Stacker (YC S20) lets anyone transform spreadsheets and databases into web apps | Hacker News Reader

Stacker (YC S20) lets anyone transform spreadsheets and databases into web apps

venturebeat.com

78 pointsdavyson17 comments

Good luck with this.

Some feedback is to work on update speeds. The docs mention 15/5 min updates, which is a shame especially working with gsheets.

Also - i looked at the pricing and its PER APP PER MONTH and also PER USERS (since u have to add 1000user packs). This can turn a simple corporate app into a $10K annual hosting bill.

To clarify: all the apps include 500 users as standard so most customers only pay a flat rate per app.

I would agree that the phrase “Pricing is per app, not per user” comes off as disingenuous. It may be true that most customers’ apps won’t reach 500 users, but I would expect that many customers aim or even expect to reach that level and find the small print contradictory. I would count myself in that category

I'm Sam, co-founder of Stacker. Since we launched on HN last summer (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24037118) and the batch ended, we've grown to be used in over 500 companies.

One of the key things we've realised from our customers that they've got a lot more data that what sits in their Airtable or Google Sheets. They all also use numerous SaaS tools that master different parts of their organizations' data: things like Stripe, Hubspot, Xero, Quickbooks and many more. They also sometimes have a production SQL database that contains critical customer information.

So we've been focused on expanding our product so we can incorporate more of our customers data and will be adding new data connectors through this quarter: we're starting with SQL, Stripe and Intercom. We want to enable anyone to snap their data together across whichever systems its stored in, and then create the most productive interface for them on top of it.

May I ask if you attribute your success to the "no code" movement/idea.

Yes I’d say it’s definitely helped us. The “no code” movement has enabled more people who’ve never contemplated being able to create software start to realise it’s readily possible for them.

Great work! Some questions:

1. How would you compare Stacker to Retool?

2. Would the data from Stripe/Intercom appear as just another sheet/table?

3. One thing I learned that, despite the promises of no code solution, a non-technical user would still not use them, because they lack the know-how to model their domain knowledge in a no code tool. Have you run into these users? How would you work with them?

Thanks!

1. Retool targets developers who want to build internal tools faster. Stacker is for business users who aren’t technical. The output might be similar but the audience is different.

2. Yes so the third party SaaS data we are bringing in will appear just like the data from your spreadsheet.

3. We’ve definitely found these users and the vast majority of our customers aren’t technical. We’ve simplified the creation of an app so once you finish onboarding you have a working app, from there it is tweaks to make it the app you need. This makes the process much more approachable for non technical users.

That's a name that took me by surprise, immediately reminding me of the stacker vs. doublespace lawsuits:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stac_Electronics

I'm sure this is reasonably good but I just can't help but think we've been here before with MS Access and then XAML .Net.

Maybe this time it'll stick.

Stacker is great, most polished product in this space for sure - much better than building admin dashboards.

I agree, very happy with it personally for my MVPs

P.S. Hey Colin, funny seeing you here :)

Cool! Are there any competitors in the space?

Sheet2Site https://www.sheet2site.com/

Stacker is a disk compression program.

Link please?

You were so busy asking if you could, no one stopped and asked if you should.

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