rishabhkaul1

Partykit is a nice open source tool that is trying to make this stuff easier around creating multiplayer applications https://github.com/partykit/partykit - built by ex core react team / cloudflare engineer

There seem to be MANY companies in this space.

One I am aware of is https://www.restack.io/

At the risk of sounding stupid: How is it different from autoGPT or baby agi

Non paywall link: https://archive.is/iefuV

Hey Manoj, creator of the project here.

Both transactional and usage-based subscription are usage based models because the metric you are billed on is tied to usage. In one, there's no minimum cost (think twilio) and in another there's tiers of usage (hence subscription) - like Zapier where you can only buy Zaps in specified blocks. So if you want to use 433 zaps, you will still be billed for 500. So it's kinda like a subscription.

I will try to make this more explicit.

Here's the frontend of this repo: www.usagebased.org

Ok, slack & notion are bad examples because often the entire team is on it by default.

But imagine tools, where there is high aversion to adding more seats unless you're 100% sure. Like CRM & CMS systems, or like Support tools (Zendesk), or shared inbox tools (like Front) or project management tools (Asana) and so many others.

That's interesting. Because that's exactly the behavior we're trying to prevent.

Think of the alternative: - A user uses the product for one hour and they pay the same amount as they would if you use it for the entire month.

I think that's where the cap becomes important. Think of the cap as a traditional user based pricing. Now only in the case where EVERY single user ends up using it VERY actively will they ever pay that amount.

In every other case, they end up paying less, because they're only paying for the value.

So if Slack is today charging $8/user, but instead they change their model to max $8/user, but users who message lesser pay lesser than $8, then it's a fantastic decision commercially. Esp as an org scales.

I think the real issue is that, when you add a new user, you're not really sure if they're going to use the software fully, so you're hesitant adding them (think about buying a salesforce license for a solution engineer). But if someone said "hey, you don't pay the full amount, till they end up using very actively", then you're more likely to invite more people because the risk of racking up costs is lower.

So the hope is also that a pricing like this leads to more experimentation and wider adoption by a customer.

Hey Scott, Rishabh from Appsmith.

Absolutely agree with you. I do think it also depends on the kinds of companies you are seeing. In our case, we realized we have 1 member devs, but also 1000 member teams. And didn't want to drive all the larger teams towards a "contact us" button unless they were really large. So a standard user based pricing (which most of the players in our space have) didn't work for us. That's what led to the cap.

I agree communicating this is a challenge. We're spending multiple iterations on trying to have a good calculator (we're on your 10th iteration now ha!) on our pricing page to try to explain this. Coz once obviously it makes more sense from a budget perspective, but it's not necessarily intuitive. So end up getting questions around how we calculate usage etc etc. So trying to also beef up the FAQ section more.

btw, congrats on Text Blaze!

I didn't quite understand this. Why would the vendor have a problem with this - you mean rising cloud costs?

For the customer the value is ofcourse apparent. They aren't locked into a monthly fixed price. Plus the cap helps drive predictability incase of spikes of usage.

So is your "actual" ads spend in addition to the $5K that goes to the agency as their fees? Or does $5K include ad spend (money paid to google etc)

Hey, congrats on the growth guys! Drop me an email, happy to share some advice around this. I've run small acquisitions for companies and have some specific ideas that can help you guys (ofcourse, its all free advice).

The best case scenario is where you have inbound offers.

But typically all these ideas will revolve around a couple of things: - Figuring out the right mix of companies of companies that will value this - Figuring out the right people to connect with (it's not always corp-dev) and tactical advice around how to reach them - Other creative stuff (like using influencers to your advantage)

rishabhkaul at gmail dot com I am based in London, so similar timezone to you.

Could you clarify your question? Did you mean a newsletter thats focused on "SaaS design"?

- I've seen team based sports be interesting for this. Like here in London, I meet a lot of folks at the cricket club. Atleast 80% of the people turn up 2-3 times a month. And then from where people end up catching up at pubs etc.

- Board games clubs

- I am not sure but maybe certain cohort based courses that involve group accountability? I'd assume if you're in a localized group like OnDeck, YC, or even a humour writing workshop down the road, chances are churn might be low (coz there's an actual cost or opportunity cost) and people are likely to connect to get feedback/accountability etc. This might be a good start to building a relationship - once the course is over, maaaybe you might stay in touch?

The other activity is to involve existing friends (incase they're nearby but don't meet often) to try to do things you like. I've seen a friend do this with Pottery classes on weekends and has been doing this for a while now, but ofcourse could be applied to anything.

If I have 2FA set up, would I still need to change the passwords (despite the leak)?

Oh yes, I've seen those labyrinths! There's one right next to the elevator at Holloway road station, and I just end up ogling at while waiting for the lift to arrive. It's great!

Do check out appsmith.com/pricing , we've tried to be upfront, happy to answer any questions you might have :)

For forgot to mention, Google and Github SSO are part of the Appsmith community edition.

The other thing to also note is that we don't put a limit on the number of users that can be added to the paid plan. This doesn't apply to Tooljet coz it only has custom pricing, but with the other players you will notice that typically you get upgraded to either a higher tier plan or a higher minimum $ commitment, as you add more users, even if you don't want the features of those higher tiers.

Hey! Rishabh from Appsmith here. Thanks for mentioning Appsmith!

Just to clarify, at Appsmith, we offer SSO (OIDC, SAML) in our paid plan (appsmith.com/pricing) - where you pay a maximum of $20/user/month (with many customers paying lesser than that as they add more users). Infact it's the only plan we have. Do check it out.

Whoops, my bad! I stand corrected.

So Retool itself was heavily inspired by a Palantir internal project (https://twitter.com/barrald/status/1550496754335875075?lang=...), and started in 2017 AFAIK. And as was mentioned above there have been other tools like Outsystems, Mendix, Appian for a while, however those were primarily built for an enterprise context and weren't very developer focused.

Appsmith (I work here) started around 2019-2020 and decided to take an open source developer focused stance, because the core philosophy was that open source is a better alternative for internal tools, because they were substitutes for other OSS alternatives (like React Admin, Django, Angular and the likes) and we believed tools built on Appsmith ideally can proliferate across the organization and so it was important to have a model that that a) was easy to try, esp in larger companies (OSS helps there) b) was easy to adopt without worrying too much about the additional cost of every new user you add.

Budibase started around 2018 I think, but became OSS after a few years. There were a few other players like Internal.io as well as vertical specific ones like ForestAdmin, Jetadmin etc.

2021-2022 saw the rise of many other tools in the market, many of which trail their origins back to the Appsmith source code (Tooljet, Superblocks, Openblocks etc) as well as others like Airplane etc - some of these are open source (like Tooljet, Openblocks), while Superblocks is not. This to some extent explains why you're seeing so many companies come out in this space.

Even within the OSS options, there's also a difference in the licenses that each of them use. At Appsmith we use Apache 2.0, which is more permissive than others.

Starting an open source project means that you're ok with commoditizing some aspect of the product (and as a result the industry), which gives developers of these tools to focus on the next bigger challenges, which in turn further the industry.

This is still a nascent industry and there's a lot that each one is learning from the other. For e.g, Retool was a cloud first product for the longest time, and Appsmith (and other OSS tools) invested heavily in the self hosted experience. It was in 2021 after seeing the reaction the market that builders of internal tools prefer self hosting (since you're dealing with sensitive internal data) that Retool decided to offer a self host option (albeit at a steep cost), and I believe they've benefited from that quite a bit. At Appsmith, every day we also learn a lot about the use-cases for internal tools from our customers and users as well as from the other players in this space.

The user today is often still confused about what these tools are useful for (since internal tools themselves are custom software with endless possibilities), and hence you see a lot of companies in this space trying to educate their users on how to use these platforms and how they can integrate it in their existing workflows etc.

Thanks for mentioning Appsmith (I work there)! We've been busy at work!

I think a mix of your suggestion + https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32994453 might be good, no?

Well I think there's a bit going on here:

A bit of background: I actually applied to OnDeck, and spoke to their team, was about to do one of their programs and decided to not do it at the last minute. Know several folks in the OnDeck team well, as well as more than enough people that have gone through their program (including advised them in specific circumstances to actually go through it).

OnDeck definitely started as a good initiative and definitely is valuable. It's not about "meeting interesting people", but more like "become part of a club". Now the latter is different because its the same as joining YC or a university. The "education" is important, but often not the most important part. It's like come for the content, stay for the network.

The content, I am sure one can get elsewhere, but the network if done right is great. For folks starting out, or who don't have exposure about a relevant program (say Chief of Staff, or Founders), this is actually great and worth the price. Secondly, for a one time fee, you get to become part of the network for life (again, similar to things like YC, universities), and so that is definitely valuable.

Whether that can be replicated in other ways, and can one do it manually? Ofcourse. But you can see how it takes longer, because you'd have to "prove" to the other person that connecting with you is worth their time as opposed to two Ondeck Alums catching up wthout any agenda coz of the pre-assigned credibility of them being part of the same program.

The bigger challenges with programs like OnDeck is, does the experience of the alums change as the program scales. Coz there's definitely enough people from the first year or so, who will vouch for the value the program provides (I personally know atleast 50+ such people). The issue is whether that value trickles down to people who will join today. It's the same argument around, does it make sense for someone to join YC today.

And the answer to that is tricky.

If you already have a network and are doing something the second time, then you probably don't need it. Like if you're a second time founder, having raised money earlier, you don't really need YC or OnDeck or anything of that sort. But if you're an engineer who've got NO idea of how startups work, OnDeck is a great place to find your first few customers, get your first few investors, be part of a community and have a directory of people globally that you can reach out to.

I'd have loved to see this model evolve, esp if they figure out how to maintain that "closeness" within the alums as the years go on.

You might want to try Appsmith for the internal tools use-cases. It's open source with a big community and a lot of features that are part of the OSS edition that you'd end up paying quite a bit for once your Retool credits run out (I work there).

Also, hear you on Paddle. Fees are quite high, but we found them easier to set up than Stripe.

Google Analytics was a pain to use.

At Appsmith, we use Plausible, which is laughably simple (and open source too).

Thanks a lot Chase for mentioning Appsmith.

Btw, here's a tutorial for hooking up Supabase, n8n and Appsmith together: https://www.appsmith.com/blog/the-modern-stack-to-build-inte...

Plausible is pretty awesome too, we use it and are very happy!

That's cool. Have known the founder and liked their product and seemed relevant hence suggested.

Do check out Appsmith (https://github.com/appsmithorg/appsmith), I work here and we're an open source low code framework for building internal applications. We haven't really thought about the accounting use case, but now that you mention it, it could be super interesting (we've ofcourse had a lot of users building for HR, IT, Sales & Marketing use cases, other than the support).

Btw, on an unrelated note, I'm Kashmiri too :)

Do check out Causal.app , looks like this use case might be interesting there.

Yea, long time user for Hubspot. Had moved on from them in my previous startup because it didn't have lead to account matching and so wasn't suitable for ABM type stuff. But I see that they've recently implemented that, so all's good.