Decipad – Like Notion with problem-solving capabilities

https://www.decipad.com

by g-camargo • 4 years ago

207 45 4 years ago

g-camargo7• 4 years ago

I've been working on Decipad. It's a low-code notebook to tell stories with numbers and build interactive models. It's like Notion with spreadsheet-like capabilities. You can build and publish interactive notebooks for things like forecasting, burn rate, a mortgage calculator, or just something fun.

We're testing with early access users. Would be grateful for any feedback if you're interested! Decipad.com

johnhenry• 4 years ago

Is this like formulas (https://www.notion.so/help/formulas) on steroids?

melony• 4 years ago

I think it's more like https://causal.app

dscape3• 4 years ago

Our goal is to make it powerful enough to support a range of modeling and calculation needs, from a financial modeling to building a recipe (e.g. https://dev.decipad.com/n/The-Saturday-White-Bread%3A9JQMbgK...)! We wrote our formula language to support a broad range of modeling use cases. We’re currently testing that language with a small group. Is there any particular use case you would be interested in using a more powerful formula language for?

lilyball• 4 years ago

Is there any way to try it out interactively without having to sign up for early access? When I loaded the website and I read what it said about changing Discount Rate, I immediately tried clicking around to actually do that and see the change but of course it didn't work.

g-camargo7• 4 years ago

Right now, access is limited as we continue to build. We are collaborating with a small group of early access users from our community as we develop certain use cases and features. We will be expanding access in the coming months as we expand to new use cases and capabilities.

phrom• 4 years ago

FYI,

"This site has been reported as unsafe Hosted by www.decipad.com Microsoft recommends you don't continue to this site. It has been reported to Microsoft for containing phishing threats which may try to steal personal or financial information."

Using Edge on Windows with SmartScreen turned on.

zbhoy• 4 years ago

This is really interesting! I have been keeping an eye on the low code number modeling scene and it's great to see a mix on the usual spreadsheet + X.

I applied for early access but I wanted to ask how you balance the amount of spreadsheet and modeling you expose vs keeping it out of sight?

g-camargo7• 4 years ago

Thanks a bunch! It's really early stages here... but we're so excited with the possibilities this tool will unlock.

It's been a big topic that we talk about a lot as a team as we continue to build. We ultimately want to give creators the control on how they want to share and present their model. And, give the reader/collaborator some controls on how they want to consume it. But, we also want to make it easier for people to understand what different calculations mean and how the model works so they can learn and collaborate more effectively. One approach we've been exploring as we build Decipad is a more human way to write calculations that are easier to read and understand.

PaulHoule• 4 years ago

Nice to see something follow in the footsteps of

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TK_Solver

ibdf• 4 years ago

I wish Notion would allow people to build third-party plugins/add-ons. This looks really cool but it would be so much cooler if it build on top of everything Notion already does.

djhaskin987• 4 years ago

Yes, but then you would end up with, well, Confluence.

cheriot• 4 years ago

Let's be fair, none of the products mentioned in these comments are as bad as Confluence.

nichos• 4 years ago

You should look in to Logseq.

Terretta3• 4 years ago

See Craft.do.

leobg• 4 years ago

Would like to see a demo video. Reading through the landing page doesn’t really tell me what this does, or how are using it would work.

SCLeo• 4 years ago

Agreed. Or, since it is an interactive application, it would be very nice to just show a interactable demo on the front page.

g-camargo7• 4 years ago

We’re working on it as you speak! In a couple of months, we’ll be expanding access to more people, and we’ll have more videos and use cases to share soon.

skybrian• 4 years ago

Too bad the documentation isn’t online. What does it use for formulas? How do you share notebooks? Do you need the app to view them?

I’m pretty happy with Observable’s notebooks. It means you need to know JavaScript, though, and furthermore learn Observable’s quirks [1] and a plotting library.

[1] https://observablehq.com/@observablehq/observables-not-javas...

ryanianian• 4 years ago

Ya, weird. The landing page gives almost no information about what it's like to actually use it. Not even an example workbook/file to tinker with the possible finished-products.

g-camargo7• 4 years ago

Decipad has its own custom formula language geared towards our use cases (we’ve been testing the language with a small group). Right now, to share a notebook, you can generate a secret link. You don’t need to sign-up to view/read a notebook that someone shares. Here is a model on interest rates- https://alpha.decipad.com/n/Rising-interest-rates-and-AAPL-s... You should be able to view it. Are there any use cases you are thinking of?

We plan to make our documentation publicly available soon. Right now, we are focusing on enabling certain use cases.

Rafsark2• 4 years ago

That's probably something I would see "on-top" of Notion. I really like the formulas on steroid, but having another tool inside the company is a bit painful. Notion team could authorize add-ons built on top...

KMnO4• 4 years ago

OTOH, I'm desperate for a tool that's "like Notion, but better", where my primary definition of "better" is that it's not slow/bloated.

If this is lightweight AND has these cool data modelling features then I'm on board.

vthommeret• 4 years ago

They’ve started to move their iOS app to native views which has made a big difference so seems like they’re prioritizing performance.

jitl• 4 years ago

Maybe one day! I’d like us to do something like this but it’s probably more than a year in the future.

k__• 4 years ago

If it less laggy than Notion, that would already be enough for me.

h0l0cube• 4 years ago

Seeing what's happened with Figma, I think it's important to have at least one other major player. There's always a market for an alternative to <dominant player>, and they are more suited to smaller companies looking to reduce expenditure that can tolerate a maybe less mature (fewer integrations etc.) and less familiar product, but with a better support turn around, and maybe even a stake in driving product features

light_hue_1• 4 years ago

I might have been a user if I could access it without signing up to try it out.

Having to give my email, click a link, set up an account, etc. just to see what this is to decide if I want to use it, is far too high of a barrier to entry.

g-camargo7• 4 years ago

We hear you! As we build, we’re prioritising certain use cases. If you’re an entrepreneur (or know one), that can relate to the pains of creating your first cap table, explaining burn to investors or managing your P&L in a spreadsheet, we would love to chat.

phren0logy• 4 years ago

Nice! Reminds me of the native MacOS apps Numi and Soulver. But being web-based and understanding python opens up a lot of interesting possibilities that those apps don't have.

r2sk5t2• 4 years ago

Congrats! Whether it's Notion, Google Docs/Sheet/Slides, Coda, Figma, Adobe Cloud, iCloud, Slack, Google Drive, One Drive, etc. the issue for me is content management and SSO. There is a high bar to get anointed to manage content inside a company/team.

For example, we use Office 365 and OneDrive for file management. But, I prefer Keynote over PowerPoint. Saving Keynote to OneDrive folders works perfectly fine. Of course that means anyone who wants to edit my documents needs OneDrive and Keynote, but that's reasonable for our team.

To use Decipad, Notion, Coda, Google Docs etc. We would need a way to manage the documents in OneDrive, an authentication mechanism so that the documents can be open and edited from OneDrive. Whether it's OneDrive, Box, DropBox, or GDrive my issue might be the same for others.

Just rewrite the software to run on Mac & Windows and save documents as files, and then we would give it a try :-)

Terretta3• 4 years ago

Or at least the SSO + a full audit trail.

r2sk5t2• 4 years ago

Good point. We would have no interest in paying for or managing SSO. Sorry for not being articulate.

My point is that since Decipad is not a client app that creates documents on the file system, my recommendation would be to integrate with the Office 365 ecosystem to gain SSO with Office 365 so that our users could easily navigate to Decipad. For us, that would be table stakes.

sbierwagen• 4 years ago

SSO

So you're looking to pay $1000 per user per year?

Terretta3• 4 years ago

This up-pricing is so short sighted. Offering SSO is a whole user creds mangement flow you don't have to write, secrets you don't have to store, and password theft PR you don't have to have.

So it's cheaper, less risk, and reduces friction to join.

If I'm doing a professional SaaS today, I don't store passwords. I use login with (Microsoft, Google, Apple with a user flow for FIDO Alliance passwordless) and SSO. If consumer, I'd use those and add Facebook. Gaming, Discord. Etc.

It should look like this:

https://www.xsplit.com/user/auth

Companies not offering the Sign in with Apple may be just mad they might not get an email address they can correlate:

https://zapier.com/app/login

Now that Apple launched free MDM (Apple Business Essentials) and corporate Apple IDs, expect more apple accounts.

unwoundmouse• 4 years ago

What did you use for UI, is this tailwind? looks really clean

andrezzoid• 4 years ago

It is our own design system and every component is custom built. Glad you like it!

personjerry• 4 years ago

Be careful, the name sounds a bit like it's a feminine hygiene product

g-camargo7• 4 years ago

We dream to one day be just as useful.

avgcorrection• 4 years ago

Can I afford a

No.

valyagolev2• 4 years ago

i wonder if it would be cool to have generalized "task" management in the form of embedded Prolog-like (basically make queries through unification)

dscape3• 4 years ago

Would love to know more. Learning prolog at uni was quite the experience, but don't really know how that could be used in our language. Happy to chat, join discord and we can talk about it. Here’s the link - https://discord.com/invite/HwDMqwbGmc

valyagolev2• 4 years ago

Thanks - I'll think about it a bit more and will join when I have something specific to say

dscape3• 4 years ago

Hi Everyone! I’m a co-founder at Decipad. Love the support and excitement for what we’re building! We’re currently collaborating with a small group of early access users. Come say hi on Discord. We will be sharing more soon. And, if you have a certain modeling use case in mind, we would love to learn more about it.

Decipad – Like Notion with problem-solving capabilities

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