We're a not-quite-startup that's pivoting. We're looking for feedback on our new product, Dirigible, a programmable cloud spreadsheet.<p><pre><code> http://www.projectdirigible.com/
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Dirigible is a spreadsheet that displays in a browser and calculates on the server. It uses Python both as its formula language and as its (more than) macro language. Our users can run their spreadsheets in parallel across a bunch of servers.<p>It's in free beta right now, we're aiming to start charging for compute time soon (we're using EC2, so will be charging a mark-up on what Amazon charges us).<p>We'd appreciate any feedback at all, but we're particularly interested in:<p>- Ideas about people that might benefit from using it (so far we have thought of bioinformaticians, finance professionals and accountants/actuaries).<p>- Missing features that would prevent you from using it.<p>- How well we're presenting our case.<p>- How smooth the signup process is.<p>Any thoughts would be much appreciated -- thanks in advance!
I love the product, but I have doubts on whether or not you can make this a long term success.<p>>>>- How well we're presenting our case.<<<<p>I think that's the central challenge to your startup. The problem isn't that whether or not dirigible is good (which it is). It's the fact that why should anyone use this?<p>As the average jane I really don't care about using Python in my spreadsheet or that it can contain other objects than just text or numbers. I really don't care. I have Google on one end, Zoho in another corner and something nice from Microsoft that's as cool as the Office on my PC.<p>So, why should I invest time to learn something like this? The website really isn't that clear on the matter and other than terms like that why should anyone move beyond options that work okay for now?
Charging based on compute time makes no sense to me. Not only does it force your customer to guesstimate their required compute time (a function of code they haven't yet written and servers they don't administer), but it also implies that your service offers little more value than the commodity infrastructure underpinning it.<p>I'm far more likely to have advance knowledge of the number of inputs and outputs I'm expecting and to pay more for features. My gut feeling is that the real value in what you've developed is that business types with little programming knowledge can use a spreadsheet based on data automatically imported from elsewhere. They'll be the sort of people very happy to pay more for widgets that simplify using the relevant libraries (your screen-scraping example is excellent) and very uncertain about how many minutes I need (unless I'm doing something very simple on the free plan). If you need to charge more for intensive processes it might make more sense to have it as an abstract bolt-on like Heroku's dynos that can be added on top of the monthly fee.<p>Unrelated aside: for some reason I have to sign in to view one of your examples: /user/tutorial/sheet/1024
Very interesting tool.<p>Two main thoughts:<p>I felt that you could remove the word programmable from 'programmable cloud spreadsheet' - since most people will think that spreadsheets are programmable.<p>I am a little worried that you have only gone half-way to your users. If you are about the cloud and your users understand that, then perhaps you should let them deploy to their own cloud machines, the other alternative would be to not charge per compute time but to charge per operation (line of code).<p>Beyond that you might need to experiment with a couple of things: Try giving an example of how much a small license will buy me, or just giving me an example per compute time. Try letting me just buy buy time so that you can see what I would do with it, and perhaps don't show the number of concurrent servers in the signup page - just making the decision process simpler. Having lots of options means more decisions that a new user will have to go through - it might work for you if they are aligned with your users, but otherwise it might just mean more work for you to do to get it right.
Not going to comment on the usefulness of the product but...<p>1) I love that the website presents a video right away that is calm and clear and explains both the simplicity and the power at the same time<p>2) What you revealed here about the simple fact that you're running right on top of EC2; I think that you should be made clear on the website because it's a trustworthy brand and a transparent business aspect<p>3) The light blue background colour hurts my eyes. It's very intense and sharp and not pleasant background for the white logo.<p>4) What is the logo? I Balloon trapped in ropes? A H2O molecule?
Do you have any plans to license the software to clients, where we could use it on our own servers? The functionality looks great, but I have concerns about proprietary and confidential information.
Hi,<p>I know this is outside of your requested feedback but have you considered adding some vertical business back ends to it.<p>I cannot see why I would want to use your spreadsheet over google apps'. But, if you where to offer built in statistical analysis or say accounting functions, then market it to that user base you may be able to make it stick.<p>Another example would be common functions used to perform land surveys.<p>Just my 2 cents. Probably worth less than that.
* 'Spreadsheet' is a really bad summary of the product. My first impression was 'Great another Office wannabe, <i>NEW</i> with Python', but when I watched the video, I saw it as "effortless desktop supercomputing" .. cool !<p>* Another message that could be given is "wrangling big data the easy way"<p>* Focus the product on the niches you have already identified, all the big boys with the hard numbers to crunch. Do not dilute for the Mom and Pop segment.
love the web interface, it's quite clean.<p>i didn't rtf-faq, but can you do things like import xls and google doc spreadsheets? that would be pretty cool to translate xls macros into python.<p>it would also be cool to have like a side by side comparison of say a common problem that's done in an xls spreadsheet versus this and how much easier it would be to use this.<p>nice work!
Nice. I sometimes wonder why I have to write my formulae as one line into one tiny window when I have a full-HD screen on my desk.<p>The simplest example on your examples page consists of a Python program with a function and a for-loop. Perhaps you could add even simpler examples to pick up spreadsheet users (e.g. just add A1 and B1, giving C1)?
My first thought upon getting into an actual spreadsheet was "I'd use it if it supported Ruby or Javascript". Any plans to support languages other than python?<p>Also, any plans to import spreadsheets from excel/gdocs?
This looks very interesting. Have you looked at Hypernumbers? They are building something similar. YC-funded Skysheet was also working on a web-based spreadsheet but they seem to be still in private beta mode.
Haven't checked it yet, but calculating on the server, in particular with Python as a macro language, sounds like a can of worms: doesn't it make very easy for any malicious user to DoS your server?