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JohnHammersleyon Reflecting on the founding, growth and maturing of Overleaf

Good suggestion, thanks -- I've just added an update to the top of the post, and mentioned it there :)

Edit: just a note to say that I added this update to http://johnhammersley.com/?p=428 as that's where this HN story originally pointed to.

JohnHammersleyon Reflecting on the founding, growth and maturing of Overleaf

Thanks for this amazing comment! Overleaf definitely came from us solving a problem we had ourselves, and we've always continued to use it, which definitely helps you catch bugs and UX issues.

We've also hired a great team who have expanded on using Overleaf with clients -- for example, we use Overleaf for documentation when onboarding a new institution or publisher. It's really helped, and it's broadened out the type of feedback we receive too.

Thanks for using Overleaf! :)

JohnHammersleyon Reflecting on the founding, growth and maturing of Overleaf

Glad to hear you've been finding Overleaf useful!

Re the business model: we don't rely on the user subscriptions for revenue -- we provide services for institutions (e.g. Overleaf Commons: https://www.overleaf.com/universities) and publishers (e.g. templates and direct submission links: https://www.overleaf.com/publishers#!publisherslist), as well as private cloud / local installs for companies: https://www.overleaf.com/enterprises

(and that allows us to provide a solid free plan that works well for most users, especially those just starting out with LaTeX)

But yes, the "how does it make money?" question was always one we found difficult to articulate well -- we certainly didn't do it in the YC interview! :)

JohnHammersleyon Reflecting on the founding, growth and maturing of Overleaf

Thanks, and yes, we've been doing a lot of work on scaling over the past few years to help with the compile times :)

We've just announced some exciting news too -- the ShareLaTeX team has recently joined Overleaf! More details on that here if you're interested: https://www.overleaf.com/blog/518-exciting-news-sharelatex-i...

JohnHammersleyon LaTeX Math in MS Office

This is great to see, although it sounds like it's still somewhat in beta. Be interesting to find out if they support packages such as amsmath, either now or in the future.

As a shameless plug, for anyone wanting to use LaTeX without having to install everything locally, the online compilers Overleaf [1] and ShareLaTeX [2] are pretty handy. I'm one of the founders of Overleaf, and we're excited to now be working together with the ShareLaTeX team [3]. Feedback always appreciated :)

[1] https://www.overleaf.com/

[2] https://www.sharelatex.com/

[3] https://www.overleaf.com/blog/518-exciting-news-sharelatex-i...

JohnHammersleyon ShareLaTeX Joins Overleaf

Hi Pitaa -- thanks for this, great to hear you've been a regular Overleaf user and have enjoyed it! :)

On your side question: it's a tricky one, as although we do try to keep pace with the different browser updates to keep in the in-browser experience ok on ios, I agree it's not ideal. Long term we do want to do something better, but it's not an immediate priority (given that mobile use of Overleaf for editing is still relatively low, and we find that a lot of tablet users use separate keyboards). Hope that helps clarify, even if I don't have an immediate solution!

JohnHammersleyon ShareLaTeX Joins Overleaf

Thanks storrgie -- I'd like to echo James' point (in his reply to pfooti) that this is very much two teams coming together to build on each others strengths, and we see the open source aspect of ShareLaTeX as an important part of that.

JohnHammersleyon ShareLaTeX Joins Overleaf

Overleaf founder here: We’re going to make sure that there is still an open source version that you can download and run yourself. We’re still working out the details of how we’ll do that, but if that involves open sourcing parts of Overleaf, then that's what we'll do.

JohnHammersleyon The future of education is plain text

Congratulations on your thesis -- it's a lot of work, and I'm glad Overleaf helped :)

JohnHammersleyon Show HN: Version Control for Microsoft Word

Slightly off-topic, but if you're using Git for managing your LaTeX documents, you might like to give Overleaf a try -- it allows you to clone your LaTeX project on Overleaf to a local Git repo (which can be a submodule of a wider project). Details here: https://www.overleaf.com/blog/195

If you do use it, feedback is always appreciated (I'm one of the Overleaf founders), thanks.

JohnHammersleyon The future of education is plain text

Thanks for the feedback - great to hear you've been finding it useful and yes, improving the file tree is definitely on our list.

Good luck with your future projects!

JohnHammersleyon The future of education is plain text

If you're interested in adding LaTeX to that list, you might like to try Overleaf [1] -- it's an online collaborative LaTeX editor we built to try to lower the learning curve (I'm one of the founders).

It includes a rich text mode for easier collaboration with non-LaTeX users [2], and you can also write in Markdown if you like :) [3].

Feedback always appreciated if you do give it a try, thanks.

[1] https://www.overleaf.com

[2] https://www.overleaf.com/blog/81

[3] https://www.overleaf.com/blog/501

JohnHammersleyon The future of education is plain text

Something Overleaf [1] might help -- it's an online collaborative LaTeX editor with a rich text mode [2] to help make it easier for non-LaTeX users to collaborate on LaTeX docs. If you do use it, feedback would be appreciated -- I'm one of the founders :)

We also published a short post on 'the stoic resilience of the PDF within the digital ecosystem' recently [3], which seems relevant...although it's just a short background piece.

[1] https://www.overleaf.com

[2] https://www.overleaf.com/blog/81

[3] https://www.overleaf.com/blog/509

JohnHammersleyon Scientists Aging Faster Than Other Workers

From my perspective as someone who's moved from academia (mathematics) to industry (driverless taxis) to startup founder (Overleaf), it felt to me like all of my transitions were one way only. Whilst I admit I'm not at the point of looking to go back into academia yet, I can't honestly see a path back.

I've written more about this here if you're interested: http://johnhammersley.com/?p=381

JohnHammersleyon HTML5 Games Workshop: Make a Platformer Game with JavaScript

Am I the only one who clicked the link expecting to see Citadel Minatures recreated in 2D in HTML5?

JohnHammersleyon Apple Pages 6.1 adds equation support using LaTeX or MathML

You might also want to give Overleaf[1] a try if you're interested using LaTeX in a more WYSIWYG style -- we have a rich text mode[2] (currently in beta) that parses the LaTeX and presents it in a way that's more familiar for non-LaTeX users, which makes it particularly handy for collaborations. Of course, you can always edit the underlying LaTeX directly if you prefer :)

I'm one of the founders of Overleaf, so if you have any questions (or if you use it and have any feedback), please let me know -- it's always appreciated, thanks.

[1] https://www.overleaf.com

[2] https://www.overleaf.com/blog/81

JohnHammersleyon High quality graphics for Latex documents: The Matlab route

There's also a nice gallery of online pgfplot examples at http://pgfplots.net

JohnHammersleyon High quality graphics for Latex documents: The Matlab route

Yes, that is a good point -- it does include the percentages at least.

JohnHammersleyon LaTeX Coffee Stains (2009)

There is now a wine stains version too :) https://www.overleaf.com/latex/examples/latex-wine-stains/cd...

(although I like your workaround!)

JohnHammersleyon LaTeX Coffee Stains (2009)

Lian Tze created this handy variant if you prefer to give a different impression :)

https://www.overleaf.com/latex/examples/latex-wine-stains/cd...

JohnHammersleyon Things You Notice When You Quit the News

Thanks for posting this; it really helped me parse the parent comment properly when I reread it.

JohnHammersleyon Avremu: An AVR Emulator Written in Pure LaTeX

Mine too! Just when you thought you'd seen everything LaTeX could do (and we see a lot of it at Overleaf[1]!)

If the author is reading these comments, what motivated/inspired you to do this?

[1] https://www.overleaf.com

JohnHammersleyon Texture – As open as LaTeX and as simple as a classic word processor

We're solving a lot of these problems with Overleaf[1] by providing a cloud-based collaborative editor with a simpler UI for those new LaTeX, whilst keeping the power of LaTeX for those that need it.

We're also working with publishers to ease the submissive process to journals and repos[2], and include things like git-sync for offline working[3].

Great to see lots of different approaches to solving these problems though, and Texture is certainly an interesting idea.

[1] https://www.overleaf.com

[2] https://www.overleaf.com/publishers#!publisherslist

[3] https://www.overleaf.com/blog/195

JohnHammersleyon The man behind the million dollar homepage 11 years later

From an article in 2006:

"His friends and family paid the first $1,000 dollars, which he spent on a press release. That small publicity gave his site more traffic, which in turn persuaded more advertisers to have faith."

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4585026.stm

I remember from the TV news coverage he talked about how he'd sent that press release out to hundreds of news outlets. So I feel he (in part at least) made his own luck on this one.

JohnHammersleyon The man behind the million dollar homepage 11 years later

I remember this at the time -- Tew invested the initial earnings he made (<£2,000 IIRC) from selling ad space to friends and family into buying media coverage, which kickstarted the whole thing.

So whilst he was lucky, he did kind of make his own luck by putting the money into it -- he could have just taken that money and sat on it.

JohnHammersleyon Jupiter’s North Pole Unlike Anything Encountered in Solar System

"This is the first I've heard of Saturn's hexagon, very interesting"

Yes, me too -- thanks for posting your reply and the link, I've now learnt something new today (and it's only 00:45 so that's a good start to the weekend!).

JohnHammersleyon NASA Is Giving Away Retro Space Travel Posters for Free

"Imagination is our window into the future. At NASA/JPL we strive to be bold in advancing the edge of possibility so that someday, with the help of new generations of innovators and explorers, these visions of the future can become a reality. As you look through these images of imaginative travel destinations, remember that you can be an architect of the future." - excerpt from the official home of the posters[1].

[1] http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/visions-of-the-future/

JohnHammersleyon Successfully collaborating with computational biologists

Interestingly, some of the first interdisciplinary collaborations on Overleaf[1] were between computational biologists (who tended to write up their papers in LaTeX) working with non-computational biologists (who tended to use Word), helped partly by the Rich Text mode we built[2] which hides (most of) the LaTeX code for those who prefer to edit in a more WYSIWYG-style environment.

We continue to see strong use in this area today, and indeed there seems to be a growing trend for interdisciplinary collaborations (I'm one of the founders, and we started it very much as a side project between mathematicians needing to collaborate in LaTeX!).

It's also great to see that some of the newest innovations in publishing platforms are in the (computational) life sciences area too, e.g. F1000Research[3] (which offers open, post-publication peer review) and PeerJ[4] (which has a membership model but no fee to publish).

[1] https://www.overleaf.com/

[2] https://www.overleaf.com/blog/81

[3] http://f1000research.com/

[4] https://peerj.com/

JohnHammersleyon How to bring science publishing into the 21st century

Native markdown support is planned -- in the meantime you might like this tweet :)

https://twitter.com/overleaf/status/763395560682364928

and for something more light-hearted, here's a D&D template in LaTeX!

https://twitter.com/overleaf/status/763524947339800576

JohnHammersleyon How to bring science publishing into the 21st century

Thanks for mentioning Overleaf[1] - we started it to help solve a problem we were having collaborating on LaTeX documents with co-authors based in different timezones - it helped avoid the 'multiple copies of the same doc in multiple email threads' issue, amongst other things.

Since we've grown (now at half a million users worldwide), we're now also working to help solve and streamline the submission & publishing process, for many of the same reasons discussed in this article.

Feels like change is finally happening, which as a scientist myself is great to see!

[1] https://www.overleaf.com