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Launch HN: Stacker (YC S20) – Create Apps from Airtable or Google Sheets

292 pointsby skellystudiosalmost 5 years ago
We&#x27;re Michael and Sam, co-founders of Stacker (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;stacker.app&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;stacker.app&#x2F;</a>). We let anyone create custom software powered by data from Airtable or Google Sheets, with a nice UI, auth and rich permissions. Think Internal Tools, Custom CRMs, and Customer Portals.<p>We&#x27;ve been working for ages on building something that lets non-technical people create software without code. We spent about 2 years building a really powerful and complicated drag-and-drop no-code app builder. It was really awesome, it could create social networks, SaaS, marketplaces – the works. The only problem was: nobody could use it unless they were already a developer! It turned out that even though you weren&#x27;t technically writing any code… you were still actually programming, still thinking like a developer. Just with a really inefficient set of no-code tools.<p>We (eventually!) realised that non-devs were already building systems anyway; but instead of code they were using spreadsheets.<p>Spreadsheets are basically the world&#x27;s most used database&#x2F;IDE. They&#x27;re great for modelling and managing data. But, if you&#x27;ve ever used someone else&#x27;s sheet you&#x27;ll know that they&#x27;re not the best way to interact with the data. Giving someone access to your spreadsheet is pretty much like giving someone access to your SQL database – they won&#x27;t understand it, they might see more than they should, and they might break the whole thing.<p>Stacker is basically an app layer on top of spreadsheet. We let you set up a nice UI, add user login, and limit who can see&#x2F;do what using permissions. We also handle abstracting away the limitations of the APIs of Airtable&#x2F;Google Sheets so that the whole thing stays performant.<p>The main two cases where people find Stacker useful are:<p>1. they want to create internal tools that are easier to use&#x2F;understand<p>2. they want to allow customers&#x2F;partners access to some of the data in their sheet without giving the whole thing<p>We&#x27;ve been really excited that most of our early users have been non-technical people who hadn&#x27;t ever thought they could create software for their business. People have been creating marketplaces, CRMs, resources centres, order-tracking portals, ERPs… lots of stuff. We&#x27;re a monthly SaaS model starting at $39pcm – we handle all the hosting, infrastructure, and even SSL certs etc.<p>Right now we support Airtable and Google Sheets, but we&#x27;d like to expand out to include other data sources like SQL databases, APIs and even MS Excel(!).<p>Underneath the hood we&#x27;ve got a bunch of technology from our original web app builder – a python backend that creates on-the-fly endpoints depending on the user&#x27;s data model, and react frontend that can flexibly layout the app. Then on top of that, we&#x27;ve got a service that analyses the schema from your sheet and automatically creates your initial Stacker app.<p>I&#x27;d love to hear what use cases you can think of for this, either internal or external, and what you&#x27;d like to see it do in the future! Check it out here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;stacker.app" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;stacker.app</a><p>p.s. History update – you might remember us from when we did a very early alpha launch as &quot;Toga&quot; a few months back (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=22746663" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=22746663</a>). Thanks to everyone who helped us iron out all the bugs from that!

39 comments

omarhaneefalmost 5 years ago
I&#x27;ve seen so many of these, and I think they should all be very successful but the only time I&#x27;ve seen them work is when they are wrapped in a service&#x2F;consulting organization.<p>The reasons for this may be:<p>1. Even when the coding is free, the problem understanding part is not<p>2. The amount of work to be done to implement a new process or system is non-trivial, but temporary, so you need temporary help.<p>3. Probably another 3-5 reasons I haven&#x27;t thought of.<p>In any case, it seems you would have to pitch your solution to a consulting firm. If you get one of the top 5, you&#x27;re golden. However, they might prefer the real expensive enterprisy solutions. You&#x27;re better of pitching to larger but lightweight organizations.<p>One way to do that is have training around learning typical client processes, typical solutions, and how to implement them. Or how to recognize issues. (Making this up: look at the balance sheet, if inventory is building up, turnover is low. You want a process to push back the order time and link it to sales.)
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Mertaxalmost 5 years ago
Design your own database&#x2F;no-code solutions ironically seem to appeal more to software developers than it does to end-users. Devs and tech-savvy-power-users are looking for ways to automate app development. End-users are more likely to try to find the exact solution that targets their specific niche--not a design my own database&#x2F;no-code solution.<p>This is not necessarily a bad thing, there is still a problem here to solve. The approach is likely in who you market to and understanding who your market is. As much as you might think end-users are your market, they really aren&#x27;t. Even if end-users are given the tools so they <i>can</i> design their own apps, a lot of them don&#x27;t <i>want</i> to. They&#x27;d rather have IT do that for them. IT on the other hand, would love to have things that makes it easier for them to automate quick CRUD apps for all the internal business operations that have to be dealt with, especially at enterprise levels. This is why SalesForce and JIRA succeed and other too generic design your own database solutions targeted at end-users fail. As much as people love to hate SalesForce and JIRA for their enterprise-y ways they are making a lot of money doing what they&#x27;re doing.
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vadorequestalmost 5 years ago
I&#x27;ve done some R&amp;D during 4 months and I&#x27;ve chosen Stacker as our main CMS&#x2F;Back-office for building a SaaS B2B product.<p>Here is our list of requirements:<p>- Providing a backoffice to our customers, where each user can connect to its own tenant and access its tenant&#x27;s data only.<p>- The backoffice must be generated automatically from a data structure (db schema for instance)<p>- An API must be generated automatically from the data structure (allows to consume the data from web apps, mobiles, etc.)<p>- Ideally, this API would be a GraphQL server because that&#x27;s what we use already.<p>- Advanced permissions and roles for internal users, basically need to configure who can view which tables, or has update&#x2F;delete permissions on which tables. It must be flexible and non-blocking for our business evolution&#x2F;future needs<p>- The backoffice needs to be flexible about UI components&#x2F;views so that we can create our own workflows, views and components.<p>- Theming capabilities of the backoffice, per tenant, would nice to have.<p>- Also, my goal is to have as little to manage as possible, I&#x27;d prefer to use a managed cloud version over a custom &quot;have-to-install-and-maintain&quot; one if possible<p>I&#x27;ve tried many others, GraphCMS, Directus, Frappe, Django Jet, Strapi, and studied tons of other. Stacker is the only one who is flexible enough for our use case.
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maxwinalmost 5 years ago
I feel like these no-code companies are a bit ahead of their time and focusing on the wrong audience. Instead of focusing on end user&#x2F;business user, they should focus on developers. Please create tools (code or not) that make it really easy and fast to create CRUD apps for developers. There hasn&#x27;t been good ones available. Empower developers first. Last time I check, no business user would want to create an app no matter how easy it is.
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Tade0almost 5 years ago
Here&#x27;s an open-source attempt at something similar:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;ryxcommar&#x2F;fullstackexcel" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;ryxcommar&#x2F;fullstackexcel</a>
mmastracalmost 5 years ago
I keep wanting to love Google Sheets as a building block for creating rich applications, but Apps Script is so painful to use and my complex sheets are almost always full of cells that are stuck at &quot;Loading...&quot;<p>If you can solve the former I would be grateful. Solving the latter is a much bigger challenge.
ape4almost 5 years ago
I remember another Stacker <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gunkies.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Stacker" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gunkies.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Stacker</a>
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eastonalmost 5 years ago
So, what makes your system cooler than Glide, another YC company? Is the primary differentiator not relying on Google Sheets as much (which is good, since I think Excel is a lot more common in large enterprises), or..?<p>(<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.glideapps.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.glideapps.com&#x2F;</a>)
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replwoacausealmost 5 years ago
Yikes, just noticed that your first two paid plans have branding. I find that objectionable. If I am a paying customer why am I being forced to advertise as well? I wonder if I am alone in that thinking. I have never priced a SaaS but as a customer that puts me off. Otherwise it looks pretty cool.
cheezalmost 5 years ago
When reading these comments, remember: these arent your target customers
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Legogrisalmost 5 years ago
This reminds me of a what I did for a friends app project to give them the tools they needed, allow them to iterate quickly, and minimize need for backend engineer involvement (use-case: frontend smartphone app, data admin of hierarchical data by non-technical team members):<p>Using Firestore as main datastore, exposed to app by stupid Cloud Function. Backend admin is done through Google Spreadsheets, using a custom script that syncs each spreadsheet to an entity type. The only required&#x2F;static fields are the &quot;relational&quot; columns that maps parents&#x2F;childs. Apart from that they can add&#x2F;remove&#x2F;rename columns as they want, which maps to JSON fields in the API output. All values are JSON serialized.<p>With Airtable, the JSON can be abstracted away from the user.<p>After the initial setup, they have been working and iterating on it for months now and the frontend app can do all the changes they want in terms of data and all it takes is editing the spreadsheet.<p>This is obviously not suitable for when&#x2F;if the product takes off and starts scaling, but for the hack it is I found it ideal at the exploratory stage. No need for any kind of CRUD app, teaching new tools, or involving backend&#x2F;db admin for schema&#x2F;API changes.
las3ralmost 5 years ago
Hard to complete with the likes of Microsoft who offer PowerApps for &#x27;free&#x27; in their 365 product catalog. I&#x27;ve seen previous selfproclaimed excel ninjas build whole (internal) business apps with PowerApps to get rid of the excel sheets. Upside for me is that since it&#x27;s all in the 365 ecosystem it&#x27;s all covered with our security policies.
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darkwateralmost 5 years ago
I&#x27;m thinking at some departments in my company which heavily rely on Google Sheet for their under-cover development needs - basically when they are not given any dedicated developer time - and this is both awesome (gives them freedom to tinkle&#x2F;experiment) and scary (gives them freedom to mess it up) at the same time, so I feel a bit divided :)
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ebfe1almost 5 years ago
Interestingly, I had the need to make a spreadsheet available as an API and ended up using very simple appscript to archive this a few days ago. I shared it in my blog here, perhaps it might be useful for someone here.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.ebfe.pw&#x2F;posts&#x2F;sheet2api.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.ebfe.pw&#x2F;posts&#x2F;sheet2api.html</a>
brianbreslinalmost 5 years ago
Wow, my first thought was &quot;I love this idea.&quot; second thought was &quot;holy crepe this is pricey.&quot;<p>I think we need to see more about the interface for building an app and such. Bubble and others in your space or even Glide your direct competitor are better about explaining how the build process works.
cascaalmost 5 years ago
Stacker is on my shortlist of no code services to try once I&#x27;ve finished scaffolding in Airtable. Others are Bubble (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;bubble.io" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;bubble.io</a>), Boundless (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.boundlesslabs.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.boundlesslabs.com</a>) and Webflow (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;webflow.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;webflow.com&#x2F;</a>).<p>Stacker looks nice, but why is it better than the other options that have been around for a long time? At $349&#x2F;app&#x2F;mo (or $3480&#x2F;app&#x2F;yr) it seems more expensive than the others but perhaps the value is there.
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vayyalaalmost 5 years ago
Really cool tool. A few reasons I&#x27;m excited about it:<p>- Even though I&#x27;m a dev, I find myself hating the maintenance of internal tools<p>- I looked through my GSuite and realize that I&#x27;m already using sheets to build micro apps. Each spreadsheet I create is a basic tool for collaborating around data. Adding a meta layer on top of it to enable things like permissions + better UI is a totally natural next step. I think there&#x27;s a bit of an education piece to get spreadsheet users to realize that they&#x27;re building micro apps, but once that aha moment happens, I think the value prop of stacker is really clear.<p>Excited to see where you all go :)
caogecymalmost 5 years ago
This reminds me of Azuqua[1], which has its owning implementation of cloud table that could be used as persistence layer for custom build applications.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;azuqua.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;azuqua.com</a>
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tylermenezesalmost 5 years ago
FWIW we used Airtable to power one of our sites (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;labs.codeday.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;labs.codeday.org&#x2F;</a>) and it was a huge mistake. Airtable has at least one hour-long downtime every month during the middle of the workday.<p>(The API was also really awful, e.g. bool is `true`&#x2F;`undefined`, never false, you can&#x27;t query table schemas, etc. But I imagine this app abstracts some of that away.)<p>Anyway I can&#x27;t imagine building an app on top of Airtable, of the options I would 100% choose Google Sheets.
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mNovakalmost 5 years ago
Personal opinion--I like the pre-cooked templates, and would love to see more of common trivial SaaS products. Things like timekeeping or inventory management for instance. That would make it feel easier to justify, since it essentially replaces one or more things we&#x27;d already be paying for, rather than the abstract notion of &quot;we&#x27;ll create new efficiencies, somewhere&quot;.<p>It could even go the third party marketplace route, similar to what you see with quite popular wordpress themes and plugins.
samblralmost 5 years ago
Congrats on the launch.<p>How do you handle latency to google sheets or airtable APIs - these are not as responsive right ? Does it affect performance of stacker ?
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charlesdanielsalmost 5 years ago
One thing I wonder -- Google Sheets has relatively restrictive limits on the amount of data you can have per sheet. I think something like 400k cells? What happens when a customer scales up to the point that their data doesn&#x27;t fit anymore? I guess maybe users at that scale can afford to just buy a bespoke CRM solution &#x2F; hire a dedicated programmer?
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janhenralmost 5 years ago
Just fyi: On Firefox Mobile, the menu text (white) disappears into the background (white).
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2molalmost 5 years ago
Looks good at first glance. What are the auth options? In an enterprisey context SSO can be quite important, and I feel like a lot of hosted apps could really benefit from some form of Active Directory integration.
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AznHisokaalmost 5 years ago
Does this work with dynamic data and dynamic inputs in Sheets?<p>For example I have a sheet where users can enter in thing on custom inputs and it loads data from an API Into the spreadsheet.<p>I would like to replicate this functionality in an app.
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ngoel36almost 5 years ago
Does anyone have a comprehensive list of all the services targeting this market? I&#x27;ve used Glide and find it &quot;ok&quot;, and I&#x27;ll try Stacker, but I&#x27;d love to see a &quot;best&quot; list...
myself248almost 5 years ago
What happens to my work if my need outlives your company?
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gcatalfamoalmost 5 years ago
Hi, how do you compare with appsheet or retool?
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replwoacausealmost 5 years ago
I’m more interested in the really powerful no-code app builder you spent 2 years building! What happened to that bad boy?
tombotalmost 5 years ago
Hey, where is the data processed? Possible to select UK, EU? and is it possible to sign a DPA with you?
sandGorgonalmost 5 years ago
Does it enable functionality where I register&#x2F;signup for things ?<p>Like an Airbnb for example?<p>What about Stripe integration?
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projektfualmost 5 years ago
Why not use a foxglove in the logo for Digitalis? Sorry, bike shedding, I know.
alex_galmost 5 years ago
Just came here to point out the use of the Forrst logo in your demo app...
kleneralmost 5 years ago
Your service looks really nice with a clean design. I will give it a try.<p>Best of luck
weddingbirdalmost 5 years ago
and there&#x27;s also this hatchling trying to do the same thing <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pory.io" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pory.io</a><p>Looks like they launched in May this year.
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jneubergeralmost 5 years ago
Congrats on the launch!
MaxHoffalmost 5 years ago
Nice stuff.<p>Check also out openasapp.com
KrYpT0Nvirusalmost 5 years ago
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eric_khunalmost 5 years ago
I love spreadsheets, especially for crowdsourced information. One of my side project[1] is to gather informations from experiences expats to help new comers that set up in a new country&#x2F;city. They are questions&#x2F;answer you wished had known instead spending months&#x2F;years figuring it out. The collaboration happens in google spreadsheet and it works wonderfully. We have 14+ cities now<p>If you have any experience in your city, feel free to fill the spreadsheet[2]<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;travelhustlers.co&#x2F;cityfaq&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;travelhustlers.co&#x2F;cityfaq&#x2F;</a><p>[2] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;docs.google.com&#x2F;spreadsheets&#x2F;d&#x2F;1-Lut4zmeDw9z-ikRJPH1nrmXGqt6rYDWGraFYUGnPUk&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;docs.google.com&#x2F;spreadsheets&#x2F;d&#x2F;1-Lut4zmeDw9z-ikRJPH1n...</a>
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