Show HN: Track and Control Your PDFs

The only two questions that matter: 1. Why is the PDF reader running active or remote content without prompting? 2. What PDF readers do not respect my privacy?

I was CEO and co-founder of doxIQ (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.crunchbase.com&#x2F;organization&#x2F;doxiq" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.crunchbase.com&#x2F;organization&#x2F;doxiq</a>), a similar product. We were acquired by Nitro, another PDF software company, after a couple of years. DocSend started around the same time as us and has become the standard for final format document tracking.<p>My suggestions:<p>- read analytics are valuable, but it&#x27;s hard to get people to pay for that alone given how many other products offer it for free<p>- pick your target user persona (SMB vs enterprise) and focus on making them happy<p>- focus on integrations with other systems that your target persona uses, like CRM&#x2F;marketing automation&#x2F;email&#x2F;etc<p>- ignore shiny object syndrome. you&#x27;ll be tempted to add more analytics tools or insights to &quot;add more value.&quot; while YMMV, i&#x27;ve found this to be a waste of time.

Can’t seem to find any information which PDF readers are supported (read - that fetch external resources without explicit user’s consent). I suspect that not that many...<p>Edit - in fact, the site badly needs “How it works” section, because otherwise it reads like yet another “self-destructing emails” type of product.

Seems like a good tool for professors at universities. For some classes my professors send out quizzes along with (mandatory watch) lecture videos (3-4 min) long and they track how much of it have you actually watched. Mostly to see if a student is actually putting up effort or simply copying.

Hi,<p>my name is Wiktor. Together with my friend Tom, we built HelpRange, tool to help you track and control your PDFs. What do you think about the idea? I would love to get feedback!<p>Best, Wiktor