jedgardyson

will give this a try for our analytics, looks v smooth

dashboard for the end of days

check out this post[0] on some alternatives. We missed engineyard and a few others but it can help give some context.

[0] https://tooltip.com/reports/managed-hosting-or-paas-for-boot...

Congrats on the launch! This seems like a great beachhead / GTM strategy for an insurer to get off the ground.

Curious about the footnotes you mentioned: "Thirty-five cents of every dollar spent goes to clinical waste, unnecessary services, administrative bloat, or fraud. (We could give footnotes, but doubt anyone needs convincing.)" Is there any one good source, or a few good sources, on this breakdown?

Great short story / biographical narrative! Was a fun and v real read

Some key rules I've found are to avoid the challenges you're describing are to evaluate quality (use the software + check their docs + talk to customers) and portability (actually make sure the exports work the way you need them to) before considering using or recommending any new piece of saas

Working on a search/review/ratings engine (https://tooltip.com), that currently operates as a consulting service, because I've found that parsing through all the muck is a waste of human time and anxiety (also, ppl often end up on the WRONG solution because they didn't have enough time or the right resources to search)

Edit: More immediate practical strategies are to use a spreadsheet that aggregates up from the dept level to the company level to keep track of all users/accounts, or buy a piece of SAAS to manage dedicated procurement / billing (there are a few alternatives out there on this front nowadays)

Would say we were going for comprehensive and thorough. Will keep working on it

Anything that was missed, entirely my fault

I'll add it in for the next pass

Edit: think actually y'all are in a different report category with a different comparable set of companies, but added it to the list for when that time comes

will defs give it a listen, thank you for sharing!

An old roommate used to work at a lab that also researched this stuff. Similar conclusions, or at least strong signs of some impact on humans, if I recall correctly

Seen 1&2, will add the rest to my list and recommend them to Alex as well!

You should try a virtual office space. It's a nice feeling of we're jamming together for small teams sometimes.

The recommendation as written is Here.fm or Gather depending on your vibe. Teamflow was good too so it's really about your energy. Wrote up a list to help you decide. https://tooltip.com/reports/virtual-office-space if you'd like to read the whole report

As a note, the manga is a lot less "hard" but no less enjoyable than the anime. For the anime they had a bunch of space folks consult to fix things up so if the space faring details bother you watch that.

Not an old-timer, but really hope more and more ppl choose to support the service financially since I get massive value out of it.

Maciej's writing is great too!

He's just generally a person worth sponsoring/supporting IMO.

I've used Taste before and it worked really well. The quality of the food was high (we ordered from a NY restaurant we really liked) and putting together the "finishing touches" was the right amount of work. Made for a great date night at a price pt that was much lower than actually going to one of the restaurants.

Wanted to come here to plug this: https://teams.startplaying.games/. Participated in a hosted game with them a week ago and really really enjoyed it. Think that D&D and other role-playing options like it are a great way for teams to stay connected during the pandemic in a lower stakes type environment where everyone can express themselves in a cooperative/constructive way!

Congrats guys!

Been working on https://tryquilt.com, a production service that creates a 1hr polished video interview about a loved ones' life, for about a year now. We did user research, figured out ops and how to tell the stories in a way that folks end up happy with-- with small launches on a few subreddits and a few partnership attempts. Total cost has been in the low $1,000s (mostly test production folks and interviewers + software) with no returns yet. Big sink timewise, on and off between breaks for the day-job. Might use a full CMS (probs Wordpress) from the get-go and maybe something like Webflow or Shopify for faster market testing next time. Also a lot to be done to make the production process leaner (it's been good learning tho!).

Will probably push more, just after the holiday window, then expand to an adjacent market where there are more clear triggers for purchase.

Thanks for sharing this story. This is something I suspected and have actually complained to customer support about repeatedly (things are buried within menus of menus, strange link redirects that don't make sense, functionality that is not available to business owner accounts but is available to the supporting accountant-logins!!). These terrible patterns that keep users from more easily managing their books and the awful lobbying of congress to keep taxes complex are why I think people should actively boycott Intuit software.

this. there are cheap silk ones as well for people who don't mind the fabric on their eyes.

This feels like a setup for a broader push into healthcare by these companies. The sector is still growing, Amazon is already working out the pharmacy space. "[F]ree from profit-making incentives and constraints" sounds like the strategy they've used so far to dominate sections of online retail.

We (Casepad) also applied via the traditional path to YC Core and YCF. We put in a weak application the first time around, unfortunately offering a less helpful signal as to whether or not HN identified something that was missed, so we took Apply HN very seriously as a second chance.

I'd like to echo /u/jonwachob91's post above in saying that we can't thank the community enough for the votes, feedback, and support. Also, many thanks to Kevin and his team for giving us a wildcard slot.

Hi, I'm Gabriel, one of the co-founders of Casepad.

A bit of background on us. I'm a '14 college grad. I'm also a self-taught software developer. I worked for a bit under a year as a data analyst, writing R, SQL, and processing excel spreadsheets, at a startup in NYC. While I was there I also volunteered at a public defense firm, usually one afternoon a week, running documents to and from court, rebuilding their HR filing system, building small a web-app for them. After I left my job I also spent A LOT of time doing research on the market and specifications for the system.

My brother and co-founder is getting his CS degree, but would work on this full time if we received the fellowship, in Brazil. He has work experience building/maintaining ERP software and a POS credit-access platform.

NOTE: If any other founders want to reply to this comment I asked Dang and he said it would be fine (even though there is no question written into it).

NOTE2: I'd encourage everyone to read through all the applications if you plan on voting.

Hey, just wanted to point out some guidance from OP so you don't risk disqualification: "And if you're an applicant or a friend of one, please don't post in the thread below, except to answer questions about your startup."

Hi, I'm Gabriel, one of the founders of Casepad. Your comment about our market, "lawyers are pathologically tech-phobic and by their nature are spending someone else's money and taking a percentage. Cost savings are taking money out of their pocket," is, based on our research, incorrect. We found that lawyers in the particular fields we are interested in, both young and old, are keenly interested in cost and TIME savings. In fact, most of these folks are so desperate for additional time that they would be willing to overcome any alleged "tech phobia" in order to get it.

Also, most public defenders, prosecutors, and court functionaries are not "spending someone else's money." Rather, at least in many metropolitan areas, they are salaried government or non-profit employees who are just trying to get the justice system to work.

On public defenders in particular (our first target market) I'd recommend reading a few of the NYT's op-ed series from this year which have good insight on how starved for resources and time much of our potential client base is: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/19/opinion/when-the-public-de... (New Orleans) http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/19/us/public-defenders-turn-t... (Missouri) http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/30/opinion/a-mockery-of-justi... (Fresno CA, South Dakota, Minnesota)

The folks we interviewed have said if you can save us x amount of time we would be thrilled to pay you $y per case because it will be more than worth it. We will only be able to see how much the market will bear once we're done building our product but, so far, the fact that we have been able to get a public defense firm to sponsor some of our development costs bodes well for the idea that lawyers are interested in spending on tech that saves them precious, precious time.

EDIT: I'd encourage everyone to read through the application posts. I think the Q&A in our thread fleshed out quite a few of the concerns about starting a business for this particular subset of the legal profession.

Hi everyone! I'm Gabriel, one of the founders of Casepad which is currently the second most upvoted Apply HN Post [0].

Before I launch into an argument for how to conduct the selection process I wanted to say thanks to everyone who contributed to Apply HN. The feedback and support that we received went beyond our wildest expectations and regardless of what happens we're glad we participated.

<argument>With that being said, I would suggest that upvotes and comments should have serious weight in the decision of who receives the fellowship. My understanding of this process was that it was an opportunity for members of HN to express their voice in the YCF selection process and it seems to me that the way they do so is via comments and upvotes. While the idea of a "runoff" selection with the top five or top ten most upvoted posts is appealing in practice it also disregards much of the work that the community put into vetting and discussing existing submissions. A runoff also doesn't solve the problem that it purports to solve, that some submissions got more structural attention than others, because it is also being conducted on an anonymous message board over an arbitrarily selected period of time (not unlike the first 20 odd days of Apply HN). As an example, someone who had the chance to vote or comment on ApplyHN might miss the runoff because of a bad week at work, and that means that their voices could be washed out.

I have a vested interest in saying this, but I am skeptical (until I see data) of all of the oblique suggestions that the front runners' posts only made it there because of bandwagoning. I like to think that we, along with many of the other front runners, presented a strong idea that deserved the attention it got. A separate but related point is that this is HN, not a randomized controlled experiment in selecting companies, so the habits and voting patterns of the community should be seen as a feature rather than a bug.

If I were running this selection process I would say that some combination of comments + upvotes + the judgment of the partners who will work with these companies would be the best way to choose the fellowship recipients.

But, that's just me :). </argument>

Thanks again to everyone who upvoted, asked questions, and gave feedback. More thoughts + feedback are always welcome. (I'm at gajbotelho@gmail.com if anyone wants to reach out privately.)

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11452884

EDIT: Small edits for clarity.

EDIT2: Removed "(a more focused version of /u/baron816's suggestion)" because it just wasn't that accurate of a statement

Thanks for the comment and the links.

Your point is well taken. We are committed to building transparently and with good standards.

We have looked at some existing legal documentation standards such as LegalXML[0] and are still in the process of evaluating whether or not we should implement them in our work. We are also open to developing additional standards as needed, but need to do a lot more research before we feel comfortable claiming the world needs yet another specification[1]. :)

[0] http://docs.oasis-open.org/legalxml-courtfiling/specs/ecf/v4...

[1] https://xkcd.com/927/

Hey, thanks for the question!

The short answer is, I am not sure. We haven't really had the time to examine the demand/need for this type of service outside of the US.

The longer answer is that if we were to expand abroad the data model would need to be tweaked to adapt to each country/local jurisdictions' particular needs for compliance and automation. This is something that we will already have to do across different jurisdictions in the US and are accounting for as we build the software so, from a purely technical perspective, it should be feasible.

Hey, thanks for the question.

I think your intuition here is correct. Like a few other comments mentioned the buyers are very very conservative.

Our first step to sales will be to deliver on what we've promised to the firm that has taken a bet on us. The market is very trust driven, since the outcome of a criminal case can change a persons life, so we need to make sure that we can deliver on our promises above anything else. That being said, firms really want a solution to this problem. We have started talking to a few other firms in NYC who have a use case that is identical to the one we are building for so once the product is ready we'd hope to follow-up with a few more sales wins.

Will definitely look more into this. We had looked into some encryption options based on our current database solution but will dig more into it re figuring out how to hide the users' data from us.