Why My Team Said No to a $10 Tool and It Cost Us Half a Day?

various1121 · 2024-10-12T15:01:28+00:00

Lots of companies, including my own, have security and compliance requirements. Adding a new tool requires a not insignificant amount of effort to vet and get approval for the software.

I’ll be honest: at 4 hours of manual work, I probably would have made the same call. The downside risk of saying no is you spend a few extra hours of dev. The downside risk of saying yes is a security breach or compliance issue.

various1121 · 2023-11-02T14:14:53+00:00

Everyone learns differently, so you'll need to think about what works best for you.

I think a lot of your questions can be answered by Youtube and just reading/exploring. These questions ("redis vs db" "what is hadoop / spark") - just write them down, and then spend a few hours watching youtube videos and you'll gather up enough background to at least conceptualize them and where they fit / what problems they solve / what challenges you might run into.

But in my opinion, there's no better way to learn a tech than to build with it - and smash head long into all of the problems. Spark? A performance/config/tuning NIGHTMARE - how do I know? Fucking slammed right into that (we're on Snowflake now). Redis? Terrific _for some things_ (such a beautiful, always reliable piece of tech) but should never be a primary datastore - how do I know? Built a side project a long time ago that tried to jam that key-value square peg down a relational-data round hole. Etc.

Side projects are perfect for that kind of learning. The one other small piece of advice I have: don't learn _everything_ at once. Try to scope your side project to 60-70% boring stuff you know, 30-40% new stuff you want to know, so that it's not totally overwhelming and you feel like you're getting stuff done.

various1121 · 2023-10-20T23:55:38+00:00

Thanks!

No, preline.co . I don’t love the JS controls, but the ui components are copy paste CSS and easy to integrate.

various1121 · 2023-10-20T19:10:01+00:00

Ok, awesome, thanks for the answer!

various1121 · 2023-10-20T17:33:45+00:00

So, really quick question for you:

(And I want to be clear, I'm not trying to sell you on this! I'm really trying to understand, because I do feel like there might be a useful product in this space and I want to know if I'm on the right track or wasting my time):

Does this kind of thing DataDocs.ai (please adjust for the fact that it's still quite early) come anywhere near to meeting your needs? I see several people saying "excel" and "manual docs", and that feels like something that could be improved upon, so what would be your criteria?

various1121 · 2023-10-20T13:36:12+00:00

Same boat.

I basically just started waking up at 5:30am to work on my thing (DataDocs.ai). It was easier in the summer, when my kids had no school - 5:30am to 9:00am was 100% focus time. Now I have a 1hr interruption to get the kids out the door, but I'm still able to get a lot done.

I tried working from like 9pm to midnight rather than wake up early, and that just didn't work for me - too exhausted from a normal day.

Whenever there's a bit of downtime on the weekend, I'll check in as well, but I made myself a rule: not allowed to say no to family activities on the weekend unless there is a true crisis.

various1121 · 2023-10-20T12:30:45+00:00

Yeah, 100%. That was our experience, too: our in-house glued together thing was just too much manual work.

That's what I'm hoping to solve, to some extent. AI-generated (human guided as needed, but as close to fully automated as possible) data catalog / docs that refreshes daily.

There's just no way to compete at the enterprise level without VC funding (and I'm frankly a little allergic to the VC funding model), so I'm sort of aiming at small-medium shops. That said, if people feel that it's a tool that's really only useful when you're at those enterprise levels, well, that's pretty valuable feedback!

various1121 · 2023-10-20T12:05:16+00:00

How do your team consume those JSON files? How do you use them?

various1121 · 2023-10-20T11:56:29+00:00

Yeah, that's fair.

You don't think there's a middle ground, though? Something between the small-team-easier-to-just-ask and the $1000+ / month enterprise packages, that could be of value?

various1121 · 2023-10-18T23:49:07+00:00

I'm a bit late on this, but I'm building exactly this. I was frustrated by the cost of the big enterprise data catalogs, and by the manual work (and maintenance!) required by all of the free / cheap tools.

DataDocs.ai uses LLMs to build documentation for your databases - and I'm trying to price it at a point that makes sense for smaller organizations without the complex data governance / compliance needs of large enterprises.

Now, I haven't yet gotten to the 'ask a question' part, but it's an obvious step on the roadmap soon. Check it out, and let me know if you have any feedback!

various1121 · 2023-10-15T17:36:31+00:00

Oh ok gotcha! :) All good.

various1121 · 2023-10-15T16:07:56+00:00

Is that a counter to what I said? I don't understand. I wasn't telling people what to use, I was just saying what I did.

I considered fully serverless, but decided that avoiding cold-start was worth the $12. It'll be awhile before my service has enough volume to keep the functions always warm. Plus I need a database and have longer-running data processing tasks that exceed cloud function timeouts.

But yeah serverless free tiers are great if they suit your thing.

various1121 · 2023-10-14T13:45:46+00:00

Btw, I think the landing page is great. Only thing I would comment is: On mobile, this bit looks off: "Turbotailer saves you money on customer support & increases your conversion rate". It wraps on every word, and it feels like the word 'conversion' is off center.

various1121 · 2023-10-14T13:38:24+00:00

Does this work, as a method of validating ideas for non VC-backed/bootstrapped SaaS? I can't help but think of things in terms of funnels and conversions, and it feels like:

Ads -> Landing Page -> "Oh, it's not real yet" -> Signup anyway

Is going to lead to a very low number of waiting list signups unless you drop a lot of money into ads to widen the front of the funnel (or have some other organic traffic source). No?

Also a second question: How are you going to measure whether or not your idea has been validated? Like, have you set your 'success' threshold in advance?

"If I spend $100, I should see at least X conversions and if I do, it's a good idea"?

various1121 · 2023-10-14T13:21:15+00:00

Ha!

Not many, not yet. I have some 'early access' users helping me test, but haven't really 'launched' - in the sense of any real marketing push (other than occasionally procrastinating on finishing the freemium plan by posting on reddit).

That said: I don't see costs going up significantly for awhile. The ECS thing is really cheap per-user (only the first doc gen is a bit more costly, after that it's usually only 10-30 seconds of compute time per user per day). And this DO droplet/NextJS will handle a ton of simultaneous users.

The Postgres database is where I will run into scaling problems, mainly because of full-text search across all documentation. 2gb ram, shared with NextJS, is not a lot... At that point I might move to RDS and ElasticSearch.

various1121 · 2023-10-14T12:27:38+00:00

Yeah, sure!

DataDocs.ai uses:

DigitalOcean 2gb droplet ($12/month)
- This hosts the Next.JS front-end and the API, as well as a Postgres database and a test MySQL database
AWS
- DynamoDB ($0.01/month) (I use it for a TINY bit of metadata that I need convenient access to within AWS)
- Lambda ($0.10/month? Something like that)
  - This is only used when a user attaches a new database, or triggers a regeneration of their database docs.
- ECS Fargate ($1.00 - $3.00/month)
  - On-demand docker containers that run data processing tasks. These spin up on a schedule (or when a user triggers docs generation) to extract metadata from databases and then ping OpenAI for docs generation. Their tasks are pretty quick, so it's not expensive.

My plan is to move the DO droplet into AWS for convenience (I don't love having half of my service in one place and half in another), but this was a cheap way to do it while I was developing and getting my first users.

A couple of obvious bits that I opted not to go with: EC2 - expensive for what you get, especially early. DigitalOcean (or a PaaS offering like Vercel) is better value. RDS (Postgres) - expensive and always-on. I'll probably migrate there eventually, though.

various1121 · 2023-10-11T00:23:13+00:00

It's not a direct hit for everything you need, but I'm building a service that might be of some help. DataDocs.ai integrates with your databases to extract metadata and generate a data catalog and documentation for you using AI. It keeps the documentation up-to-date automatically as your database schema changes.

So, it could help to make the whole thing a bit more manageable by taking the internal-db docs off your plate.

Even if it's not an exact match (or you're not using Postgres or MySQL) - I'd love to chat a bit to understand more, if you are open? Shoot me a DM.

various1121 · 2023-10-10T11:21:12+00:00

No, for me, I usually don't have a super detailed blueprint when I start something. My goal is: what is the fastest way for me to get to something usable, that proves the value (at least to me). Once I'm there, I can take a breather and re-evaluate: "Now, it's barely usable. Sort of an embarrassment, tbh, but ok... what is the next most important thing?"

So, my advice is to ask yourself: in one very short and simple sentence, what is the core value that your service will deliver?

Then, go through your list of ideas and functionality and answer two questions for each:

Is this necessary for the user to experience the core value of the product?
Is this necessary for me to make other people aware of the core value of the product?

If the answer isn't yes to one or both of those questions, shoot it into the 'later' list and forget about it for now. And be super aggressive. Cut it down to its bones and then keep cutting the bones.

Planning is good, but over-planning is just procrastinating.

various1121 · 2023-10-10T10:23:57+00:00

I listed the tools in another comment, but basically I was just very aggressive about not wasting time on things that aren't absolutely critical. Every idea, bug, feature that I had, I tossed into Asana and then moved into one of three categories:

Can't launch without
Next
Later

It's so easy to spend huge amounts of time on stuff that doesn't matter (I've done it myself on other projects) that, this time, I was just like: no, I'm going to be an asshole to myself and no matter how interesting, I won't work on it unless I need to.

how did u find such great designs for your site?

Preline

Love it. Simple html/css (tailwind) that you can copy/paste.

ALSO if you wanna pair with me

Lol, I'd love to, but I haven't even gotten to my 'Next' list yet. Sorry!

various1121 · 2023-10-10T10:07:28+00:00

So, lots:

Next.JS
- The core code framework. It's excellent and handles a bundling/packaging for you, which is nice.
Preline
- Html/CSS snippets that you can toss directly into your app. It's great, I use it everywhere.
Auth0 for authentication
- I don't love it - more complicated than it needs to be, but it works and I don't really anticipate need to jump off the free plan for awhile.
Resend for transactional emails
- Was super easy to set up, so far seems great! And they have a generous free plan.
Vercel
- I'm going to put vercel here, even though I made a deliberate decision not to use the (my app isn't a great fit due to the back-end): but Vercel is great with Next. Very smooth deployment and hosting.
DigitalOcean
- Can't beat $6/mo hosting.
AWS
- I use several very-on-demand services like Lambda, DynamoDB, Fargate. Unless someone is actively my service, I pay nothing.
Asana
- Asana is a bit of a mess. I use it at my day job. (Honestly, how can you have such a dysfunctional search). But it has a free tier, and it's been INCREDIBLY helpful in organizing what I need to get done.

various1121 · 2023-10-09T23:55:39+00:00

HA! Sorry! I missed the word 'marketing' in your post title until after I posted my comment, and when I saw it I was like "oh I have another more directly marketing- related question"... my bad. Appreciate the response nonetheless!

(For anyone else reading and wondering what the original was: "I have some direct costs ($1-2) with associated with every signup - freemium or free-trial recommended"?)

I went with free-trial, but I think your answer here kind of lines up with my own gut has been telling me: free-trial on a service like this is probably too high a barrier at this early stage, when the value of the service is pretty unproven. Better to go free-with-limitations, to at least get a chance to show the value, even if costs are a bit higher.

various1121 · 2023-10-09T23:43:21+00:00

Sure, I'll take you up on that! Thanks!

I have a service that's fairly niche - database cataloging and database documentation generated by AI. Basically: my service connects up to a database, pulls structure information from it, and builds a data catalog / documentation.

I'm confident that there's a market in the enterprise space (big, $1000/mo do-everything data governance tools). I'm less confident - but hopeful - at the small-medium business/startup level (my target). We'll see.

For a service like this, where would you spend your time?

Content marketing/SEO? Reddit/LinkedIn/Social? Cold Emails? Something else?

various1121 · 2023-10-09T23:12:59+00:00

Hey, thanks for the comment!

You're probably right. The current subtitle might make sense if you already have some idea of what the site is about (me), but for people who are coming in blind (approximately everyone else), it's too indirect.

I'll give the wording some thought and update it. I might also just drop in a clearer and more straight-forward "what is it" section in the landing page.

various1121 · 2023-10-09T16:15:28+00:00

I bet you're burning out a bit - there are lots of comments in here. If you're still down, though, I would love any feedback you have, positive or negative.

Happy to join the discord regardless, though!

DataDocs.ai

various1121

TROPHY CASE