truetraveller

Are you kidding me? I gave it a spin, and it's solid. That's crazy, I'm impressed!

Great job! How long did this project take total? How much percent is AI generated?

What's the best way to contact someone about to get real feedback on a paid app / SaaS? Give them a free license? Mention something specific about them, so they knew you actually cared enough to check out that person and manually write the email?

Love the monetization idea. Something like this might actually be the future.

Your estimate of "6-7 month project for a 9 FTE team" was probably waaay off. I mean, what is this mobile app? Without even seeing your app, I would say 2 months TOPS with 2 devs. So, the "AI" version is really not that much better, and probably even worse.

Could you do the math for the raw material cost of 355ml?

Moose here, congrats! This is the real "firebase alternative", not Supabase. Supabase is good, but it's just hosted Postgres + user login. People who are asking "why would I need this" don't get how difficult scalable data storage is with user permissions. Would absolutely recommend this if it's good. Been in this space for ~7 years, and made a high-perf realtime DB as well. Will contact you guys directly. Some concerns for everyone's benefit:

1) Transparency on pricing: This builds confidence. Need to know exactly what I pay for additional egress/ops (read/write). "unlimited" is not sustainable for the provider (you). For example, Firestore has detailed pricing that makes scaling sustainable for them. see https://cloud.google.com/firestore/pricing.

2) Transparency on limits: Req/s, max atrributes, max value length, etc. What about querying non-local non-indexed data (e.g. via server-side call), that's costly for you guys. So, what's the limit?

3) Simpler code in the docs/examples overall. Currently, they're not bad, but not great. For example, change the "i" used everywhere to "inst" or "idb". Assume dev is a noob!

4) Change simplify/terminology used. This is probably the most important, but hardest thing. Internally, keep the same triple structure. But dev just cares about tables/key/val. Or tables+rows. Namespaces/entities are confusing. Also, be consistent/clear. For example: "Namespaces are equivalent to "tables" in relational databases"..Perhaps you meant "namespaces are just a list of tables/entities"..slighly different, but far clearer I think? "Attributes are properties associated with namespaces"...I though attributes are associated with entities? Please keep in mind, I am completely new to InstantDB, so need to study the architecture more.

5) Simplify docs BIG TIME. And add an API REFERENCE (super important). Right now, you have: Tutorials, Examples, Recipes, Docs, Essays. These are all essentially "docs".

6) Simplify the "About" section. Should be 1/10th the size. Right now, it's like a fruit salad of docs, and re-iterating the features/benefits. Instead, put pics of both founders. Maybe investor list. Pics of your office?

SaasS or one-time? Did people pay via native App Store integration? Or pay via the desktop website? App price? Answers would be super helpful. Thanks!

Hey! I have no absolutely no clue who OP (BigBalli) is. I checked this guy's profile out. He's a member since 2012, I don't think he meant bad at all.

I'm personally anti-AI. I checked out his app, and whether vibe-coded or not, it looks very well done. And the app actually has both offline mobile apps + web apps. And it's free? And FWIW, pestpro.app was registered ~1 month ago.

Okay, what about non-streaming vid? I think the vanilla html5 <video> tag is solid, correct?

Congrats, and genius move. And great hustling, show's there's no way out of hard-work.

Reminder to myself to pick an industry that's always gonna have demand. We recently paid ~$200 for a 30 minute visit to seal off like 3 tiny holes around the perimiter of our house because of mice (actual cost of materials ~$5).

Thanks!

Great info, thanks!

£150/mo for each? Do these receptionists actually answer? Has he "tested" them with test calls? Any recommended site to get this?

This I can somewhat agree to. But how much time is saved vs just skimming a support request by an agent? Or, just having filters for "keywords" like "sales" / "purchase" to increase priority?

"Top customer service" and AI do not mix. People hate an AI response more than a late, real response.

Thanks!

Since you know a lot about SOC: is SOC2 Type I (point in time) enough to close enterprise sales? Is it worth getting for a new startup (seems super simple)?

What about enterprise customers / sales?

Ok thanks!

Yup! I always say I'm "Launching now". But now I'm launching for real (God willing)!

Apologies. Was it at all edited by an AI?

Very likely AI slop, very hard to read. Too many indications. HN should have another rule: explicitly mention if article was written (primarily) by AI.

Great work. Tip: Do a comparison with Screen.Studio, the defacto standard. And contact other bloggers who use it.

You perhaps just introduced one more moving part, that you don't understand well. Instead of thinking of a simpler solution.

This is basically my take as well!

Thanks for the insight!

Lol! Didn't mean any harm, just giving my 2cents!

OK, it's not just RESEARCH, but "RESEARCHability" of the source content [in this case code], and also critical analysis ability [not saying you are deficient in anything, speaking in general terms].

In this example, if the 25 files are organized nicely, and I had I nice IDE that listed class/namespace members of each file neatly, I might take 30 minutes to understand the overall structure.

Morever, If I critically analyzed this, I would ask "how many times does this event of summarizing 25 files happen"? I mean, are we changing codebases every day? No, it's a one time cost. Moreover, manually going through will provide insight not returned by LLM.

Obviously, every case is different, and perhaps you do need to RESEARCH new codebases often, I dunno!

Apologies, I changed this within a ~10 minute period. Never knew you would actually see it so fast.