ReadMe (YC W15) Raises 9M Series A from Accel and Y Combinator
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
Well there is something you don't see every day.
I'm impressed by how far they've come. If in 2015 you told me you're starting a company that helps companies customize their API documentation, I would have marked you as a particularly shiny unicorn.
Here's our launch, if anyone wants to go back and look: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8422408
Let's say you get back an error. We've made it so the API creator can link in the response to a unique page in the docs, where they'll see their actual API log. They can see exactly what the server saw and returned, replay the request, and more. If an error code is returned, the API creator can write out what the error means and how to fix it.
If that's not enough, they can open a support ticket on ReadMe, and include the logs that seem broken. That way, both sides are looking at the same API logs, and know things like what SDK is being used or if the data is URL encoded properly.
Lastly, we're going to build tools that are more proactive. Like, if a customer is getting a certain threshold of errors in production, we'll make it easy to trigger an email to them with a warning.
Engineers, support, solutions engineer, dev evangelist, content writer (with a technical background), and more! If you don't see the right job, email greg@readme.io!
It was really cool to find out that you were the founder of readme after hearing about it (and asking for the budget to buy it). Congratulations on the Series A!!
We think we used that URL when we submitted to HN a few years ago because the root domain had already been submitted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6397526 (I ended up offering to pay for it!)
If had come across their site without any context I would have assumed it was a generic marketing site template that needed to be filled in. I'm sorry for being so negative, but I am interested in documentation related technology and it bugs me that I can't for the life of me figure out what this is after seing things posted about it on Hackernews for the last few years.
So, basically, we sit at developer.whatever.com, and take care of everything from reference guides to marketing pages to tutorials to support forums. If you have any more questions or feedback, feel free to email me at greg@readme.io!
We're always updating the homepage, so we'll definitely do our best to make it more clear in the future!
Also, the company logos don’t appear at all on an iPad in portrait mode.
So what I usually do first thing is go look for the documentation. When I clicked on "documentation" the first time I expected documentation. It's under the "Products" section at the top and bottom of the page, and that can be interpreted as "product documentation" or "documentation for the product". But as you know, it's the marketing page for a product called "Documentation".
On that page I couldn't really get any more information other than "Easy to Update Within Seconds - Sync your Swagger file, update content in our editor, or merge a suggested edit to make sure docs are always up to date."
I'm not sure what this means. Is this a manual process I have to do or do you have an API call I can hook into my build system?
Is having a Swagger or OpenAPI file a requirement? If not, what's the alternative?
How does the changelog work? Do you read it out of a git repo or manage it on the site?
I have more questions along those lines and I think some screenshots or documentation for actually using the readme documentation product would help a lot.
> I'm not sure what this means. Is this a manual process I have to do or do you have an API call I can hook into my build system?
We do have an API and a CLI tool for automating, or you can sync it in the UI.
> Is having a Swagger or OpenAPI file a requirement? If not, what's the alternative?
Nope, we have a manual editor in the UI for describing your API!
> How does the changelog work?
It's just a blog mostly, but with icons for different types of changes
> Do you read it out of a git repo or manage it on the site?
Everything is on the site, since locking it in git makes it tougher for non technical coworkers to make changes. That being said, you can sync it to git. We have built in page history, versioning, and our own version of pull requests called "suggested edits".
> I have more questions along those lines and I think some screenshots or documentation for actually using the readme documentation product would help a lot.
You can see your docs at https://docs.readme.com
Thanks for the detailed feedback!
Not _your_ docs, right? lol I think this demonstrates well some of the copy confusion.
The placeholder mockups are a pretty generic side menu / text content area and adding in an Intercom or Trello logo doesn't really clarify what is being mocked.
Definitely some internal vernacular being used in the copy, too. What is a developer hub? Again the mockups dont' clarify much.
100% agree after a second glance the use of "Documentation" as a product is confusing when you consider 99/100 saas/tech companies have a documentation page for _their_ docs. Maybe something like "Hosted Documentation" or "<Your Company's> Documentation" would work. Thanks for the thoughtful response.
You can have multiple projects, and the internal ones can be secured in a variety of ways (OAuth, site-wide password, admins only).
As for Zendesk, we have an integration (the little modal popup thingy), or you can disable our support forums and redirect any sub-URL to Zendesk!
It still might not be the right fit, however I'd love to talk more if you have feedback or thoughts!
It's hard to evaluate situations from the outside so I could also be totally off. At Jungle Disk we consume a ton of tools and they are all easily positive ROI. Good people are hard to find and expensive vs. SaaS subscriptions.
WIt's not just writing. ReadMe doesn't write anything for you. You'd have to build the "platform" before anything is actually written.
But $5k/mo works out to be a ~$30k salary after taxes.