Show HN: Opstarts – Startup planning and forecasting without spreadsheets | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Opstarts – Startup planning and forecasting without spreadsheets

opstarts.com

90 pointsdevahaz44 comments

We've created this product to help startups easily make financial plans and projections without complicated spreadsheets. Check it out at https://opstarts.com/ You can use the beta invite code SHOWHN or click here to create an account: https://app.opstarts.com/create-new-account?invite=SHOWHN

Love the idea! Would gladly pay for it if it supported physical product sales. i.e., ability to add COGS, have a gross margin, etc. Correct me if I am wrong but your current iteration is more geared towards SaaS startups.

we started with SaaS, so we currently have the most functionality there. However, we are rapidly building out that kind of support. We already support linking expenses for each sale you make to support basic COGS and will have much more soon.

Thanks for the response. Will keep an eye out for that functionality. Fyi, would be willing to pay $100-150/month to give my sales team the ability to run scenarios.

Would love to hear more about specific scenarios you're looking to run. You can email me deva@opstarts.com if you'd like to talk more!

Thanks - just did.

Can second labaraka - the inventory-holding startup world needs a product like this desperately! To the developers: I included my contact information and a writeup about our fashion brand's pain points in the signup page, and I'd be happy to give feedback about the product at some point - just send me a ping!

thanks! we already have a couple of fashion startups using us that have both seasonal (fixed amount) and ongoing (based on sales) inventory purchasing and replenishment expenses to model. We support a number of basic scenarios like that, but inventory-related modeling is definitely something we're focused on improving. I'll keep an eye our for your message, and also feel free to write me any time at deva@opstarts.com.

Can it pull financials from Stripe (plans, MRR, customers)? This would be amazing.

My other advise. Start charging (do a 1 month trial) and something like a flat rate of $12 a month to start. You can iterate later by charging per user or another model.

We are looking forward to trying Opstarts out, and if we like it and find value, totally willing to pay.

not yet, but we agree! Integrations are something we're working on. I just started a discussion thread for suggestions: https://opstarts.zendesk.com/hc/communities/public/questions...

Thanks for the pricing feedback, I like those suggestions. We're currently evaluating pricing and will have some updates on launch pricing soon.

Do I have to login to comment on this? This is a bit annoying.

you shouldn't. i'll get that fixed in a bit. in the meantime, anything else besides Stripe you'd like to see integrated with Opstarts?

Here's a video of Andy Lash (author) presenting the app at the recent Meteor Devshop: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smnSkyRF-JY&list=UU3fBiJrFFM...

Looks like he made a lot of progress since then!

gotten a haircut at least :-)

I'm an early beta user, and have been really happy with it. It saves me a bunch of time, but I think the real value is in what it teaches me about where to focus our efforts. Way easier to predict which initiatives (features, hires, etc) are going to make us money, and when we'd see returns.

Wish there was some info about what the site does without signing up.

Also, I would remove the question asking for business description and planning/modeling needs from the signup form. I think you're likely to get very little effort put into that section from a new user who has no attachment to your app. It could be placed better as the user begins to interact with your app (however that works) ..

edit: Oh I see, you have to go to the default landing page to get more info. https://opstarts.com/ -- Should fix that, at least make the navigation element in the upper left of app go to that landing page.

thanks, good point. we'll add a link back to the website from the application.

I'm another early beta user, and have been very pleased with the product. We used spreadsheets for a while, then started running financial models using Opstarts.

I think the biggest benefit for my company has been the ability to rapidly communicate amongst the founders regarding financial options. The visualizations are clear and we spend less time getting on the same page, and more time discussing the trade-offs of different decisions. Less minutiae and more meat.

Looking forward to more support for different business models. Nice work so far.

I am having trouble modeling a Bootstrapped Freemium to Premium conversion. Even with generous Freemium growth and a decent conversion rate to Premium I don't see much revenue growth over time.

happy to look into this with you, this is likely something very simple, feel free to email me deva@opstarts.com. also, there is going to be a "modeling freemium" knowledge base article posted today.

Thanks! If I am still confused after the article comes out, I'll reach out to you.

I see the freemium template now, it sets things up in a pretty reasonable way. Thanks!

May I suggest a 'bootstrapped' template as well?

yes, def good suggestion. the templates are right now only sorta useful since they arent really documented. i'm working on that and should have basic stuff done this weekend, that'll make them a lot better and we can think about adding more then.

A feature that seems missing (particularly for bootstrapped startups, but useful for others too) is using a % of profits or revenue to fund user acquisition, rather than a $x amount that grows by either Y% or $Y.

OTOH, that would assume that channels don't get saturated, so you'd also need a ceiling on the max spend for that channel.

Did you ever get that 'Modelling Freemium' article posted? I can't find it.

We have been using this with our startup, it has helped us to both figure out our runway, and play around brainstorming new business models. Our investors were really impressed when we showed them as well.

Looks promising! I love anything that helps you focus on what you're good at, which for most startup founders isn't non-technical operations and forecasting.

I'm the developer on Opstarts. I'm happy to answer any questions if anyone has them. I built it using Meteor, which has been really sweet to work with.

Looks (and sounds) like it might be very helpful.

However as I'm in the UK, any chance of currency conversion?

Do you actually need currency conversions (in the sense that you deal in multiple currencies and want to normalize them to one) or do you just want to be able to use pounds vs dollars and have the numbers like reasonable for a UK person?

For sure we ultimately want to support the former, but worked on systems that do this, there's a fair amount of complexity depending on what you really need to do.

Ideally when international ops come about it'd be helpful to have complete currency conversion. It's easier to work around than the whole site being dollar only.

For the time being just being able to use pounds to make the numbers clear for us over here would be fine though.

edit: sounds like that's the plan from the reply above. looks good :)

I just added the currency selector into plan settings. So you can display in dollars, pounds, or euros now. Intended as a first step.

like andy said, currency conversion is something that's in our plans, but will be a little while. on the other hand, we hope to get at least different currency display options (as opposed to just $) in settings very soon.

I clicked 'Join Beta Program' but it doesn't take me anywhere :( - this is something I would use too.

Did you get any message at all? (trying to debug, as it seems to be working).

From the home page, it looks like you have a placeholder href:

<a href="#" class="btn btn-large btn-warning " style="color:#fff;" target="_blank">Join Beta Program</a>

thanks! broken button in WP theme, replaced for now w/ a link.

thanks for the report, fixed

You need to click the link a second time for some reason to be taken to the form.

This is really great stuff. I wish I had a product like this years ago. Keep up the good work!

I've been using them for a couple of months. Love it.

Love the idea. I'd like to learn more about it.

anything specific you want to know? happy to discuss! Or just check out the product, then feel free to post in our forums or email info@opstarts.com with any questions you have.

Wow. I am going to sign up for the beta!

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