Ask HN: Please rate my startup, managewith.us

- There is no "who" column, so there is no task assignment. In groups, this is critical.

- (Obviously from the above) There's no contacts list.

- There is no internal (per project) calendar, or external calendar (personal) integration.

- BUG: Date picker widget doesn't handle font sizes being different than expected (i.e. it doesn't scale).

- There is no hierarchy of tasks, hence there's no way to map dependencies.

- There's no 'length' (of time) field.

- Per-item check boxes do nothing?

Can you name a single advantage your app has over using a Google spreadsheet?

Something you might want to checkout is smartsheet: http://www.smartsheet.com/

There are also quite a number of competing task/project management apps for google domains/GAE that you might want to look over.

EDIT: Sorry. I forgot to even mention the positive things. Seems I need sleep... ;)

- The design is clean and looks good.

- It was very intuitive. Bravo. Just looking at it was enough to grasp what it does.

- It seems like a really good start but you're entering a very crowded space.

Hi jcr, thanks for the feedback, and for pulling out some positives!

Thanks for finding the bugs, I'll take a look asap.

I think you may be viewing the read-only task set, in which the checkboxes will soon allow you to download and forward the selected tasks.

The 'who' column is definitely under consideration.

I'm aware that a task management app can easily become something that's trying to cater for everyone. As this is the MVP at the moment I'll take your suggestions into consideration, so thank you I really do appreciate it.

In my eyes Google Spreadsheet is very generic, you could compare it to thousands of apps out there and argue that it is better. I'm really trying not to make another generic task manager, but one which is suited to teams working together in a multi-office environment.

To answer your question (if it is still required knowing my intentions a bit better), Google Spreadsheet requires you to sign up, it requires typing in fields such as a 'status' or a 'priority', it doesn't look as attractive, and it's always going to be branded as 'Google Docs'. Most importantly, it's not a task manager! Although it can solve a magnitude of problems, it's not exactly tailored to a specific one. Some would argue that it has more value, some would argue it has less.

I'm aware that this market is crowded, but I appreciate you believing I have a good start, and I really hope that the simple concept I'm trying to introduce will be noticed by a small fraction of the market out there who may find my product more suited to their business need than the product they are currently using.

Cheers!

Hi, I like the ability to rapidly get started and quickly share (far better than Remember The Milk on that point).

There are other apps/services in competition but that is ok - proves there is some semblance of a market out there.

I'd say you should get it infront of as many potential customers as possible ASAP so you can move from hypothesizing about customers to having validated learning about them.

You're right to release early - you need to start qualifying WHO will pay and how MUCH pretty soon (if you wish to turn this into a profitable business).

Your unique selling point may well be the speed/ease of use and ease of sharing. I'd pay at least £1 per month for that.

Hope that's useful feedback?

Matt Green

Hi Matt, that's really useful, thanks.

Glad you can see there might be a niche for this kind of product. I'll take your pricing guidelines into account, and I may well reduce the pro account to be more in line with the users' expectations.

Sharing/ease of use is exactly my selling point, and it's one which not many similar apps out there have.

Cheers

Loved the fact that I can get started with a single click. The UI is very simple to use too and it was fast. Some feature suggestions but probably you already have them in your mind/roadmap

1. Saving the task list. (Pro Version Feature maybe) 2. Sharing the list via email. 3. Downloading the list as excel, csv any format that makes most sense

There was a time couple of years back when I was working for a firm and my manager was based out of US and me from India. We used to have a weekly update meeting and there used to be 5-10 action items coming out of it. I used to email my manager the action items after the meeting. I believe this app would have made our lives lot easier then.

Thanks for the feedback, appreciate it.

2 and 3 are on my list, 1 seems like a good idea, I love the way the revision system works on Etherpad (curently visible on http://typewith.me), but unfortunately I couldn't develop something that sophisticated so quickly. Everything is saved in real-time, are you referring to viewing old revisions?

Your case study is the exact one I'm trying to address! It's relieving to hear that someone else is familiar with this problem as well, as it's been apparent in every office I've worked in, especially when a team is spread across countries.

I'm aware that it might seem like I'm trying to compete with RTM and Google Docs, but what I am really aiming to do is find the people who might make make better use of an application more tailored to this problem.

Cheers

Looks nice and clean. Is there a way to create tasks for separate projects? It appears to me that you can only have one wall of tasks?

You should change your email address in the footer from info[at]managewith[dot]us to info@managewith.us and make it clickable.

I think spam filters these days manage to capture a majority of the junk that you might receive from harvesters.

Very intuitive but I personally won't pay $10 for this service.

Hi, thanks for the feedback, really appreciate it.

You can create as many task lists as you like, but you're right in the sense that you'll have to remember each URL you create. I have a dashboard feature in development to organise task lists you've viewed/edited/created, and I'm currently deciding whether or not that should be a paid feature.

I've changed the footer as per your advice.

That's fair enough, I understand that for generic use there are better free apps out there to use. I'm really trying to appeal to quite a specific use case, which I believe is quite common in multi-office environments. It may be quite ironic that I still use RTM in parallel for task management, as I myself do not fit in the target market for my own product!

I do know of some business who already happily pay for services like this, but you and I probably wouldn't find it as valuable.

Thanks again.

I think an excellent way to have multiple projects would to have a set of tabs above the task list just like a browser with a plus symbol on the end. That way a single url can manage them all and it would hopefully maintain it's brilliant simplicity and intuitive-ness.

Brilliant idea, love it. Thanks!

Good to see you know your target users. Maybe you can outline example use cases somewhere in the copy. It might be be enough to persuade potential customers that they need your product. =)

That's a great idea, thanks. I'm looking forward to having some spare time to concentrate on the marketing side, so when I do I'll make this a priority.

It's really nice. Easy to understand and solves a problem. Yes there's other players but the ease of using it is outstanding.

I realize you've got to test your market but my recommendation would be to get the "subscribe/buy now" buttons hooked up and mention its a 48 hour turnaround. Then when you get someone paying for it, write that functionality in those 48 hours.

Gary

Hi Gary,

I really appreciate the feedback so thank you very much. It's great to know that you can see I'm trying to address a specific problem, and not become another generic task management app.

I will follow your advice, which echoes what another startup founder has said to me, so hopefully I'll have the sign up in place this week.

Cheers

Why do you style checkboxes? It looks weird to me that there are mac-style checkboxes on my Ubuntu-driven browser.

Hi troels. To be honest I often do this to make the UI more consistent and better looking for Windows users. I'm aware that some users may find this has quite the opposit eeffect, so I'll bear your feedback in mind and get some more opinions.

Thanks

clickable: http://www.managewith.us

POSSIBLE BUG: Clicking the priority boxes for multiple tasks keeps generating more popups on-top off each other. Not sure if this is desired behaviour but it looks a bit off...

I'll look into that, thanks.

Fixed, a CTRL+F5 should get this working. Thanks.

Fixed. A similar problem occurs across status and priority - not as major but still a little funny. (sorry for the double post but I didn't realise this till after).

I love the site. Am already using it.

However, is it possible to make it real-time? E.g. I check a task, but to see it on the other window, I have to refresh it.

Thanks for the feedback.

Checking the tasks is currently just used for archiving & deleting tasks, and will eventually be used for downloading and forwarding tasks as well.

All changes should update in real-time (assuming you have separate sessions open), if it's the same session you probably won't see any changes. Can you confirm if this works?

Thanks

Looks good, I like the idea.

Feature request: Make a calendar view for overviewing and planning.

The design looks sharp enough. Unfortunately, this space is pretty crowded with great free apps.

Hi, cheers for the feedback.

I am very aware that this market is very crowded. I don't know if others will agree with me, but I believe the market is crowded with informal generic task management apps. The majority require a sign-up, and don't update in real-time, you need to refresh the page to see other peoples' changes.

I'm hoping to find a slice of the market who would find this app more suitable for their needs. I'm quite open in the direction I'm going to take it, but I'm hoping that the 1-click start, the collaborative nature, and the simple concept will give me a decent foundation to squeeze my way in.

could you name some.. we can compare with his product and even he could get some tips from em. thanks

Very nice app. What language(s) did you use (back-end and front-end)?

Hi grep. Thanks for the feedback. I've used CodeIgniter and jQuery.

I love it - great work

Thanks very much

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Sorry, just fixed this. I forgot to push to code live that took into account Twitter being completely unreliable!

You shouldn't have notices on in a product environment anyway. In fact it would be best if you logged errors and show the user a nice little "Oops, a problem occurred" style message.

Will get this sorted, thanks.