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My second startup; solving the problems from my first startup

Hacker News

My second startup; solving the problems from my first startup

A little history first. Back in Jan 2011 I quit my day job after saving up my $ for a year and began my first startup, a hardware + SaaS business. It was exciting and at the end of 14 months I had a handful of customers but not enough incoming to keep me going so I went back into the workforce full time, running it on the side. Naturally my time is pretty limited. Users kept signing up and I had to constantly print and post them unique welcome forms, direct debit forms, post out monthly invoices etc, the list goes on. The paperwork alone took me hours. I'd have just coded up each form into a batch job if the content on them didn't change so drastically. I needed a mail merge system that worked. So I checked out the offerings from MS and Libre Office much to my dismay. 36 steps, an excel file, stand on a sheet of alfoil and hit merge and you've got your mail merge done hopefully. Finding them not quite capable of doing what I needed I did what any coder with a few spare evenings does and I wrote my own that spat out PDFs from a csv file. I shot the idea past some business connections from startup 1 and got back a lot of positive feedback from. In fact so much feedback that the recurring theme was that they were shouting at me "How do I use this, my secretary/wife/monkey spends hours hand editing our invoices and still half of them are inconsistent. Sell me this now!". I realised hardly anyone except MS Word pro's and well trained office staff actually know how to do a mail merge. Usually not the kind of people you find in a small business. So why not make an app out of it. The spare evenings turned into 6 months and a few banking headaches but finally it's ready for it's first release. www.rocketmailmerge.com Any and all constructive feedback is welcome. I've got plans to put an intro video on the front page when time permits and add some extra features, but I'll see how the feedback goes first before stretching the MVP boundaries too far.

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Indie HackersFits the IH revenue-focused audience · Strong signals: wife · Missing: supports, reddit linkedin, podcasting
97%97% predicted probability of success on Indie Hackers, based on ML models trained on real launch data.
best fitHighest predicted score across all platforms for this description.
Hacker NewsStrong engagement from HN community · Strong signals: ide, io · Missing: https docs, excited, just released
67%67% predicted probability of success on Hacker News, based on ML models trained on real launch data.
nativeThis product was originally launched on this platform.
Product HuntOn track for Day 1 leaderboard · Strong signals: user, code · Missing: mac, agents, macos
62%62% predicted probability of success on Product Hunt, based on ML models trained on real launch data.
TrustMRRFits verified-revenue profile · Strong signals: video, month, monthly · Missing: mobile apps, ios, personal
54%54% predicted probability of success on TrustMRR, based on ML models trained on real launch data.
AppSumoMay struggle as an AppSumo deal · Strong signals: users · Missing: plus, platform, intuitive
30%30% predicted probability of success on AppSumo, based on ML models trained on real launch data.
Acquire.comPre-revenue stage for this audience · Strong signals: saas, recurring · Missing: arr, mrr, revenue
28%28% predicted probability of success on Acquire.com, based on ML models trained on real launch data.
BetaListMay not resonate with beta-testers · Missing: web3, chat, crypto
0%0% predicted probability of success on BetaList, based on ML models trained on real launch data.

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