5 ms·

Leftronic (YC S10) Dashboards Optimize Your Data Displays

61 points by bwaldorf 16y ago

dongle 16y ago
Before we joined Y Combinator, my co-founder and I had plans to build a Panic-style status board. Then we realized that status boards were not our core competency and we dropped the board completely to focus on our primary task at hand. I love that I can pay Leftronic for a fully customizable, fantastic-looking board – this way we can make our product and track it, too! BTW, I've seen one of these boards in person and they're really slick. I can think of a hundred ways these could be hugely motivating (have a dial tick down based on bug-counts, have a meter showing avg user engagement, etc).
- sonofabell 16y ago
  Thank you very much for your vote of confidence!
lachyg 16y ago
What does one of these cost on average? Are they affordable to the average startup guy?
- maxawaytoolong 16y ago
  I have a nearly identical startup on the east coast but it's more of a side business at the moment. Almost any good programmer has the chops to make one of these, it's just really hard to turn it into a business. Pricing is the hardest part. So... I'm guessing they aren't going to let you know. As far as the average startup guy, it's probably not affordable. I only sell to places I know have money to burn.
  - wensing 16y ago
    Almost any good programmer has the chops to make one of these Except the making it beautiful part, right?
    - maxawaytoolong 16y ago
      I hope so. My background in art and design is my only competitive advantage.
      - inovica 16y ago
        Whats your URL :) ?
    - lachyg 16y ago
      Checkout www.geckoboard.com - made by a guy here - it rocks.
- jyotindra 16y ago
  Yes definitely, we are going to make it affordable for startups. We want everyone be able to use our dashboards.
statictype 16y ago
The article is short on details. Does Leftronic provide hardware + software or just software? Does it run on the company's network or via the internet?
- seancron 16y ago
  From their description on their website (http://leftronic.com/ http://leftronic.com/): "Leftronic develops web-based visualization software optimized for large screen displays. Our API makes it easy - just push individual data points and our application tracks, parses and presents the data." It looks like they provide an API for you to submit your own data, and then they make a personalized web application dashboard that you can display on a display.
- jyotindra 16y ago
  We make software that drives the displays. The dashboards are fully customizable through our website. We have a simple API for collecting the data that needs to be monitored.
  - ajju 16y ago
    What kind of hardware displays do you support? Is there a min or max resolution and display size?
    - sonofabell 16y ago
      We are hardware-agnostic. Our visualizations are inherently vector-based, so screen size/resolution will not be an issue.
      - ajju 16y ago
        Cool! Is the "hundreds" quoted in the article, per month or per year?
      - nreece 16y ago
        vector-based Is that Flash, HTML5 or just vector images?
Timothee 16y ago
I'm not quite sure what they're offering besides "software that makes it easy for companies to aggregate data" and “People pay hundreds per screen for our visualizations.” I could imagine that it's a subscription-model for the web service that gathers and displays the data? But hundreds per screen sounds high Is the professional services part a significant one? The mention of YCombinator, Cloudkick and WePay make it sound like they setup the whole thing. Anybody has more details on that?
- wensing 16y ago
  hundreds per screen sounds high Given the value of seeing your key metrics in a continuous display, hundreds seems low to me.
atldev 16y ago
We have a number of big screens hanging in our office. We loop an ugly powerpoint with stale messages. Regularly, I walk by the screens and wish we had a Panic-style dashboard for key metrics. Of course, we could build our own, but we always seem to have more important priorities (like our own products). Even thought about a startup opportunity in this space- if we would like it, we're probably not alone. I've signed up for the beta and I'm very interested in the product details. Wish them the best of luck.
- jyotindra 16y ago
  Thanks. We received an overwhelming response and we are actively sifting through all the signups. Please be patient and stay tuned for a response from us.
dotBen 16y ago
I spent some time working on a dashboard project (with the view to it becoming a start-up). I wanted to blend Panic style eye candy with something you could throw in a load of api keys (pivotal tracker, git hub, Google analytics, etc) I abandoned the project mainly because the size of the addressable market is too small. I don't think Startups will spend $hundreds a month on this and there are only so many companies even interested in dashboards.
- wensing 16y ago
  The addressable market is small? Doesn't every Fortune 500 company use dashboards in their operation and control centers? The market is ripe.
  - kapitti 16y ago
    I've seen lots of BI tools used for creating dashboards in Fortune 500s given that most of the data is secure in random databases, mainframes, etc - the most popular of late is QlikView.
    - pmjoyce 16y ago
      As a BI tool QlikView is a different animal to what's being proposed here. QlikView is a fully interactive BI tool designed for use on the desktop. Dashboards like Leftronic are designed to show key metrics from all over the business to a wide audience either via a large screen or a secondary or tertiary display on the desktop. Once it's set up and operating users shouldn't need to interact with it a great deal other than glancing up to check on part of the screen they're interested in. Much like you would use the dashboard of your car when you're on the road.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - dotBen 16y ago
    Fortune 500 companies tend not to use Pivotal Tracker, Git Hub, etc. The money they spend is because they want custom integrations but that's not the company I wanted to launch. I wanted to build an 'off the shelf' dashboard you plugged in yourself. And it is true that many startups don't care about dashboards - I'm surprised at the number I know who don't really have any visualization or tracking of their velocity, Constant Integration failures (if they even do CI), unit test fails, code commits, server health, etc.
pmjoyce 16y ago
Welcome to the space guys, it looks like a great product, I've signed up for the beta and I'm really looking forward to checking it out. What follows is by no means meant as a slight on the creators of the product, it looks like they've done a sterling job and I wish them every success. I launched an almost identical product (in terms of functionality) http://geckoboard.com http://geckoboard.com into private beta a little over a month ago and have been steadily improving it since then (adding a bunch of new APIs including Freshbooks, GitHub and an API with the ability to load custom data to your status board). Despite being first to market, accumulating a couple of thousand beta testers and reaching out to TC we only get a one line mention in the article. Getting on Techcrunch et al. is not the be-all and end-all but as a single founder outside of Silicon Valley situations like this reinforce the notion that you're swimming against the tide. It's inevitable that sort of thing happens but it really does go to show one of the prime benefits of joining YC; the exposure and access you get is second to none and the best leg up a startup could hope for.
- nedwin 16y ago
  This kind of surprises me. I had naively assumed that it wasn't all that difficult to get an article on Techcrunch. How did you "reach out"?
  - nedwin 16y ago
    I'll also add that I've been looking for something like this for a client so I'll make sure I check both products out FWIW.
- cglee 16y ago
  This is my experience as well with Active Interview. We've been around for about a year, and I even personally pitched our working product with paying customers to PG at SXSW in March. He shot it down immediately. But yet, Hirehive gets front page Techcrunch treatment just a few weeks ago. We're not in the valley and didn't go the YC route either. But in the end while I think there is an initial marketing benefit, it still comes down to how hard you scrap and acquire customers in the long run.
- 16y ago
iamclovin 16y ago
We demoed a similar product we are using internally at gameplanapp.com called fergie and demoed it at the Singapore ruby brigade meeting a couple of months ago. Definitely not pretty but it has a plug and play architecture for different stats to track. http://www.slideshare.net/mobile/gameplanapp/gameplans-panicinspired-stats-dashboard-called-fergie http://www.slideshare.net/mobile/gameplanapp/gameplans-panic...

61 points by bwaldorf 16y ago

Before we joined Y Combinator, my co-founder and I had plans to build a Panic-style status board. Then we realized that status boards were not our core competency and we dropped the board completely to focus on our primary task at hand. I love that I can pay Leftronic for a fully customizable, fantastic-looking board – this way we can make our product and track it, too! BTW, I've seen one of these boards in person and they're really slick. I can think of a hundred ways these could be hugely motivating (have a dial tick down based on bug-counts, have a meter showing avg user engagement, etc).

sonofabell 16y ago
Thank you very much for your vote of confidence!

lachyg 16y ago

What does one of these cost on average? Are they affordable to the average startup guy?

maxawaytoolong 16y ago
I have a nearly identical startup on the east coast but it's more of a side business at the moment. Almost any good programmer has the chops to make one of these, it's just really hard to turn it into a business. Pricing is the hardest part. So... I'm guessing they aren't going to let you know. As far as the average startup guy, it's probably not affordable. I only sell to places I know have money to burn.
- wensing 16y ago
  Almost any good programmer has the chops to make one of these Except the making it beautiful part, right?
  - maxawaytoolong 16y ago
    I hope so. My background in art and design is my only competitive advantage.
    - inovica 16y ago
      Whats your URL :) ?
  - lachyg 16y ago
    Checkout www.geckoboard.com - made by a guy here - it rocks.
jyotindra 16y ago
Yes definitely, we are going to make it affordable for startups. We want everyone be able to use our dashboards.

statictype 16y ago

The article is short on details. Does Leftronic provide hardware + software or just software? Does it run on the company's network or via the internet?

seancron 16y ago
From their description on their website (http://leftronic.com/ http://leftronic.com/): "Leftronic develops web-based visualization software optimized for large screen displays. Our API makes it easy - just push individual data points and our application tracks, parses and presents the data." It looks like they provide an API for you to submit your own data, and then they make a personalized web application dashboard that you can display on a display.
jyotindra 16y ago
We make software that drives the displays. The dashboards are fully customizable through our website. We have a simple API for collecting the data that needs to be monitored.
- ajju 16y ago
  What kind of hardware displays do you support? Is there a min or max resolution and display size?
  - sonofabell 16y ago
    We are hardware-agnostic. Our visualizations are inherently vector-based, so screen size/resolution will not be an issue.
    - ajju 16y ago
      Cool! Is the "hundreds" quoted in the article, per month or per year?
    - nreece 16y ago
      vector-based Is that Flash, HTML5 or just vector images?

Timothee 16y ago

I'm not quite sure what they're offering besides "software that makes it easy for companies to aggregate data" and “People pay hundreds per screen for our visualizations.” I could imagine that it's a subscription-model for the web service that gathers and displays the data? But hundreds per screen sounds high Is the professional services part a significant one? The mention of YCombinator, Cloudkick and WePay make it sound like they setup the whole thing. Anybody has more details on that?

wensing 16y ago
hundreds per screen sounds high Given the value of seeing your key metrics in a continuous display, hundreds seems low to me.

atldev 16y ago

We have a number of big screens hanging in our office. We loop an ugly powerpoint with stale messages. Regularly, I walk by the screens and wish we had a Panic-style dashboard for key metrics. Of course, we could build our own, but we always seem to have more important priorities (like our own products). Even thought about a startup opportunity in this space- if we would like it, we're probably not alone. I've signed up for the beta and I'm very interested in the product details. Wish them the best of luck.

jyotindra 16y ago
Thanks. We received an overwhelming response and we are actively sifting through all the signups. Please be patient and stay tuned for a response from us.

dotBen 16y ago

I spent some time working on a dashboard project (with the view to it becoming a start-up). I wanted to blend Panic style eye candy with something you could throw in a load of api keys (pivotal tracker, git hub, Google analytics, etc) I abandoned the project mainly because the size of the addressable market is too small. I don't think Startups will spend $hundreds a month on this and there are only so many companies even interested in dashboards.

wensing 16y ago
The addressable market is small? Doesn't every Fortune 500 company use dashboards in their operation and control centers? The market is ripe.
- kapitti 16y ago
  I've seen lots of BI tools used for creating dashboards in Fortune 500s given that most of the data is secure in random databases, mainframes, etc - the most popular of late is QlikView.
  - pmjoyce 16y ago
    As a BI tool QlikView is a different animal to what's being proposed here. QlikView is a fully interactive BI tool designed for use on the desktop. Dashboards like Leftronic are designed to show key metrics from all over the business to a wide audience either via a large screen or a secondary or tertiary display on the desktop. Once it's set up and operating users shouldn't need to interact with it a great deal other than glancing up to check on part of the screen they're interested in. Much like you would use the dashboard of your car when you're on the road.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- dotBen 16y ago
  Fortune 500 companies tend not to use Pivotal Tracker, Git Hub, etc. The money they spend is because they want custom integrations but that's not the company I wanted to launch. I wanted to build an 'off the shelf' dashboard you plugged in yourself. And it is true that many startups don't care about dashboards - I'm surprised at the number I know who don't really have any visualization or tracking of their velocity, Constant Integration failures (if they even do CI), unit test fails, code commits, server health, etc.

pmjoyce 16y ago

Welcome to the space guys, it looks like a great product, I've signed up for the beta and I'm really looking forward to checking it out. What follows is by no means meant as a slight on the creators of the product, it looks like they've done a sterling job and I wish them every success. I launched an almost identical product (in terms of functionality) http://geckoboard.com http://geckoboard.com into private beta a little over a month ago and have been steadily improving it since then (adding a bunch of new APIs including Freshbooks, GitHub and an API with the ability to load custom data to your status board). Despite being first to market, accumulating a couple of thousand beta testers and reaching out to TC we only get a one line mention in the article. Getting on Techcrunch et al. is not the be-all and end-all but as a single founder outside of Silicon Valley situations like this reinforce the notion that you're swimming against the tide. It's inevitable that sort of thing happens but it really does go to show one of the prime benefits of joining YC; the exposure and access you get is second to none and the best leg up a startup could hope for.

nedwin 16y ago
This kind of surprises me. I had naively assumed that it wasn't all that difficult to get an article on Techcrunch. How did you "reach out"?
- nedwin 16y ago
  I'll also add that I've been looking for something like this for a client so I'll make sure I check both products out FWIW.
cglee 16y ago
This is my experience as well with Active Interview. We've been around for about a year, and I even personally pitched our working product with paying customers to PG at SXSW in March. He shot it down immediately. But yet, Hirehive gets front page Techcrunch treatment just a few weeks ago. We're not in the valley and didn't go the YC route either. But in the end while I think there is an initial marketing benefit, it still comes down to how hard you scrap and acquire customers in the long run.
16y ago

iamclovin 16y ago

We demoed a similar product we are using internally at gameplanapp.com called fergie and demoed it at the Singapore ruby brigade meeting a couple of months ago. Definitely not pretty but it has a plug and play architecture for different stats to track. http://www.slideshare.net/mobile/gameplanapp/gameplans-panicinspired-stats-dashboard-called-fergie http://www.slideshare.net/mobile/gameplanapp/gameplans-panic...