Show HN: DocTemple – My first SaaS startup after 6 months of solo development
doctempleapp.com
doctempleapp.com
I’m Jan, creator of DocTemple.
The idea came from doing much more advanced version for one of my customers where he needed a tool to fill repetitive templates with data from the database. Employee enters database id and based on the data it filled it accordingly (with loops and conditional statements within document).
After working on it I was like „Wait a minute, there has to be more companies that are underserved in that specific area of filling templates manually.” So I created a completely new app based on the same idea - to let people fill thousands of templates in minutes instead of hours. And to let them do it in simple fashion. I truly hope I achieved that.
After long 6 months of developing my own product (there where months that I had only 2 days to work on it because day job and life + never implemented payments before) and making sure everything works as I wanted I can finally say it’s ready to show it to the world.
For sure the biggest challenge here will be to find the companies that actually need it.
I hope you will like this little tool! If anything you can reach me out here and on the chat on the site as well.
Thanks and looking forward to your thoughts and feedback!
I believe you should make the video visible, many people prefer a short intro, and the link isn't that large. Also, I'm not sure whether you intended to have it play the music or that was what you were listening to while recording the screen cast, it was a bit confusing to me.
It's similar to Word's serial letters, only that it produces individual files, right? Maybe you can put that into simple sentence and why it's better than using serial letters. How does it prevent (common) errors? A short "don't you hate it when ... happens? We've got you covered by doing ...." or something similar will make it easier for people to understand the value, as if you're telling a co-worker about this new cool thing that solves/improves something you've both been working with.
Since data will be uploaded (which likely will include PII), especially in a corporate context, you might want to put more emphasis on being GDPR compliant, and offer an automated way to sign a data processing agreement so users can stay compliant as well.
It made me remember the first time I used the serial letter system to print a mailing and I somehow managed to edit some fields and turn them into text, so I ended up with "Dear {firstname} {lastname}", but only noticed it when I picked up the 500 pages from the printing shop.
Yes, I was struggling with decision to make video more visible (under the headline) and I realized that on mobile then it would show in that order: - headline - video - actual product
From what you are saying it might be actually better to do it like this. Will test that for sure. Also, the background music thing - it's little embarassing, but I originally put video without music and after I while I was like "Hmmm, it's seems a bit dull without music" so I added one from YouTube music library. Seems like that wasn't my best idea so far :D Should I take that music down?
Using Word so many years I must say I never really used serial letters, but yes - turns out to be the same idea behind it. Very good point about conveying value more clear - need to incorporate these as well.
Regarding GDPR compliance - actually files never even leave one's machine. It all happens in the browser (one reason is that doing it on the server was as fast so no point sending it over) so because of that I THINK (must check though) it's already GDPR compliant (because beside emails that are kept on Google Firebase I keep no data).
GDPR-compliance sounds good when it all happens offline in the browser. I'd definitely make that a selling point. Everyone is on their toes about it, if you can take away the worry of "Where is that company located? Where are their servers? Do I need to run this by our data protection lawyers?", you've removed a lot of barriers.
"Where is company located?" - well, formally in Poland, but server-wise it's all Google so what should I say here? Or it doesn't matter when it's all offline?
And just for the record, I really appreciate your valuable inputs!
I'd definitely mention Poland, since "made in EU" is a big bonus for everyone in the EU (both for privacy and for billing/payments). If the data isn't uploaded, the servers don't matter for that part. They're relevant regarding you user's personal data (e.g. their IP), but if their CSV doesn't touch the server, that's ideal from a privacy perspective. You'll still need to put your use of Google into your privacy information, but that's a formality and very few people (especially in a company setting) care about their own PII being stored on your server - it's other peoples' PII that they get in trouble for.
At least for enterprise customers, you might also need to be more transparent about yourself, i.e. "Who's offering this service". You'll need to have it for billing anyways, and will also require it in your privacy notice ("who's responsible, who can I contact about my data").