed.

something like: look into alternatives for GTD due 12/1/2010 [work, gtd]

Taking syntax like that is definitely cool. I was thinking though of just being able to hover a node and get teensy widgets

Maybe both? I like the idea of being able to quickly type out what I need.

Yeah, everything's going to be text editable. The twitter #hashtag model is what we'll probably follow. So if you type, say, "!" it might pull up a date picker and then when you choose the date it'll insert it in the text like !2010-10-24 (and record the metadata invisibly for sorting/filtering and whatnot).

Add a way to try it out without signing up!

Yes, this! Add some example lists to it, and reset it every hour or so. This way when they sign up, they don't just see an empty list, but already have ideas what to do with it.

Maybe even add some example lists for new registered user (you could use that to add a little user guide).

Ctrl-Backspace isn't a good shortcut for deleting items. That's the shortcut to delete a word to the left in Windows.

Looks really cool.

Small nit: In Chrome, hit the backspace a few too many times and it fired the "Back" action of the browser. Might want to override this default when in text editing mode.

This looks fantastic, with some obvious advantages over other todo list apps.

A couple of obvious todos I would like to see done before I can use it. Firstly a search throwing up a list of notes that match (browser text search is okay for this but doesn't give me a nice easy to read list).

Secondly and this one is more important, the ability to cross reference lists, for example what do I need to do today for all my projects? Search could provide a stopgap using hash tags ala twitter for tagging notes or marking dates in the interim but a formal method would probably be more convenient especially for mainstream users.

+1 for both requests here.

Cool, glad you like it. We're definitely adding search and tagging in the near future. We want tagging to be a first order tool for navigation just as descending the hierarchy is now.

This is awesome. I have something similar as a project on the back burner because I haven't been able to find anything really simple and generic like this. I was trying to solve simple creation of lists and the zoom in feature is exactly what I was looking for. Nice work.

Now for a tiny feature request. I like to make sections with ample white space between them. When I have an empty bullet, can you hide the bullet? Similar to what gmail tasks does.

And I want simple formatting. Textile? Markdown? Is this supported already? I just want to make junk bold and italicized. :)

Impressed with beautiful minimalistic design!

I think this service could be very useful for me when transparent synchronization with mobile be ready. Evernote have not created correct two way mobile synchronization yet.

Very nice interface and website. It's sleek and uncluttered. Overall, pretty enjoyable to use.

-You need SSL. Badly.

-You need to post a privacy policy. I need some something to reassure me before I can store private information under your control.

-Public demo? A lot of people will lose interest if they have to set up an account before even coming into contact with the software. Knowcase (http://www.knowcase.com/) does a good job of providing a demo without forcing you to jump through hoops.

As is this is not very useful to me, because often dates are associated with the things you do. I want to know what has to be completed tomorrow/next week/etc. A calendar or timeline view would make this very useful. I think you might be able to do a neat calendar view that also shows the nesting, so I'd be able to see:

    School: homework X, homework Y, test Z
    Project A: email joe about X, implement Y
    Project B: ...

In a calendar/timeline view.

Would like a calendar/timeline view and a search function.

I've been using http://bulletxt.zetabee.com it appears to be the same thing, but many times nicer and more polished.

Thanks for the props. It's nowhere close to being finished either. I still have tons of half-implemented features.

I really like the app and I'm definitely going to be using it for many things from this point on, but I would use it even more if you had Collaboration. I need to be able to collaboratively edit a section of my list with my coding team. We should be able to move this section of the list where ever each of us wants it in our individual accounts.

Would that be too difficult to implement at this point?

agree. colaboration feature is a must. for me it could easily replace piratepad if it have implemented colaboration.

Sweet. Collaboration is coming soon.

Interesting product idea - could use a bit more explanation on the homepage (maybe a paragraph of explanatory text?), the video was nice but a bit hard to take in (fast paced, talking over music, short).

Your other video "How to use workflowy" was much easier to understand and actually convinced me to sign up: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPMVtkNrquU&fmt=18 . Specifically, the part after 1:30 where you show the length of a list when it's expanded vs. when it's organized by workflowy. I usually end up with huge word documents that look like scarily similar to the sprawling, expanded list, and when you showed how the tool cuts down on that and only shows the level of detail you need, that hit home big time and made me want to try it.

Best of luck!

Thanks, thats really useful feedback. Nice to know the main thing that persuaded you. I wonder if we could capture that in images/text somehow too, for the people who keep saying they don't want to watch a video.

No problem, glad it was helpful! The best thing for people who don't want to watch a video might be just some screenshots of the different states of the list: compacted, expanded 1-2 levels, and fully expanded with accompanying text explaining how the product works.

Another quick suggestion: "A better way to think" doesn't really convey what your product does, maybe something like: "Map your workflow to your brain, not your brain to your workflow." would work better? Something more descriptive might help people tell more quickly whether or not the product is relevant to them and worth checking out.

Yeah, we've realized that our tagline sucks. We're going to change it to "Organize your brain." What do you think?

That works. I think the key is having a solid introductory paragraph that explains what the product is, the tagline can only say so much.

I really like the product. I currently use Things for my GTD, so it would be competing with that. I would have to have an iPhone app version to make the switch. The UI also lends itself to a useful project management tool, which I always thought was a space in need of some simplification.

Mobile support is high on our list.

Yeah, we think it'll be pretty powerful for project management once it has collaboration, tagging and search.

I love the simplicity of the application! Easy to use and no complicated system to learn (which isn't the case for all the GTD apps out there...)

But there are two things I would love to see: Add an easy way to append things to the Goals list. So I could add parts of a project to my week list, and when I break it down into single tasks I could easily add the subtasks to the today list. They would have to be linked to the original item of course.

And what would also be nice (but may be outside the scope) is a way to ad recurring tasks (for example refactoring every Friday), so I don't have to remember to add it all the time to the today list.

This belongs on a smart phone.

Until it is... anybody know of a good outlining app on the iPhone? All I need is "infinitely" nestable items.

EDIT: OK, Outliner seems pretty good. As far as workflowy goes, for desktop use I think I'd prefer a standalone app.

It's a good idea. Similar to Taskpaper (http://www.hogbaysoftware.com/products/taskpaper), I wish you guys the best of luck.

I'd like more formatting options. (Bold, size, etc.)

Also would like to be able to embed media somehow (videos, images, etc.)

I'd like to use something like this as a good outlining tool.

The expanding of bullets into new pages is great.

I worry that embedding media would just overcomplicate it. There's definitely a point where it's simple enough and adding more features will only detract from the overall effectiveness.

We had embeddable media implemented but took it out because the UI wasn't right yet. We need to figure that out, but I think it is definitely important enough to work on.

Agreed about overcomplicating it. I'd rather link to the media elsewhere to keep my information less cluttered and not worry about the formatting.

Excellent choice of music for the video.

It stood out from the usual ones by being high energy and compelling. I also like how the clapping was kept in at the end.

Thank you. We thought it was cute.

This is orgmode without emacs and on the web. Given the usefulness and popularity of orgmode, I wouldn't be surprised if this really takes off.

Awesome. WorkFly almost mimics how I currently organize my things to do. Eschewing fancy stuff, I simply make a long indented list and cross things out as they get done. Having that capability in a browser based application is neat.

Now I do like long lists, but could I have the capability to make multiple lists? I don't want to put my personal to-do's on the same list as my work to-do.

Hi durga. Your last question is interesting, because in WorkFlowy there's not really a difference between a list and an item in a list, because both can have infinite items underneath them. It does seem to confuse people, though, so we're going to make the icons at the top level into "document" icons and see if that helps clear things up. Might slightly change the behavior too, unclear.

Exporting would be nice so that one can save the list 'snapshot'. This way we could use it to report our tasks/projects every week. My boss is using Word. It's just not efficient...

Tables are very common on my lists. Maybe you can add support for simple tables to Workflowy too.

Another suggestion: several users accessing the same Workflowy.

Their website probably got a lot hits from the curious today, since it was a hacker news front page story. I wonder how many potential users, like me, that they lost forever because because of the register-before-we-explain anti-pattern. And no, I will not unblock a video until after I am interested.

:) Yeah, we've heard that feedback loud and clear. We're going to put up some more descriptive text as soon as traffic dies down. We don't want to mess something up while people are still signing up like crazy.

We're getting amazing conversion rates, though, so most people don't have a problem watching the video.

When typing/editing an item, ctrl-left/ctrl-right doesn't jump the cursor to the front of the closest word.

What's the advantage over Google tasks?

Information organization.

It's an outline program (with a great UI), rather than a simple task list. The video makes it pretty clear.

I like it. It has the simplicity of mytextfile.com which I've been using since I saw it here on HN months ago. I was hoping I could also access it on iPad with Safari but it says no "smart phones" yet. Signing up and in with my Google account would be great.

Any chance of getting a Vim emulation option? That might be enough to get me regularly using it.

I love it.

For those that don't want to "Sign Up" here's what happens when you do: NOTHING

I never got ANYTHING in my inbox. They just use your email for a username, which I very much appreciate over any other method (creating usernames you forget, Facebook connect, OpenID, etc, etc)

It asks only for email while signing up but asks to loin with either Email/Username.

Interface looks good but even average geek will not use it for more than few days let alone average user. How do you make sure users keep using it for long time?

The name grates on my nerves (although I am aware of the URL shortage problem). But the product looks cool. I'm going to use it for a few days and see how I like it. It looks near perfect.

Thanks, hope you like it :)

Also, I have no idea how this is a business, but I've resigned myself to being thoroughly confused by Valley business sense. I imagine you will be no more or less economically successful than simplenote.

As a business, I think we'll follow the lead of dropbox and evernote. Some variety of:

1) You get a lot for free. 2) If you need even more (or just love us) you can pay us (My hunch is we'll also have an easy to find "I need a lot of space but am poor." option) 3) You can always earn more space by promoting us

Also, once we have collaboration this could be a pretty powerful enterprise tool, and businesses pay lots of money for software.

My first feature request would be due dates and email reminders.

I'm wondering how much you can eventually charge for a service like this, especially considering it would be fairly easy for competitors to replicate and undercut you.

org-mode Inspired I see. In a way this solves the problem org-mode has which is keeping the same list sync'd in multiple locations in a clean and straightforward way.

Four testimonial quotes, a short fluffy video, and a sign up box? That's your launch website? You're kidding, right?

Is it online only? Is it free? Forever or for a trial? ...

Why is this bad? It's a launch website.

And it worked because I signed up.

Same, and quickly realized I'll probably never return.

I thought about that, but given its potential for me I set it as my homepage. I'll give it a few days to see if it has money for me.

Nice. That's what I like to hear! Please let us know what you think after a few days of using it.

I think if I use it for a week I'll be hooked. Some sort of game mechanism to get people to use it for that initial crucial time frame might be helpful.

Totally :) I think a simple progress bar getting people up to, say 1000 items might do it. Any other ideas?

But this is because you saw it on HN and it's a YC company so you want to give it a chance.

Most people wouldn't care or even know what YC is.

Did he say that some where else? I can honestly say I may have been more likely to open it up and check out the site because it's a YC company, but I am 'giving it a chance' because I don't have anything else that does this except scrap paper and issue queues and I liked how you can change what the root node is and the clever use of breadcrumbs.

That, and because it's extremely fast compared to other software. I usually tend to go with less apps, but this could be a nice addition for me. Time will tell.

I find it's the perfect combination. Watch the 45s video, and you know everything about the product. All that's left to do is enter an email address + password and you can start using the app.

Great site.

The post you're replying to contains three questions you don't know the answer to without signing up for the service.

If your first version is so impressive that trolls don't make fun of it, you waited too long to launch.

http://www.paulgraham.com/really.html

I think he was referring to the product, not the website.

Sites are usually also pretty bad initially.

It's a simple tool that only needs a simple explanation and simple signup box.

That said, a text explanation would make the process even faster. Also it would be interesting to see a usable mini-version of their hierarchical list right on the homepage that I could play around with before even putting in my email address.

We'll put this stuff online and put more descriptive text. Thanks for the feedback. Conversions are really good, btw, so something's working.

Regarding your specific questions:

1) "Is it online only?" You can currently edit offline and when you go back online it'll sync your changes. Don't close your browser window, though, cause it'll lose the changes. That'll be fixed soon thanks to html 5 caching.

2 & 3) "Is it free?" & "Forever?" It's going to be like Dropbox, freemium with a quota. In other words, free forever up to a certain number of lists allowed. We'll grandfather in early users.

"free forever up to a certain number of lists allowed"

Er, I love your product and use it, but how does that model even make sense? Couldn't I get around it by having everything in a single root list?

Oh, I guess I think of every item in WorkFlowy as a list. So I should have said, "certain number of items".

A bug: when you put links in, <span>s appear later: http://imgur.com/4bvY8.png

Doesn't really do much more than what I've already been using http://checkvist.com/ for.

Looks and feels good. However, it conflicts with vimperator, which is a no-go for me... I'm sure a workaround can be found. Good job.

Any thoughts about (optionally) turning URLs into hotlinks? Or (as suggested on techcrunch comments) having (hideable) due dates?

It seems to work like TaskPaper but in a browser, and with less flexibility being TaskPaper more similar to a simple text editor.

Very cool, I definitely foresee using it. Please don't forget to add list export functionality before you sell to Google.

Looks very interesting + simple. However, in Fx3 (sorry I'm outdated) I can't get passed the intro video after signup.

You're in FX 3.? It doesn't work in 3.5, but should work in 3.6 and higher.

Ah. I'm in 3.5, and I was baffled at how to exit the video and start the site.

Both Firefox 3 and firefox 3.5 (ubuntu 9.04 and 10.04). I'll see if I can fix it on my side :)

it is supprisingly nice match to the textfiles google-docs i use a lot lately.

currently i'm playing with meinmeister for deep-not-taking.

compared to mindmeister one thing hold me back in workflowy: lack of links

what i like: - makes nice use of the space (gets stuff out of the way when zooming in) - clean - works like my text files :)

hmm.. that's more pros then cons :D

Yeah, our initial target is people who use text editors (& specifically Google Docs).

You need to watch the video on their homepage at the 38 second mark. Brilliant.

Really like the app, I've been wanting something like this for a long time

I cannot move things horizontally, only vertically. That's no no for me.

another feature request - when i close a parent task, close out its children. or at least, prompt me if i want to do that. make navigation into sub items respect the back button.

arrrrgh. i just back buttoned to the article, and went forward to try and find my list again, and its gone. I have no idea what I'm supposed to do today.

Hmmm, that's odd. Your changes are synced to the server every 5 seconds, and you should be notified if you have unsaved changes when you try to leave the page.

Would be nice if "control-Z" performs undo.

I like it. I definitely will forget the name, so I made it http://bit.ly/worklist

iphone app please :)

I would ask for a good mobile web version way before an App (android or iphone). If you have a good mobile web version, people can pretend it's an app, and if it works -- feel free to use PhoneGap to make a real honest-to-god app out of it.

Very nice!

I really want to attach screenshots to items. I'm going to use Workflowy while programming... whenever I notice a small tsak (such as refactoring a hack, reformatting some code, etc), then I'll add it as a Workflowy item.

But rather than type out an item description, it would be way easier for me to simply screenshot the code. (I do alt-printscreen, paste into MSPaint, save to dropbox, copy public link.)

Of course, each item could just be a dropbox link to the screenshot...

I'd +1 this feature request. Although, I would rather not see these show up in-line but instead be a link for download.

Or possibly better yet, let me browse and attach things from DropBox.

Just to clarify, you wouldn't want to upload stuff to WorkFlowy, right? You'd basically just want to link to it from another location?

Um. It would be nice to attach (via upload or via link) a screenshot or PDF to certain items, but I wouldn't want to format this inline with my text. Just be able to click and view.

I definitely wouldn't want to sacrifice the simplicity and elegance of the text only view.

Nice. Yeah, attachments & embeds are going to be cool. So, sounds like for you just linking to an image plus previewing it in the display will be enough?

Sounds like you wouldn't want us to let you upload the image to our site, right?

For me, it's not necessary to upload the image to your site, no. But most of your users won't be using Dropbox... the vast majority of them wouldn't take the time to upload to some external site (e.g. ImageShack) then copy the link into the item.

That said, you likely don't need to worry about being able to upload to your site right now. Attaching an image seems like a pretty special-case thing, so you could simply support an external URL for now...

To answer your question: yes it would be ideal if I could "attach" an image URL to an item. That would then show a small ~(128px by 128px) thumbnail. Clicking on it would pop up a new tab and navigate to the image URL.

I'd agree that a URL link is good for now, but I'd vote against any inline embedding. I think this will complicate your UI.

I think the link should browse to a new page in workflowy that is sub to the item to which it is attached and embed the image or video there.

Sounds like either super discreet (tiny) thumbnails that you can expand by clicking or a setting to determine embedding would be good.

That would be awesome!

Why do I have to sign up? Why can't I just sort of try it right away?

There's an ongoing argument about the viability of my WikiTorrents.org idea over here: http://hackerne.ws/item?id=1871068

This WorkFlowy thing is basically an incredibly general version of my WikiTorrents.org idea and it's also YC-funded.

The TechCrunch article quotes the founders: "Almost everything you create on Google docs is a list."

So there.

Very smooth experience. Love the "What if your whole life could fit on a piece of paper?" tagline. Great job!

Key points for keeping it relevant:

- Mobile

- Offline access

- Export/print

Small nitpick: Deleting an empty item shouldn't bring up the undo delete bar.

Thanks! All of this stuff is coming in some form in the near future.

As a side-note, there is "unofficial" offline access right now. All of your edits are batched up when you edit offline and will be synced with the server when you reconnect. You just can't close your browser window/tab until you reconnect.

The undelete bar thing is already fixed and will be pushed out soon.

I'm visual. Lists don't work for me. But I think my wife would like it. Now if you can give me the same info presented like mindmanager, then I'm in.

Looks great, the test will come tommorrow when I compare it to my paper list and try to implement.

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