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5 years ago, if you've told me there was money to be made outsourcing HTML forms, I'd have called you insane. Today I probably still would. Goes to show that so
by kingofspain 15y ago
5 years ago, if you've told me there was money to be made outsourcing HTML forms, I'd have called you insane. Today I probably still would. Goes to show that sometimes the things we think are so worthless that noone would ever pay for might not actually be so.
- patio11 15y agoThere is huge demand in businesses big and small for "Let me actually get my work done without needing to talk to IT." (I suppose this is a subset of the larger opportunity, which is that a) almost all large organizations are pathological in at least one way and b) people do not enjoy dealing with the pathological parts, so they'll pay to avoid it.) Wufoo solved a real problem which was persistently preventing people from making money or getting their work done. The fact that that problem is perhaps not the most technically difficult is not relevant, as dealing with it is still beyond the capabilities of about 99.95% of people who encounter it. I wish there were a lot more Wufoos.
- mendable 15y agoWhat other areas need a Wufoo?
- qeorge 15y agoI'll tell you one right now - HIPAA compliant Wufoo. I've got a lot of medical clients who want to have patients filling out input forms before they arrive, but storing medical data is something I won't touch with a ten foot poll. We use and recommend Wufoo anywhere we can. If I never have to code another form it'll be too soon.
- euroclydon 15y agoI read through the electronic portions of HIPAA a while back, and I think that if you were to install a public web server in the doctor's office, run some type of forms engine on it, and use SSL, that you could get close to satisfying the IT portion of the requirements. I think it would also be necessary to leave the customer with written procedures for managing server access. Clearly this is very involved and not scaleable, but if anyone here is considering setting up intake forms for a medical office, take a look at OpenEMR, they just received modular ONC certification, and are soon to get complete EHR certification [1]. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenEMR#Certification http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenEMR#Certification
- tedjdziuba 15y agoWow, OpenEMR is still alive? I was one of the 4 original authors as a junior in high school. Open Source for the win.
- euroclydon 15y agoYeah, I was involved briefly in source. You've got to have your hip-waders on.
- tedjdziuba 15y agoAwesome! I took a look at the source - it's unrecognizable from what we cooked up that summer. 4 high school hackers in a basement, making an EMR system for the "CEO"'s mother who was an internal medicine doctor. There was some really horrific things in there - this was before I knew what a JOIN was, so I'm glad some of my shame is long gone. Still, it's awesome to see that the project is still alive.
- iends 15y agoI've done a lot of work with OpenEMR, and this explains everything. heh
- diolpah 15y agoCompletely offtopic, but seeing dozba on HN made my day.
- tedjdziuba 15y agoI'm creepin', but I usually get downvoted to hell. Surprise surprise.
- ShawnJG 15y agoHIPPA is an immensely huge opportunity. I used to work for home health company in Las Vegas coding forms for intake, hospitals, follow-ups etc. was a pain. but any business that has to routinely create forms like colleges or law firms for example could benefit from attention being focused on them. I don't know if specialization is the right answer as far as business plan wise but expanding Wufoo's current line up to handle specific industries would be ideal
- silverbax88 15y agoIt's just tough to spot because there were already so many players in that space.
- patio11 15y ago"Too many fish, not enough barrel" rarely kills startups.
- nostrademons 15y agoExcept in casual gaming and TODO-lists.
- iamdave 15y agoTODO-lists. It's funny because it's true.
- jasonfried 15y agoWhere's there's pain, there's profit potential. Forms are pain. They are a pain in the ass to create and fill out. That's double pain - and double the business opportunity.
- tortilla 15y agoYup. Spend any amount of time working inside a Fortune 500 and you see pain and opportunity everywhere.
- aptwebapps 15y agoMid 2008 I was thinking this was really something I should do. I'd just done some PITA work on bunch of legacy php forms for a client and I knew there had to be a better way and I worked out what I thought that was ... ... but, you know, I needed the income from my contract work and couldn't find the time, etc. Realisticly, I didn't have the skills or experience to compete with WuFoo but that doesn't mean I couldn't have made a better service than a number of others out there. So my current idea, this one I'm gonna do, just as soon as I finish a few more contracts ...
- ja27 15y agoI worked for a big company with multiple business process management product offerings. What did they use for internal processes? Survey Monkey or Excel spreadsheets.
- mattm 15y agoI remember reading some good advice once. Anytime you see someone using Excel for something spreadsheets were not designed to do, there is a business opportunity.
- ShawnJG 15y agoit goes to show you, if you create something people want it's usually not that hard to make money from it, regardless of the competition in that space. The amount may not always be that high, but you can do well.
- zygot 15y agoMind-blown. What other menial web scripting will people pay a lot for I wonder.