Hacker News Reader

Comment by connorp | Hacker News Reader

Hey, your right 250 users isn't going to knock the ball out of the ball park. But remember what the product is, it's an accounting product and that puts people into a coma with bodrum. So getting 250 on to the application with no marketing in less then a month I think sends a message that we've built something that people want, it's disruptive cause the 3000 other accounting products have all just copied Sage. When I was designing the UI - I hadn't looked at one competitor.

View on HN

There are already people doing this In Edinburgh where I'm based, with far more impressive numbers than 250 users pre-launch, FreeAgent (http://www.freeagent.com) If you think these guys are going well you should check them out. They actually DO have the figures to back up being called "disruptive". I don't mean to be negative with regards Bullet, just that when I read the post I thought wow only 250 and they're "disruptive". The guys at FreeAgent are doing a spectacular job and the funding they received and users they're pulling only serve to confirm it.

Hey yep we know FreeAgent they're doing a great job and it's great to see they've got funding. They've been around a good number of years now.

Just to point out though - we fully automate all your tax return and provide payroll. With Bullet you don't need an accountant, with FreeAgent you do (unless of course you're comfortable doing your own returns). But the more Bullets and FreeAgents in the world the better. Accounting products are crap at the moment and provide guys like you with an endless pain in the ass.

In that case I apologise, I didn't realise that Bullet's offering had something over FreeAgent. My understanding was that they were achieving the same end. Good luck all the same.

Hay man, No need. They've built a great product. Thanks.

Design or number of users regardless, people really need to stop using the word 'disrupt'. It's one of the top reasons I steer clear of TechCrunch.

I hear what you're saying. I use to call TechCrunch, TesticulCrunch. When I was working other startups years ago, you'd read these stories '12year old invents 'A Button', and raises 12Million', then you find out it was a pile of shit. I suppose we set out to really try and create someone unique. Which is probably a better word, but people might understand 'disrupt', better.

That's different, not disruptive.

It's a nice looking product, great price and not being Sage is (in my limited experience) a good thing, but you're a long way off of disruptive.

Out of interest it's applicable for just Ireland at the moment? Any plans to expand out?

I suppose time we'll tell. We know some of our competitors have started lifting our copy so we're annoying someone.

Thanks we're self thought UI guys, it's our first product. Cause we do all tax returns, the product needs to be migrated to other tax rules. So our next step, which we're working on is the UK. Where you based.

Yep UK, which is kind of why I asked. If I ever went freelance this is EXACTLY what I'd want. No idea how it scales to a bigger business but that's a massive market right there of people who will pay fair money for a straight forward product.

Yep - our product is gear for companies up to about 10 users. In Ireland about 80% of the market is SME and that's under 5. Great thing with cloud is you can reach these people, but still deliver a cost effective solution and reduce stress.

Interesting. How long did it take you to develop your MVP? Did you build the system together with many customers?

Well we've been building for about a year. Although the front-end is pretty simple it's quite complex in the back-end. We were the customers, myself and John both ran consulting web/dev companies. A lot of the user testing we did was on my mother 78, and Johns dad. We wanted to build a prod that didn't require any training. So if 'Mum', and 'Dad', could use it we knew everyone else could. In the last month we've been tweaking based on user feedback though, but not a lot. We'll be bloging about what we did.

It'll be interesting to see your experiences. As a backend developer (who, unfortunately, sucks at visual design - damn colourblindness) I find these kind of posts inspiring: it's something I'd really love to do, I just haven't met the right partner yet (hard when you're a Brit living in The Netherlands).

The complexity of a user interface is inversely proportional to the time (and talent) needed to create it.

I wish you guys the best of luck :)

Thanks man. I spent 10 years working for Rabobank... Well I thought myself UI design. John who does the dev would say the same things as you. But I really think UI starts from the Dev. Example he was the one who met with the A/cant but still fought the simplicity. Then he'd say to me design a process for paying someone and you have to include xyz. I'd design it and send the screen back (not explaining them) if he didn't get a step we'd a prob and so on. If you look at the design I use it's just boxes. I'm not a graphic designer we just didn't have the money to hire one. But here is an interesting thing. If you look at dribbble it's full of beautiful design but when you then check out the sites they were designing for all their design is removed or broken (not all the time) so what that really says is keep it simple. As a point I use fireworks 8 - it's great at boxes and that all I can use. Means the site's super fast too. If you need any advice on it let me know follow me on twitter and we can share emails @peterconnor

Reply on news.ycombinator.com