Bushido (YC S11): An App Store For The Web That Can Kickstart Your Side Projects

http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/29/yc-funded-bushido-an-app-store-for-the-web-that-can-kickstart-your-side-projects/

by sgrove • 15 years ago

123 36 15 years ago

rwolf• 15 years ago

Click link to Bushido in TC story -> click "Sign up" -> click "Learn more" -> back at contentless splash page.

I can take Jason Kincaid's word for it and sign up, or Bushido can actually tell me something, anything, about what it is.

sgrove6• 15 years ago

Hey Ryan, sorry for the contentless splash page. We're building up the platform and documentation right now, and as we get closer, the work on that side gets even more intense. We'll put up a video explaining everything later tonight.

In the meantime, we're launching Bushido as a really simple way to launch Open-source rails apps with one click, a unified log-in system, and premium hosting. We do a revenue share with the developers, so all you do is write the app, put up a link that has the url to your rails' app git repo, which branch to deploy from, and any environmental variables you want the app to launch with (so you can customize it at launch time), and then anyone can instantly launch the app. If they end up converting to premium hosting (based on a few factors like number of allowed user signins and apps), we'll split the revenue with you.

The goal is to help developers be more and more independent working on their projects of passion, and to app users way more choice in the apps they can use.

Let me know if you have any more questions, s@gobushido.com!

ksolanki• 15 years ago

I came here to say exactly this.

I can take Jason Kincaid's word for it and sign up, or Bushido can actually tell me something, anything, about what it is.

Jason's article does indicate they could be on to something interesting, though.

relix• 15 years ago

A good concept, I hope their execution will be excellent and they have some marketing skills, because the latter is what will be hardest in this sector. Everyone can make a single sign-on platform with benefits, but getting those customers - now therein lies the rub.

I hope you guys succeed, because I would love to integrate with such a platform.

SingAlong3• 15 years ago

I hope you guys succeed, because I would love to integrate with such a platform.

You don't have to wait. Just get back to me at akash@gobushido.com and I'll help you port your Rails apps to Bushido. Bonus points if you are using Devise coz we have a plugin for it that makes it so much easier.

callmeed3• 15 years ago

I remember when Bushido made the front-page of HN a few months ago (search for details). I was pretty pumped then and am even more so now.

One thing that's been on my mind lately is help desk software. The current leaders are way overpriced IMO ($9 to $49 per month per agent–are you serious?) [1], especially when it's best for everyone at a startup to wear the support hat now and then. Not to mention the fact that some lock in your data.

We once used a home-built ticket system for support (a Rails 2.3.x app that's available at https://github.com/bigfolio/big-help). I'm seriously considering re-writing this app in Rails 3.1 and putting it up on Bushido. The biggest feature request I've seen is the ability to handle incoming emails as tickets, and that's now easy with MailGun or SendGrid.

All that to say I think Bushido could really disrupt some industries (even recent ones) that are over-priced or handcuff customers with arbitrary limits.

---

[1]

http://uservoice.com/plans http://www.zendesk.com/signup http://www.assistly.com/pricing http://www.freshdesk.com/pricing.html

sgrove6• 15 years ago

Hey Erik, awesome note! We actually have some crazy-awesome api's for handling incoming emails - each app has a default email address provisioned for it, and an app can add/remove email accounts programmatically. And handling incoming email is done through a very cool hook system we're really excited to share soon.

Each app that's deployed has a bunch of resources automatically provisioned for it, so as a developer, you never have to wonder if something's present - the goal is to make the developer omnipotent, so you can do whatever you're thinking of, without thinking about it too much :)

Feel free to shoot me an email at s@gobushido.com, we'd really love to talk to you about the help-desk app (even we're looking for a good one)!

Edit: Forgot to add: the incoming/outgoing email stuff is powered by Mailgun actually - those guys are so awesome. With the wrapper we add though, and because we're very language-focused right now, we can make the api's a joy to use, beyond what even they're able to do currently.

pwim• 15 years ago

The current leaders are way overpriced IMO ($9 to $49 per month per agent–are you serious?)

I'm assuming these services are targeting companies with people working full time on support, where that $9 to $49 is a drop in a bucket compared to their salary.

kalid• 15 years ago

Exactly. Does the app save an hour of an agent's time/sanity per month? If so, it's worth it.

callmeed3• 15 years ago

That's the problem. Even small startups use them. Imagine a 4-person startup with 2 co-founders, another engineer and another designer. No full-time support staff, so everyone jumps in from time to time. Unless you make a generic agent account (which is lame for assignment/follow-up), you're talking $100/mo for support.

I don't discount the value extracted but to me it reeks of enterprise, per-seat licensing a bit.

I just think an OS, unlimited agent option would be nice for small startups.

prateekdayal2• 15 years ago

I think pricing by logins for a support tool is just dumb and prevents you from delivering great customer support. That's why we are working on SupportBee - http://blog.supportbee.com/2011/07/28/why-pricing-by-logins-...

sgrove6• 15 years ago

Hey Prateek, fancy seeing you here :) We should catch up again soon, I'd love to see how SupportBee is coming along!

Zakuzaa• 15 years ago

I don't find it dumb. Just a different pricing strategy.

mshafrir• 15 years ago

I remember first reading about Bushido at http://swombat.com/2011/4/12/bushido. After reading the blog post, I gave Bushido a spin, and their service really felt like magic. I got to know this team as part of the YC S11 batch, and they're building an awesome company that's giving back to open source. Lots of good things in their future.

angryasian• 15 years ago

sounds like too much vendor lock in with proprietary solutions for my taste, but can see the benefit for some projects out there.

chc2• 15 years ago

I thought it sounded intriguing until I realized your entire codebase has to be public. Are there actually any popular SaaS products that are 100% open-source? Releasing open-source components and libraries spun off from your app is one thing, but open-sourcing the whole codebase that constitutes the core of your business? Is that done?

sgrove6• 15 years ago

There are a ton of benefits to the model - it won't be for everyone, but it'll be for a lot more people once we get going at full speed. Open source is, in general, just more practical.

And yeah, there are a handful of SaaS products that are open-sourced, but most aren't maintained to a high-enough quality for our tastes. We'll work with developers to up the standard.

SingAlong3• 15 years ago

Like sean said, "it won't be for everyone", but there's already a ton of OpenSource apps in Ruby alone (mentioning it coz thats what we support right now) that are old but still work fabulously and are useful.

Example: Mockr (https://github.com/causes/mockr-old). A sweet app that lets you share and review designs among teams (and as per last check, it was unmaintained). We ported it to Bushido with a few extra lines of code and it's here https://github.com/HashNuke/mockr

If you have apps like these, that you think others would find useful, mail me (akash@gobushido.com) and I'll help you with porting it to Bushido. And if you are using Devise for auth, we have a plugin and it's 5 lines of code promise! Most apps that we've ported, we've ensured that they work fine outside of Bushido too (opensource is giving back. right? :)

tebeka• 15 years ago

Great idea, now I just need to learn some RoR ...

Seriously, this is something that can have the same effect on application as the web had on publishing. "Just write it and place it out there ...".

did• 15 years ago

I'm Didier Lafforgue, the guy behind LocomotiveCMS, one of the 2 first open source projects handled by Bushi.do. So I will speak for the open source developer inside me. I won't say that building an open source project is quite easy but the coding part is definitively the easiest one for me. Unfortunately, a developer does not live with fresh water and (coding) love. So when Sean and Kevin came to me and shared with me their vision about monetizing open source projects, it was obvious I had no choice than to say yes. Simply because their idea is brillant. Actually, it lets the freedom for the authors of open source web applications to continue their development roadmap and at the same time, Bushi.do provides all the tools to promote and monetize the applications. I see that as a win-win situation. And to go further, that could be become a game changer in the world of the open source web applications. One last thing, the 2 guys behind Bushi.do are developers first and very nice guys....

aashay• 15 years ago

This may be somewhat petty but...isn't using the term "App Store" a bit risky? Apple owns the trademark on that: http://www.apple.com/legal/trademark/appletmlist.html

It's lame, I know, but better safe than sorry.

chc2• 15 years ago

Apple is currently involved in a legal battle over whether it legitimately owns that mark and has failed to get injunctions against its use.

Mizza• 15 years ago

Cool!

I'm about to launch something (hopefully going live tonight, announce tomorrow) with a similar philosophy - the economic engine of Open Source needs some more octane!

Hope this takes off, I hope I can partner with these guys in the future.

sgrove6• 15 years ago

Definitely let us know, would love to hear about it. Anything that helps developers and users makes us very happy :)

collint• 15 years ago

I think it sounds like a wicked clever idea.

It also sounds like a recipe for bad-blood in the open source world. It emphasizes owning a repo rather than contributing to one that already exists.

It also seems to push for over utilization of resources. Once you get to say 1-10K installs a multi-tenant solution would probably make more sense. What happens then? Does bushido help you roll your customers into one big app? Even if it's not good for bushido's bottom line?

Don't get me wrong, I see a lot of good and interesting things coming from this. I just also see some sticky situations.

SingAlong3• 15 years ago

It emphasizes owning a repo rather than contributing to one that already exists.

Something that's been under discussion for a while at Bushido.

Does bushido help you roll your customers into one big app?

No. Each instance of an app runs in it's own sandboxed environment. That helps you keep your app simple and not worry about scaling for those 10k users. If you want a simpler perspective to look at the service - it sort of provides web apps like mobile apps. Separate instances like how they run on your phone. So tomorrow if there's an online editor app (like Google Docs. Just saying...) on Bushido and you have a Chromebook-like device, you can launch your own instance and that'll all be yours like a separate app. Once there's support for more platforms it'll be easier to see it as "app store for the web". All apps on the web and all you do is launch an instance of apps for yourself.

P.S: I work for Bushido

highace• 15 years ago

Woah, they take a 15-40% cut? Is it just me who thinks that's pretty significant? I think I'd rather just bite the bullet and do it myself.

shpoonj• 15 years ago

They still have an awesome mobile presence... Oh wait.

Bushido (YC S11): An App Store For The Web That Can Kickstart Your Side Projects

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