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Spreadsheets are broken, and a horrible user experience for technical users. I'm excited to see work in this space, because it's such a great lever for continu

Spreadsheets are broken, and a horrible user experience for technical users. I'm excited to see work in this space, because it's such a great lever for continued productivity. how do you see your open source model making money and continuing to scale feature development?

davidkircos 3y ago
We plan on charging organizations using Quadratic for collaboration. Our pricing will be low so it's affordable to get seats for the whole team. Think <$15 / user / month.
- easton 3y ago
  I can’t imagine you can really charge less, but is there a huge market for an excel substitute that costs more than excel and doesn’t interoperate? I understand the reasons why this is cooler/better, but IME when people want to step up from excel it’s either because they have some use case that fits a BI tool or they are going to hire a dev. (Real problem is that they never realize Excel isn’t enough until it’s the backbone of their company… but…) Best of luck though, this looks super cool!
WillAdams 3y ago
No, the prevailing implementations are mapped to the grids of ledger sheets which the accountants who were the initial market were accustomed to. (A vivid memory from when I was young was the accountant who pulled up to the computer store I was at and said, "I want a Visicalc" --- after a bit of back-and-forth w/ the salesman, he loaded up his Trans Am w/ pretty much one of everything in the store (Apple ][, 80 column card, dual floppies, wide printer, &c.) Look up Lotus Improv and Javelin and Quantrix for examples of spreadsheets done right.
- porker 3y ago
  > Look up Lotus Improv and Javelin and Quantrix for examples of spreadsheets done right. I looked them up but Google wasn't forthcoming about what made them be "done right". Can you explain what they brought?
  - WillAdams 3y ago
    They are multi-dimensional spreadsheets where one has to instantiate and name each possible column/row, and then the formulae are set aside in a separate pane, and it is possible to re-arrange things as desired.
Andrew_nenakhov 3y ago
Spreadsheets are not broken. Spreadsheets are probably the most impactful and accessible tool that boosts productivity for many users in very many areas, from commerce to finance to statistics to automation to sales.
deely3 3y ago
> Spreadsheets are broken, and a horrible user experience for technical users. How so? Could you please elaborate, whats wrong with technical users and spreadsheets?

davidkircos 3y ago

We plan on charging organizations using Quadratic for collaboration. Our pricing will be low so it's affordable to get seats for the whole team. Think <$15 / user / month.

easton 3y ago
I can’t imagine you can really charge less, but is there a huge market for an excel substitute that costs more than excel and doesn’t interoperate? I understand the reasons why this is cooler/better, but IME when people want to step up from excel it’s either because they have some use case that fits a BI tool or they are going to hire a dev. (Real problem is that they never realize Excel isn’t enough until it’s the backbone of their company… but…) Best of luck though, this looks super cool!

WillAdams 3y ago

No, the prevailing implementations are mapped to the grids of ledger sheets which the accountants who were the initial market were accustomed to. (A vivid memory from when I was young was the accountant who pulled up to the computer store I was at and said, "I want a Visicalc" --- after a bit of back-and-forth w/ the salesman, he loaded up his Trans Am w/ pretty much one of everything in the store (Apple ][, 80 column card, dual floppies, wide printer, &c.) Look up Lotus Improv and Javelin and Quantrix for examples of spreadsheets done right.

porker 3y ago
> Look up Lotus Improv and Javelin and Quantrix for examples of spreadsheets done right. I looked them up but Google wasn't forthcoming about what made them be "done right". Can you explain what they brought?
- WillAdams 3y ago
  They are multi-dimensional spreadsheets where one has to instantiate and name each possible column/row, and then the formulae are set aside in a separate pane, and it is possible to re-arrange things as desired.

Andrew_nenakhov 3y ago

Spreadsheets are not broken. Spreadsheets are probably the most impactful and accessible tool that boosts productivity for many users in very many areas, from commerce to finance to statistics to automation to sales.

deely3 3y ago

> Spreadsheets are broken, and a horrible user experience for technical users. How so? Could you please elaborate, whats wrong with technical users and spreadsheets?