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Comment by Imustaskforhelp | Hacker News Reader

can I recommend to you to not use google forms, I know that they are convenient but they aren't privacy friendly.

There are many open source solutions out there: https://alternativeto.net/software/google-forms/?license=ope... I recommend if you can choose any of privacy friendly options, thanks and have a nice day.

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Perhaps we need something like hnforms or startupforms, to help founders?

My hot take: if a founder can't spin up a simple, self-hosted webform of some sort, I'm already wary of their technical skills.

Spinning it up is not the problem. You want to spend the time to throughly test it (or have your agent swarm test it) so you don’t waste the opportunity of having HN input?

I’d be wary of a founder with such bad NIH

Slightly agree, however I prefer third party forms as it usually avoids a bunch of the BS with bot submissions, etc.

I would let them do the opposite. I would make hnforms (maybe mdforms) based on the following idea.

Write a form in .md (even tell an llm to do it) and just put it online.

Only applicable if their core business is form-adjacent.

Web forms are simple like that slack notification thing is simple.

I would hope a founder wouldn’t waste time on home-brewing their own web form when there are tons of off the shelf ones that all have no discernible difference.

It would be like writing your own email servers or calendar software. It would be a distraction at best.

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