Ask YC: Review our new product

http://cleanupdata.com/#video

by avibryant • 18 years ago

92 59 18 years ago

cleanupdata.com

siong1987• 18 years ago

No one is going to watch your tutorial video if you tell no one what's about your website first.

jgrahamc2• 18 years ago

I did. It took seconds to realize that this was interesting.

avibryant4• 18 years ago

Damn, whole seconds? I gotta work on that.

avibryant4• 18 years ago

This is largely a technology demo, but we think it's pretty neat. Curious if anyone here has thoughts about where to take this from here. And yes, using SSN as the example was probably a poor choice - the example is from http://blogs.msdn.com/excel/archive/2007/11/12/manipulating-... .

Tip of the hat to LAPIS/Potluck/MassEdit from CSAIL for getting us thinking in this direction.

psyklic2• 18 years ago

An undo button would be neat in case I accidentally type-in rather than cut-paste, then end up losing what I manually deleted. (I didn't read the instructions, as you can tell!)

avibryant4• 18 years ago

You can always copy and paste from the From row, but this probably isn't obvious.

huhtenberg• 18 years ago

> where to take this from here

Your only goal should be to try and sell yourselves to Microsoft as quickly as possible.

While clever, the central idea is trivial to replicate. Try obtaining as much of a legal protection as possible. You have a year from your initial public disclosure to file a patent application. This will run you at about 10-15k, but will greatly increase your chances of a technology acquisition. If in doubt about the patent, consider the fact that once a variation of this gets into the next Excel version or a service pack, your customer base will go to zero.

Definitely drop the SaaS model, this is the worst application of it ever. Virtually all business data is confidential, copy-pasting it around random web servers is not encouraged to put it mildly.

It is a nice idea and it is certainly a neat tech demo. Your best bet in my opinion is to try and sell the actual technology bit.

trevorturk• 18 years ago

Looks awesome to me. I'll bookmark it and come back if I have need for it. Thanks!

theantidote• 18 years ago

Really cool. I've been waiting for an easy to use spreadsheet app that would let me do this for a while without having to figure out formulas or vbscript. This looks useful and I'll definitely use it as needed in the future.

What's your business model for this? Are you just doing advertising or are you also offering a rush fee or maybe charging extra for files over 5MB or something?

andrewcatton3• 18 years ago

It almost certainly won't be advertising, though we'll make it easy to get to Dabble DB from here, which seems to be a good way of monetizing traffic. Otherwise, we're pretty open-minded at this point -- I'd be interested in hearing what people think makes the most sense..

mikeyur3• 18 years ago

The business model that makes the most sense to me is to sell the solution to businesses. Companies that deal with a lot of databases and want an easy solution to do mass edits. They probably could have their IT guys write some crazy Excel macro to do a lot of this, but your product is so simple my mom could use it, which is a great thing.

You could keep it as a web service and/or charge to license it to businesses and make residual income off support/updates/installation on their network.

patio11• 18 years ago

I like it.

Suggestion for getting more helpful feedback -- the first post on this thread should have been this:

My name is Avi Bryant and I'm the chief bottle washer at X. We are going to release a product which performs automatic transformations on data, with an easy-to-use interface based on building examples.

For example, let's say you have a data entry team which has painstakingly transcribed 100,000 customer entries over the years. Their phone number field is an absolute mess -- some customers write 4567890, some write 123 456 7890, some write (123) 456-7890, etc. You want this to be consistent. You could either hire a DBA to do some database/regexp wizardry for you, or you could just write a single example of the proper canonical phone number and our software will just work.

For an example, try playing directly with this test data: http://www.example.com/i-go-to-test-data-not-a-video

We would particularly appreciate feedback about ease of use and ...

psyklic2• 18 years ago

He posted the description as a comment which happens to (currently) be below yours.

koraybalci• 18 years ago

I think it's a very handy application, and nice presentation.

Just curious though, why does it have to be a web app? Why not just a plugin to my favorite spreadsheet application, or just a small standalone app that I can use on my PC..

andrewcatton3• 18 years ago

It doesn't have to be, and we've talked about going down one or both of these paths in the future. Doing it web-based is a nice way for us to demo it, though. Also, since it's possible that we'd want to somehow integrate the tech with our main app, doing it on the web is a natural first step.

herdrick• 18 years ago

This is pretty cool.

The amount of data will nearly always be tiny so you ought to just process and display it interactively unless the dataset is huge. And speaking of interactivity, it really needs an 'undo'.

I'd like to read a blog post about the details of how you did it.

nickb• 18 years ago

Cool stuff but I wish I had data that:

1) I could easily paste like that (most of my data is large and too big to be pasted)

2) Since the data I have has been collected under a Privacy Policy, I can't upload it to other sites.

But for small jobs of flipping things around, this is a cool app.

orionlogic• 18 years ago

as nickb stated, you should add a Privacy Policy as soon as possible. People will definitely hesitate do upload their data to an unknown server.

andrewcatton3• 18 years ago

agreed.

cabalamat• 18 years ago

Some random suggestions:

1. the icons that appear under a column when you're editing it should have tooltips so you can see what they mean

2. there should be an undo function

3. it should be able to figure what you mean if you retype as upper-case rather than using the buttons. (Perhaps asking the user "do you want to put it in uppercase"). This is not exactly hard to code, e.g.

    if (toUpper(originalField) == editedField) assumeUserWantsUppercase();

jasonmcalacanis• 18 years ago

ummm.... this is very cool.

markessien2• 18 years ago

Good idea, nice implementation, wrong medium. There is no reason this should be a web application - in a perfect world, I want something like this directly integrated into my database tool, and not have me open my browser and all that.

At the same time, considering that the data work may be large, having this on a server is not too bad of an idea.

What I suggest to you is this - spend a day to make a version of this wrapped in a web browser in a .exe file. Put a price on the .exe, and sell it directly to businesses. It's an easy sell, and it's way more convenient to have a "local" application for a tool like this, than a website.

easyfrag• 18 years ago

Yes please. I work for a Canadian health care provider and I legally cannot upload the data for which I would find your tool useful.

jmackinn• 18 years ago

I think this hits on a big stumbling block for the product. There are a huge number of companies that don't allow the data to be removed from their workstations or servers.

If the product could be implemented as an extension for Excel, similar to Xobni in Outlook, then there is much more potential. There is really no reason for this to be an online app.

sh1mmer3• 18 years ago

If you can put this in an air application wrapper that would be amazing.

I think markessien has a great point. A lot of enterprises don't want their office worker in browsers (however lame that sounds) and may not be comfortable sending you their data.

Having a web app style wrapped in a local framework would allow you to sell to these companies what looks to be a really great product.

That said please don't loose the web version for those of us that realize it's the 21st century already.

tocomment3• 18 years ago

Any tips on how to make such an exe file?

markessien2• 18 years ago

Yes, it takes about 10 minutes using C#. Drag a web browser control to the .exe, call browserControl.navigate(url), and there, you have a native application. Use NSIS for the installer, add some license key routine, and sell your B2B copies for $299 a seat.

sh1mmer3• 18 years ago

Adobe Air does the same thing x-plaform. The is also a mozilla project, I forget the name of, which is like Air but uglier.

netcan2• 18 years ago

I disagree. Somewhat.

Sure this should be part of whatever spreadsheet you are using. I totally agree with that. But it's not. That's the reason someone came up with an external solution.

But why shouldn't it be a web based app? If it works just as well? If you have privacy/legality issues then OK, you need a local app. A local app may also be just as good for many other things. But why is this less suitable to the web then word processing or spreadsheets?

From there on it's just a marketing/distribution issue.

neilk• 18 years ago

I'm not sure this works as a website (the copy/paste/email cycle is probably too much effort for interactive editing.).

But if it was an Excel add-on of some kind I bet you could sell it. Maybe to Microsoft. Or, sell the underlying technology to Google Docs. It's got a wow factor that could inspire upgrades or switching.

Anyway I doubt you hadn't thought of that already. Cool stuff.

mwinters582• 18 years ago

The examples are pretty basic and can be done with 4-5 excel functions and no scripting. Do you guys have any heavier duty examples in the works?

What market are you going after? Soccer moms managing team phonebooks? Entrepreneurs who have other things to worry about than cleaning up data?

It'd be cool to see see prompts that inspire better uses/structure to your data. E.g. if a company is managing their sales pipeline (as in the dabble db 8 min demo), analyze that data further than excel easily allows.. track how the data changes over time to deliver insights that people wouldn't see by just producing graphs. What common trends exist among sales that actually close? How long does a sale stay on the table before closing? Does this vary by salesperson/location?

It makes sense for people who know little about spreadsheets [like my mom who would manually add dashes to dozens of rows :) ], but they may also be the type who wouldn't think to seek out a web app to help them clean up the data.

I'm probably a poor sample b/c I spend 5-6 hours/day in excel (finance @ tech company).

Color-logo feature is sweet!

tomsaffell2• 18 years ago

lol - looks like we wrote pretty much the same comment at the same time..

mwinters582• 18 years ago

haha yup. You win on clarity

tomsaffell2• 18 years ago

I think you're trying to solve a valid problem - i.e. allowing Excel type data to be manipulated/formatted more easily than Excel (or similar tools) currently allow. And I think you have a cool product, but...

But I don't think this is a solution to that problem for most people who have that problem.

My previous job involved a lot of Excel work (so I became fairly good at it) and it also involved interacting with people (often clients) who used Excel occasionally and really werent very proficient at using it. So for simplicity, lets imagine the world of excel users is made up entirely of those two types, and lets call them A and B respectively.

Types As don't need this service - they can do all the things you showed in Excel quickly (using keyboard shortcuts etc), using formatting codes (even though Excel format codes are clunky. eg. SSN format code is: ###-##-####).

Type Bs do need your service. But will they use it? If they use Excel rarely then is it worth the overhead of knowing how to use a separate service (even a simple one)? If they can't figure out how to use Excel codes then are they the type of person who will be interested in exploring new services? (note, this is about the type of person, not about how simple your service is)

OK, so the world of Excel users is not as simple as the A/B world that I describe. There is no doubt another type C somewhere between the two who might value this - but how many of those are there? My gut says 'not many', but I don't have data. Can you describe to me your archetypal customer?

Making this an Excel plug-in might solve this overhead problem somewhat, but even then, the latter issue still remains.

stcredzero• 18 years ago

Google should buy this and incorporate it into Google Spreadsheets.

netcan2• 18 years ago

I am probably type C. I think type C might be quite big.

The type of person who can't program a blog but can & will install a Wordpress if she can find decent instructions because blogger doesn't let her do XYZ.

The type of person who can & will use forum code but can't use html/css.

The type of person that can & will set up a hosted online shop but can't alter the code.

Basically, if the problem exists & the excel solution is not something that you would just come across in excel without knowing, it comes down to what solution you do come across.As an online app, this might have a better chance of being that.

The second thing is this: would you (A) prefer to explain to your clients (B) how to use the excel solution or send them a link to this?

mikeyur3• 18 years ago

604/778 numbers, Vancouver Starup? Can it be?

You guys looking for an intern? lol

avibryant4• 18 years ago

Yeah we're in Vancouver - drop us an email and we should at least grab a coffee.

mikeyur3• 18 years ago

Sounds good - emailed.

13ren• 18 years ago

Business model is the question: (1) Trade sale to spreadsheet makers. (2) Sell a plug-in to spreadsheet users. (3) Or... let users lead you to a problem that only you can solve.

I don't think it's patentable[1]. It's a cute idea, kind of obvious; I'm not sure how well it really generalizes on all the cases that come up in huge datasets. If you continue along this path, you might come up with some patentable detail. I think in the US, you can file up to a year after inventing, so public demos don't destroy novelty (IANAUSAPA).

I think your strength is less the technology than the interface, which is nicely wrapped up and works[2].

You'll get interesting user leads from this demo. Maybe: who is suffering from what problem in what specific context who really needs your help. It's hard to get this market research any other way,

I can't see a really neat or natural way to monetize it - it's just not big enough. But the world's imagination is greater than my imagination. If you stick at it, I think something will come to you. That would be really cool!

[1] a patent isn't for suing people, but to have something to sell to Microsoft or Google etc.

[2] of course, you can improve the GUI further once you know what people need - imperfection is a good thing, because a head start on the competition is worthless when you run out of track.

rksprst• 18 years ago

This is great. Very useful for itunes connect reports since they changed the way they handle dates (went from 20081128 to 11/28/2008) halfway into this month. Now, I can easily change it without going through hundreds of rows.

frazerb• 18 years ago

A good demonstration that excel needs some very-easy-to-use macro-ing capabilities. And perhaps a better business model for this stuff would be to wrap up this functionality as a $20 set of excel macros. There's a healthy market for excel macros - it should do well.

I do this kind of manipulation quite a lot, but use my lovely emacs to do it. snip snip - easy peasy. But I know it's not reasonable to expect regular excel users to use emacs.

davidw• 18 years ago

The "Magic/Replace" thing should be clickable. It's confusing not to have an obvious way to go 'home'. Worse, 'dabbledb' is clickable, and sends me off to some other site. I know that other site is related, but you might want to make that more obvious with 'created with dabbledb' or something like that.

MrFantsyPants• 18 years ago

A common problem with data manipulation is normalizing data in different formats: 5198826788 (519) 822-6238 1 519-454-1234 905 999 1234 +1 905 787-1912 x2234 are all phone numbers. Give me a way to make them all look the same.

sh1mmer3• 18 years ago

Please founders put intro videos on a CDN. If I didn't have an interest in reviewing your site as part of this community, I would have left without trying a thing.

DanielBMarkham• 18 years ago

I would support this as a requirement for reviews. It just makes the entire process much easier for everyone in the community.

mattmaroon2• 18 years ago

No need for a full-on CDN. Even just blip.tv or youtube or something would be great, plus then you get the occasional read from a searcher there.

poshj• 18 years ago

one big undo button to undo the last operation will be nice

thomasmallen• 18 years ago

I didn't much appreciate the video ambush...looks like a solid product though. Good luck.

swdesignguy• 18 years ago

This reminds me of ASAP Utilities for Excel (Windows): http://www.asap-utilities.com/

tocomment3• 18 years ago

Trying to fix a similar problem of how to explore Excel data, I made this XLS to MySQL table utility: http://utilitymill.com/utility/csv_to_create_table

Feel free to include the code in your tool if you want to offer MySQL as another download option when users get their results emailed to them.

(I copied your pasting instructions. I hope you don't mind.)

uuilly• 18 years ago

I could see our shop using this a lot. Thanks! I may even link to it for our customers.

cridal• 18 years ago

Nice solution to a nagging problem. Has a lot of potential for building data transformations for reporting type applications. And it does make sense as a web app if it leads towards the path of "hosted data warehousing" or "data warehousing as a service", where a client deliberately makes a decision and is comfortable with entrusting their data to a third party in exchange for easier path toward some type of reporting/analytical capability. As a matter of fact, I would think about using/licensing it for a system I'm working on...

However, for those advanced use cases (when it's not a one-off), there is a need for saving/editing/copying/versioning of transformations. Are you guys thinking about providing such capabilities?

mattmaroon2• 18 years ago

Where was this 2 days ago when I was using Excel macros to reformat some data pasted from the county assessor's office? This would have saved me a good half hour.

bemmu• 18 years ago

Anyone made one where you could provide some examples and out comes a regexp that does the changes? :)

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