Show HN: Introducing Comb - personal finance app | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Introducing Comb - personal finance app

getcomb.com

27 pointsheldtogether20 comments

You look like a kid and I don't trust you with my data. Why are all these types of 'startups' done by people with absolutely no experience that probably only learnt rails (or some other such low barrier to entry tech) this year?

Before the down votes roll in. This is a legit concern that ordinary customers could easily have.

Fair comment, but I've been programming for 10 years (although I know that's not what your point is getting at). Your fears are fairly moot though, the app isn't networked (yet) and is fully self contained meaning that no one has access to your data except for you.

If I get to a stage where there are enough people demanding networking then I imagine my age won't be much of a concern any more.

I think this is a good lesson. Whatever you show in your video you are using to market your product including you. Just do a video with your voice and screen capture and you'll probably be better off. I felt the video seemed semi-unprofessional.

Could I ask in what made you think it was semi-unprofessional? I'll admit it was a very candid video, but I can't see how you'd get to unprofessional.

I watched it until the point where you just rolled in and started chatting. It's hard to do these types of video.

As I said I was aiming for candid. But you're entitled to your opinion and I appreciate the feedback.

This is cool, but it might take too much effort for me. What could maybe sway me is a companion iPhone app where I could log as I go. Ideally it would all be voice activated and I'd just say stuff like 'lunch £6'... But even if you had a simple landing page where I could make single-tap entries to my ledger. They wouldn't need to be exact either, a button for 'pint' that guessed £3.50, for 'chocolate bar' that guessed 70p, a few ones for 'meal' (cantine/pub/restaurant), customisable ones for frequent train fares... You get the idea.

For me personally the main use case would be tracking what I spend money on, rather than knowing how much I have left.

On a side note, I wish my bank would get their act together and let me easily search my balance history on their online banking page. Instead I have to export it and the history gets wiped after 2 years or something.

An iPhone companion is in the pipeline. Nice to hear your thoughts on how to make it more likely for people to actually use the app, which I think is probably one of the biggest barriers to success with this sort of thing.

There is a huge amount that banks could do to make things easier for their customers but progress seems very slow. I have a friend who works for high street banks and it sounds absolutely horrendous! Better to be safe than sorry for them though I guess.

How about automated importing of transactions? Lovemoney used to do that but then stopped

I have to say, i've used ZetaBee cashflow a few times over the last couple of years and found it to be fantastic in helping project the real amount of money i have available to spend.

It's just a weekend project to start with, the first version of the app took a weekend, another weekend tweaking bits, and then a weekend to shoot and edit the video.

Would you want automatic importing from your bank account or from a table of data?

From the bank account. I know Barclays support this. Don't know about the rest.

I've thought about it. The question is, should it bulk import everything from your bank account every time you open the app, and you just add labels etc to it/match it up with existing transactions, or should it be separate somehow? Curious to hear what people actually want, rather than what's available now.

i'd like to be able to tag transactions. Then when they next appear next month, theyre automatically recognised and sorted.

I'll consider it for when the time comes :)

What about throwing some text in there? A couple sentences might have pushed me to watch the video.

I've been lurking on HN for quite a while, but first post. Can I add a URL and text?

archenemy means add some text to your site, and I agree. Without watching the video I have no idea what I'm looking at other than it's related to personal finance.

thanks for the advice :)

I think archenemy meant on the site itself rather than on HN.

Ah I see! Good idea, I'll make a quick change :)

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