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I am creating a test app that record and replay user's actions on web apps, so I have to deal with many low level html/js behaviors, boy was I surprised when I found out those quirkiness she talked about and many others during development.

For example, if you have a <form> with a text field (input[type=text]) and a submit button, if you hit 'Enter' in the text field, you get a submit event, nothing surprising. But did you know you also get an artificial click event on the submit button, before the submit event?

Now what if you don't have the submit button? Then hitting the 'Enter' key would still generate a submit event, but without any artificial click event now.

OK, what if you want to have two textfields now (and still no submit button)? Then hitting 'Enter' would...you guessed it, NOT generate any submit events. No submit event, no artificial click, not even moving the focus from one text field to the other.

But what if you have a non text base input (color, date, range, etc) and hit 'Enter' on it? Yes, you get a submit event, but ONLY if you have a submit button. Otherwise no, even if you have just a single non-text based input.

And all these are just for Chrome. Other browsers behave somewhat differently.

  Who is your market with this?

But like you said, since developers have other options, I am not sure if the value proposition is high enough to make this into a viable business model. Another possible kind of customers would be those that doesn’t have the technical still, but need to either validate their websites, or provide a way to validate their websites to someone else, like in your example 1 and 2. The problem is, I am not sure where and how to target this niche of market to focus my marketing on, as it seems they could be in many different industries.

This is part of the reason I asked the original question, if I focus on developers, is the app good enough for developers to find it useful? or do I need to spend more weeks to add more features? If I focus on nontechnical users, where and how should I target them? If you have any suggestions, I definitely like to hear them.

(for your example 3, there are already better tools like import.io, so I don’t think I will repurpose my app toward that usage for now.)

Thanks.

Hi, Kevin and Sam,

I am the founder of https://ManualTest.io. My app automates manual testing. It generate and run integration tests by recording and replaying users' actions on their websites. Manual testing is still being used everyday (by developers or not), so this could be a huge time saver for them.

My app is recently available on the Chrome Web Store, it only got a few users, despite having quite positive feedbacks. My question is, I am not sure the lack of users is because (1) I haven't done enough marketing/SEO/etc to get it in front of people, or (2) because I need to build more features before users would find it useful enough to try, or (3) it is just not something users want.

If its (1), I should stop coding and start focusing on letting people know about my product. If it is (2), I have a few very useful features that are still waiting to be done, but they could take at least weeks to complete. Without enough initial users, I am not sure which features users want most, or if the current set of features is enough for now, so I should focus on letting users know about it (so it is (1)).

Thanks!

A quote from pg that, I believe, says more or less the same thing as the author did, and incidentally kind of apply to your coffeeshop example: "That difference is why there's a distinct word, "startup," for companies designed to grow fast... To grow rapidly, you need to make something you can sell to a big market. That's the difference between Google and a barbershop. A barbershop doesn't scale. For a company to grow really big, it must (a) make something lots of people want, and (b) reach and serve all those people. "

I think the author is describing the vision a startup should have, even before it starts tackling the problem its trying to solve.

Using your coffeeshop example, if the owner's goal is to, one day, change the way people drink their coffee (in a better way that the owner believes), then yes, this vision is worth pursing, and he/she might need to start out as a corner cafe at first. If the owner's goal is to have his/her own corner cafe and have a stable income from it, then its not a startup.

But, as you said, "a huge number of people" and "augment the human condition in a meaningful way" is pretty vague wording, but the intend/meaning of his statement seems reasonable to me.

Foreign espionage is arguably more damaging than a government possibly violating its own constitution and betraying the values its country is founded upon?

There always was, and will always be, other countries spying on you (and each other), but once the rights of the people are given up to the authority, it is very hard to take it back.

I hold the prospective that the freedom and prosperity of US are more or less based its foundation on its constitutions and the values it was founded on. It is very hard to agree that foreign espionage would be more damaging to the US as you described.

if those businesses see values in "moving sideways", and in the process sabotaging your network, wouldn't they have taken your clients anyway, even without the benefit of breaking your company?

if they don't see the value in it, even if they know what you are doing, isn't it unlikely that they would waste money just to crush a would-be competitor?

Unless you are saying what your company is doing is so creative and valuable but yet no one has thought of it before. But IMO a main point of the article is that this is highly unlikely, and even if it is the case, your competitors aren't seeing the value in it, just like how google was in the plain sight of yahoo for so many years. i m not saying you should actively let them know what you are doing, but it probably wouldn't be a big deal even if they get wind of it.