Hi HN!<p>I’m Alex from Parabola (<a href="https://parabola.io" rel="nofollow">https://parabola.io</a>). Parabola is a visual programming tool for creating functional data flows that everyone can use. It’s entirely drag-and-drop, handles data sizes much larger than a traditional spreadsheet, calculates everything live, and can run your flows on a schedule of your choosing.<p>I used to work in strategy consulting, doing data analytics for SMBs and Fortune 500 companies. The amount of time wasted on menial tasks was astounding. Things like cleaning data, generating custom reports, creating human workflows to solve shortcomings in third party tools, etc.<p>Non-technical people have to rely on doing things manually or using fragile spreadsheets that solve only part of their use cases. We don't think everyone should have to learn to code in order to work productively (<a href="https://medium.com/parabola-labs/not-everyone-needs-to-learn-how-to-code-32f47ea7a171" rel="nofollow">https://medium.com/parabola-labs/not-everyone-needs-to-learn...</a>). That’s why we’re building the tools to help people stop wasting so much time on manual processes, and instead focus on their actual core competencies.<p>We’ve made some interesting decisions in the design of Parabola’s visual programming “language”. We’d love to hear what you think and are happy to discuss our thought process in the comments.
Hi HN!<p>I’m Alex from Parabola (<a href="https://parabola.io" rel="nofollow">https://parabola.io</a>). Parabola is a visual programming tool for creating functional data flows that everyone can use. It’s entirely drag-and-drop, handles data sizes much larger than a traditional spreadsheet, calculates everything live, and can run your flows on a schedule of your choosing.<p>I used to work in strategy consulting, doing data analytics for SMBs and Fortune 500 companies. The amount of time wasted on menial tasks was astounding. Things like cleaning data, generating custom reports, creating human workflows to solve shortcomings in third party tools, etc.<p>Non-technical people have to rely on doing things manually or using fragile spreadsheets that solve only part of their use cases. We don't think everyone should have to learn to code in order to work productively (<a href="https://medium.com/parabola-labs/not-everyone-needs-to-learn-how-to-code-32f47ea7a171" rel="nofollow">https://medium.com/parabola-labs/not-everyone-needs-to-learn...</a>). That’s why we’re building the tools to help people stop wasting so much time on manual processes, and instead focus on their actual core competencies.<p>We’ve made some interesting decisions in the design of Parabola’s visual programming “language”. We’d love to hear what you think and are happy to discuss our thought process in the comments.
I’ve seen a lot of attempts at this product, and none have really caught my eye. Looks like you really nailed it. Btw, great marketing website. The use cases section is critical and it’s amazing how many sites miss that.<p>As others have alluded to, the challenge will be when users need to do something non-standard with the data. From your comments, it sounds like everything is built in JS. Is your multitenancy isolated enough that you would be able to build a JS scripting engine? That is, to enable power users to drop in some custom logic when they need to, by writing JS against a simple API.<p>How long ago did you launch? How did you find your first customers, and are they happy with the product?<p>Also would be keen to hear the story of your journey to product/market fit. Did the product always look like this? Did you talk to users as you built it? It’s such an ambitious project, I’d be scared I was building the wrong thing for months while getting to launch. But it seems like you’ve already hit product/market fit, so kudos for that.
This feels like <a href="https://ballerina.io/" rel="nofollow">https://ballerina.io/</a> but for non-programmers, and with SaaS integrations built-in. I've spent so much time moving CSV between systems at an ecommerce company.<p>Congrats on the launch, this looks awesome! Would love to learn more about how it was built.
Obviously this is meant for companies or individuals without developers or technical skills. If you have the technical knowledge a lock in service like this doesn't make much sense.<p>The problem is that someone without a technical background won't initially see the value in a tool like this and I doubt non technical companies/individuals will need as much automation to justify it's price.<p>Edit: I think a much more sensible pricing would have been to offer a desktop app and then charge users for the automations they want online on a consumption basis.
Had to scroll down the page for a while before understanding the point of this: drag-and-drop data transformation pipelines that comes with app integrations at both ends. It’s a great idea!
Love the UI. One bit of feedback: on <a href="https://parabola.io/" rel="nofollow">https://parabola.io/</a> under "Self Documenting and Repeatable" I keep clicking the play buttons in the screenshot.
I understand your business pricing but your personal pricing is quite high at 600/yr for a regular simple user. You may want to consider testing it because consumers are used to 10 per month for the entire adobe photography suite. I know you are just starting up but I think you are going to get less traction at that price point.
This looks really awesome! I would love to build an integration for FormAPI [1], which would allow people to fill in PDFs. We would save the PDFs to Dropbox or send them as an email.<p>I'll send a message on the site chat!<p>[1] <a href="https://formapi.io" rel="nofollow">https://formapi.io</a>
So, SSIS?<p>Where I work we're currently replacing everything that's SSIS with .NET services. I get the idea that taking the code out of it seems easier, but I've found it usually just leads to frustrating limitations. For our latest data migration we're moving things out of some SQL-based ticketing system, online accounting services, and FileMaker into Dynamics 365. Sure, it's not pretty to look at, but we can do some deep manipulation and mapping to existing entities in Dynamics that is frankly a chore in any sort of other migration tool.<p>Ninja Edit:
To handle stuff like scheduling, endpoints, etc we use Azure functions.
What features are better than Zapier? I am curious as I use Zapier for automating stuff I don't want to program especially for marketing releated and this does look like the flow can be more advanced?
Looks great, reminds of Labview a bit. :)<p>Target market is something that UIPath currently addresses is it not?<p>How does Parabola handle authorization issues? Is it mostly through the right API?<p>I am teaching Python to office personnel who balked at the high price of UIPath but might find Parabola pricing easier to accept.
This is awesome. I am currently working with a team to develop a workflow tool with an eventual designer. This is very inspiring.<p>Take a look at Microsoft's logic apps, it is slightly more generalist, and not so focused on data processing but not nearly as polished as Parabola.
Congratulations for the launch. Definitely a good idea. I'm a developer and personally won't need this, but I'll definitely suggest this when I think this could replace some "real coding".
This is pretty much exactly what was supposed to be the main product of a startup I worked with some three years ago. Unfortunately the founders had unrealistic ideas about funding and the work required.
Does this all run as some user's ID? Is it storing/managing credentials for them?<p>RPA tools seem to be all the rage, but questions around accountability, auditability and other security aspects still stand out.
Great idea - especially for non-programmers.<p>The question I have is - can it outperform the command line?
(see <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17135841" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17135841</a> for more)<p>I almost always use awk/mawk for such things.