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I have a $100M SaaS in a different space but the underlying tech is identical. I had this idea ~10 yrs ago when we first started writing our own import logic to

I have a $100M SaaS in a different space but the underlying tech is identical. I had this idea ~10 yrs ago when we first started writing our own import logic to move users over from competing services. The engineering challenges to make this work flawlessly is going to be substantial to say the least. I GET from ~70 data sources right now...I couldn't imagine having to GET,POST, CHECKPOINT and DIFF with all the edge cases that appear. Best of luck but this is a very hard problem to solve. Would love to see someone see this through!

MathYouF 5y ago
I feel like there's a deep learning (possibly computer vision) route to this that would be extremely hard to create but would be able to arbitrage 90% of the difficulty with updating for new UIs or handling edge cases. Had you ever pursued that route or seen things that tried?
- weird-eye-issue 5y ago
  I really don't understand your usage of the word arbitrage here. Also computer vision is related to images specifically - how is that even relevant here?
  - ManBlanket 5y ago
    This guy can speak for himself but I've read the comment a few times and I would surmise there's some ESL word-soup happening here. I am going to hazard what he's getting at is using CV to import data from one UI possibly into another. I think to get around the lack of a lack of API support. Similar to the effect a company might use OCR software to migrate data from paper forms a CRM, or something? I'm still wondering why I honed in on this one comment, but hey you felt intrigued enough to leave a comment too, so there must be something to it.
    - 666b20753a29 5y ago
      What does ESL mean? I can't seem to infer it
      - nix0n 5y ago
        English as a Second Language
      - KuzMenachem 5y ago
        English as a second language I presume
      - Corrado 5y ago
        English as a Second Language
mbesto 5y ago
It's not even the technical challenge that is the big issue. It's the political one. Trying to get vendors to provide API access to migrate data away on a scalable solution will be a no-go for most of them.
- kevlened 5y ago
  Co-founder here. We skip the politics because we're willing to scrape to export or import if APIs aren't available on either end. That allows us to function independently of vendor buy-in.
  - hanniabu 5y ago
    So if there's no API then you can't help them unless their data is public?
    - shrimpx 5y ago
      Presumably if a user’s data is visible in any way while logged in as that user, they can scrape it.
      - kevlened 5y ago
        That’s correct
        lucas_membrane 5y ago
        I was in such a business decades back as a consultant, migrating clients from incredibly expensive mainframe systems to much more affordable alternatives, and I found out the path is fraught with perils. I was an independent consultant doing this sort of thing to get companies out of software contracts that would be around $10 million per annum in today's bucks. The vendor who was losing the clients had revenue approaching $billion/annum in today's bucks, ie a few thousands of times my revenue. I got a letter from their lawyers, an ultra-aggressive firm that had been written up in the NY Times for being so efficient at winning ultra-aggressive lawsuits. I took it to my lawyer, the best I could afford, and he negotiated a total surrender, which meant perhaps half of my potential clients were now off-limits. I did pretty well with the other half for around 10 more years, but the vendors whom I was helping by guiding their new customers through the inexplicable aspects of the replacement software, came to want my revenue and to prefer that their customers not be too well informed about what they were getting into, so they started putting terms into their software licenses that required new customers to fence me out. Game over. I went back to work as a developer for a vendor earning huge profits in a different vertical market which they dominated. Their lawyers were far more strategically important than their development team. The amount of revenue they derived from capturing customers was audaciously incredible for a firm operating in so-called free-market economies, even though they were always up to their elbows in legal battles and skirmishes on multiple fronts over who owned what and who was allowed to use which licensed API's for what functions.

MathYouF 5y ago

I feel like there's a deep learning (possibly computer vision) route to this that would be extremely hard to create but would be able to arbitrage 90% of the difficulty with updating for new UIs or handling edge cases. Had you ever pursued that route or seen things that tried?

weird-eye-issue 5y ago
I really don't understand your usage of the word arbitrage here. Also computer vision is related to images specifically - how is that even relevant here?
- ManBlanket 5y ago
  This guy can speak for himself but I've read the comment a few times and I would surmise there's some ESL word-soup happening here. I am going to hazard what he's getting at is using CV to import data from one UI possibly into another. I think to get around the lack of a lack of API support. Similar to the effect a company might use OCR software to migrate data from paper forms a CRM, or something? I'm still wondering why I honed in on this one comment, but hey you felt intrigued enough to leave a comment too, so there must be something to it.
  - 666b20753a29 5y ago
    What does ESL mean? I can't seem to infer it
    - nix0n 5y ago
      English as a Second Language
    - KuzMenachem 5y ago
      English as a second language I presume
    - Corrado 5y ago
      English as a Second Language

mbesto 5y ago

It's not even the technical challenge that is the big issue. It's the political one. Trying to get vendors to provide API access to migrate data away on a scalable solution will be a no-go for most of them.

kevlened 5y ago
Co-founder here. We skip the politics because we're willing to scrape to export or import if APIs aren't available on either end. That allows us to function independently of vendor buy-in.
- hanniabu 5y ago
  So if there's no API then you can't help them unless their data is public?
  - shrimpx 5y ago
    Presumably if a user’s data is visible in any way while logged in as that user, they can scrape it.
    - kevlened 5y ago
      That’s correct
      - lucas_membrane 5y ago
        I was in such a business decades back as a consultant, migrating clients from incredibly expensive mainframe systems to much more affordable alternatives, and I found out the path is fraught with perils. I was an independent consultant doing this sort of thing to get companies out of software contracts that would be around $10 million per annum in today's bucks. The vendor who was losing the clients had revenue approaching $billion/annum in today's bucks, ie a few thousands of times my revenue. I got a letter from their lawyers, an ultra-aggressive firm that had been written up in the NY Times for being so efficient at winning ultra-aggressive lawsuits. I took it to my lawyer, the best I could afford, and he negotiated a total surrender, which meant perhaps half of my potential clients were now off-limits. I did pretty well with the other half for around 10 more years, but the vendors whom I was helping by guiding their new customers through the inexplicable aspects of the replacement software, came to want my revenue and to prefer that their customers not be too well informed about what they were getting into, so they started putting terms into their software licenses that required new customers to fence me out. Game over. I went back to work as a developer for a vendor earning huge profits in a different vertical market which they dominated. Their lawyers were far more strategically important than their development team. The amount of revenue they derived from capturing customers was audaciously incredible for a firm operating in so-called free-market economies, even though they were always up to their elbows in legal battles and skirmishes on multiple fronts over who owned what and who was allowed to use which licensed API's for what functions.