Please review my startup:
http://hypernumbers.comWe finally have a ‘quantum of utility’ - a product like a spreadsheet but better at doing some things...
I would love to get your thoughts and opinions on what a native-web spreadsheet should be like - and in which ways hypernumbers meets (or fails to meet) your expectations.
BACK STORY
When I started writing this submission I googled for Paul Graham’s 'Startup Ideas We'd Like to Fund' No 22 - web spreadsheet (http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html) from 2008 – so I could point out we started full time work on it in 2007. Through the miracle of Google I found this article of Paul’s from 2005 (http://www.paulgraham.com/ideas.html) which predates us. I have no idea if I read that article at the time :(
That got me thinking. Reading Paul’s articles today it all seems so simple and obvious, but it took 6 years for me to come to think that thought – and it has taken another 4 years to execute it.
In Web 1.0, I was Chief Technical Architect at if.com – a bank on the internet. There was an anti-pattern around called ‘how come it takes me a day to do this on a spreadsheet, but it takes 10 developers 4 months in Java?’ to which the answer was just a shrug. We had a pile of innovative product designs prototyped in Excel a mile high which we actually just could not implement.
One day I stumbled across the Functional Programming FAQ which used spreadsheets as an example of a Functional Language: Eureka! We left to start our own bank with an offer engine written in an (initially undecided - later Erlang) Functional Language on the 4th September 2001 – turned out not so good...
‘spreadsheetieness of Erlang’ to ‘spreadsheet in Erlang’ took another 5 years...
3 hours sleep, filthy hangover, rural airport in Sweden, yet another failed (Erlang) start-up, depressed, I knocked up the first prototype of hypernumbers in sort of migranetic/hungover ecstasy of coding just to cheer myself up.
Another 4 years later – here we are...
We finally have a ‘quantum of utility’ - a product like a spreadsheet but better at doing some things...
I would love to get your thoughts and opinions on what a native-web spreadsheet should be like - and in which ways hypernumbers meets (or fails to meet) your expectations.
BACK STORY
When I started writing this submission I googled for Paul Graham’s 'Startup Ideas We'd Like to Fund' No 22 - web spreadsheet (http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html) from 2008 – so I could point out we started full time work on it in 2007. Through the miracle of Google I found this article of Paul’s from 2005 (http://www.paulgraham.com/ideas.html) which predates us. I have no idea if I read that article at the time :(
That got me thinking. Reading Paul’s articles today it all seems so simple and obvious, but it took 6 years for me to come to think that thought – and it has taken another 4 years to execute it.
In Web 1.0, I was Chief Technical Architect at if.com – a bank on the internet. There was an anti-pattern around called ‘how come it takes me a day to do this on a spreadsheet, but it takes 10 developers 4 months in Java?’ to which the answer was just a shrug. We had a pile of innovative product designs prototyped in Excel a mile high which we actually just could not implement.
One day I stumbled across the Functional Programming FAQ which used spreadsheets as an example of a Functional Language: Eureka! We left to start our own bank with an offer engine written in an (initially undecided - later Erlang) Functional Language on the 4th September 2001 – turned out not so good...
‘spreadsheetieness of Erlang’ to ‘spreadsheet in Erlang’ took another 5 years...
3 hours sleep, filthy hangover, rural airport in Sweden, yet another failed (Erlang) start-up, depressed, I knocked up the first prototype of hypernumbers in sort of migranetic/hungover ecstasy of coding just to cheer myself up.
Another 4 years later – here we are...