Show HN: Backyard.io - We applied to YC (W12) and need some beta users

https://the.backyard.io/hn

by traviskuhl • 15 years ago

43 27 15 years ago

the.backyard.io

FYI Chrome is flagging your site because the domain name on your SSL certificate doesn't match. Also, the site styling is completely off in Firefox. I don't mean to be completely negative, but fixing those things will probably help in getting people to sign up!

traviskuhl6• 15 years ago

no worries. thanks for the the feedback. i'm not able to reproduce, though. Chrome and Firebox both shows the SSL as valid and styles seem to be loading as expected. which versions do you have. -travis

martian• 15 years ago

I have the latest Chrome on Mac and am seeing the SSL Error. Cert information is here:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/122722/backyard_io_certificate.png

dikbrouwer• 15 years ago

Safari mobile (iPad) doesn't work (SSL error). Did you try running one of the SSL verifiers? (don't know the sites on the top of my head, google it).

roachsocal• 15 years ago

I tried in Chrome and the SSL is green and verified (by GoDaddy).

ismarc2• 15 years ago

It actually looks like it's set up for *.backyard.io and is flagged for an unrecognized CA, most likely an intermediate CA not included with the certificate.

inmygarage• 15 years ago

Who would you say are your major competitors?

traviskuhl6• 15 years ago

i think Github and similar hosted SCM providers are potential competitors. Atlassian’s line of enterprise products are also similar to our offerings. Github is definitely the company we fear (and have a crazy amount of respect and admiration for). At their core though I think Github and Backyard have different focus’. Github is focused on (and in my opinion succeeding at) being the best-in-breed Source Control platform, which means things like centralized authentication, deployment, continuous integration, internal communication, etc are not (currently) their focus. Backyard’s focus will be providing a complete integrated infrastructure platform. So while SCM will be an important component, it wont be the sole focus of our company.

pbreit• 15 years ago

I would try to find a way to complement GitHub, not compete with it.

ismarc2• 15 years ago

I signed up, understanding you're just looking for beta users, but the process for requesting a beta invite is kind of misleading. The email is sent automatically, which is nice, but the contents of the email is a request to subscribe to a mailing list. When signing up, I wasn't requesting to be added to a mailing list, just get in line for a beta invite. Not that large of a deal, but perhaps adjusting the wording would scare off less people (or at least avoid the moment of confusion and hesitation). Also, it's a bit disorienting to have an email address to a different domain than the one you're being subscribed to as the contact in the email. Other than that...anxiously waiting for an invite, it's something I've been in need of for a while but have been hesitant to start using 80 bajillion different online services to do it.

michaelw• 15 years ago

Agreed. Why not post invite codes to responders here on HN?

fraserharris• 15 years ago

What pain of mine are you solving? "Hosted technology that helps your startup run" isn't speaking to me.

jvandenbroeck• 15 years ago

I don't know if it's just me, but I think you might need to rethink your market/angle. I've worked with a few startups and the last thing on our mind was "centralized employee authentication" and "infrastructure dashboards".

jlees• 15 years ago

i'd cut it down to a few core services and make those awesome. what do your users need most?

traviskuhl6• 15 years ago

definitely good advice. part of the reason we decided to post today was to try to get a larger user base and figure out what services they're most interested in. we plan on keeping our initial beta groups small, so we can work closely with our users to figure out what services they love, what they don't really need and what we can add that would improve their experience.

pallinder• 15 years ago

Signed up, looks interesting enough.

mahcode• 15 years ago

Signed up, no problems.

fizzfur• 15 years ago

look intresting, but seconding the "why" posts...

what advantage am i getting for having these all under one roof? how are the integrations going to help me?

rkalla• 15 years ago

Looks really ambitious and look forward to seeing what you do.

A bit of a chicken and an egg problem for me. You want me to put my business life under your roof but i have no idea if you will be around ina year or two so i am very hesitent to try it at all right now.

Worst case, i love the service, import everything i own, then funding dries up in 18 months and now i have a monumental amount of pain on my hands migrating away.

That is just 2 cents from the peanut gallery. I cant be the only one thinking this though.

Figured i would share since you guys are looking for feedback.

traviskuhl6• 15 years ago

thanks for the feedback. you're not alone with that concern and it's something we thought a lot about in designing our infrastructure. we approached the problem in a few ways. 1) building as much of our technology on top of existing open source software. that way if you choose to move to a new product, your data is compatible and the transition will be much simpler. 2) making much of the infrastructure component based, so that you don't need to use everything all at one. you'll be able to slowly migrate data from existing services into our infrastructure. 3) your data will always be your own and exportable for you if you so choose. Backyard came out of our own experience at different startups. we spent valuable early engineering cycles setting up infrastructure, much of the time just recreating something that many other people had already built. so we understand the concerns about entrusting core pieces of a technology stack to a thrid-party. we plan on working closely with our users to help adress those concerns.

tomblomfield• 15 years ago

I think I'm probably your target market (startup founder) and I've spent 90 seconds reading your front page, but I'm still not clear on what you actually do.

What's the one big problem that you solve for me?

phzbOx• 15 years ago

To be honest, I hate everything in one solutions for a couple reasons:

  1. It never works. There's always some problems and since it's all in one package, it's really difficult to remove an item and switch it from something else. (For instance, I know it's far from being the same, but think django and mysql. You can use something else, but anyone who did it will agree with me that it's a lot of problem.)

  2. There are *so many* already existing solutions out there that it's hard to believe that you can make *all of them* better. For instance, Dropbox is pretty awesome, Github is awesome, IRC is awesome, Gmail is awesome. Especially for startups, these are all free or *almost* free solutions.

  3. It's simply impossible to fit everyone's need with a one big solution for everything. I've been in *big company* where you'd have a microsoft based solution with everything, or others thousand of dollars apps to manage authentification and email and everything, and they all truly sucked. And they sucked not because they were wrongly build, but they couldn't be the *best* for everyone. If you want to make it newbie friendly enough, power user will hate it. If you make it complex enough for power user, newbie will be lost and hate it. I know I'm making it sound trivial, but I hope you guess the point. 

  4. Finally, from my experience, it's extremely hard to change the way people already work. Just try to move someone out of gmail for instance. Now, try to move him/her away from *all* software he already use and appreciate.

You say you want to make it easy for startups to be like the big guys. That's one of the things I love about startup.. to NOT be like the big guys with all their politic craps.

Sorry to be harsh, I just wanted to give my personal opinion as a software developer. I'm curious to know what others hackers think about it?

teyc• 15 years ago

I'm sorry, you are a startup. If you shutdown in 12 month's time, if we used your services for critical functionality like authentication, we'd be up st creek, wouldn't we?

Show HN: Backyard.io - We applied to YC (W12) and need some beta users

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