Ask HN: who will buy PG's startup idea #22?

Re:Ask HN: who will buy PG's startup idea #22? by jasonlbaptiste on Thursday October 22, 2009 @05:31PM (#897719)

Don't market it as a "database". That scares people. Don't market it as a spreadsheet either, because they'll think it's for financial number crunching stuff which Excel does well.

Now, ask anyone: do you sometimes use Excel for lists and storing information? Try not to say the database word, but if you're with a techie, they'll understand it fine without being scared. I bet you most will say "yes".

Blist tried doing this, but failed for a few reasons. There is without a doubt a need/market to do this, but it requires such a perfected formula mix. I hope somebody does do it.

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Re:Ask HN: who will buy PG's startup idea #22? by mbrubeck on Thursday October 22, 2009 @05:54PM (#897774)

I worked at blist a year ago. Their original product was an online database/spreadsheet product aimed at business collaboration (like a web-based version of MS Access). Recently they renamed the company to Socrata and now they are focused on helping government agencies publish data on the web using the same basic database/spreadsheet interface.

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Re:Ask HN: who will buy PG's startup idea #22? by mathewgj on Thursday October 22, 2009 @07:40PM (#897951)

hi matt!

ya - my take on web spreadsheets is that there is this awesome combination of a) being really hard to build well, and b) dont solve a specific problem that people want to pay for (applications are too generalized)

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