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Show HN: Causal 2.0 – Modern Financial Planning for Startups
- skadamat 3y agoI've been following Taimur's work for many years and it's neat to see Causal evolve their messaging. Overall, it's cool to see lots of startups creating the next generation of spreadsheets: - Causal.app - Rows.com - Equals.com - Rowzero.io - and at least 50 others I've found
- refrigerator 3y agoThanks man! Messaging has been a long journey and I still think we're very far from cracking it haha
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- dark_ph0enix 3y agoWe've had a number of very interesting technical challenges along the way to this 2.0 release: - traffic tiering and balancing based on request's perceived amount of work - low latency data loading during our calc loop - implementing a selector framework to unify all the stores used by the application - redesigning the formula editor to make human friendly yet expressive enough for the most hardcore user (fun UX challenge) We really ought to start blogging more about these things :D.
- swyx 3y agoplease do! spin up an engineering blog on hashnode. https://danluu.com/corp-eng-blogs/ https://danluu.com/corp-eng-blogs/
- Lukas1994 3y agoWe have released a few bits actually! https://causal.app/blog/scaling https://causal.app/blog/scaling is one of my favourites (HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32000400 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32000400)
- djbusby 3y agoMore of this please.
- rossjudson 3y agoMachines like arrays, sequential access, avoiding conditions, and not touching memory unless you need to (compression == performance). Looks like you've traveled the enlightenment path to array languages! The first time I read Whitney's K language description was a singular mind-expanding moment.
- no_wizard 3y ago>redesigning the formula editor to make human friendly yet expressive enough for the most hardcore user (fun UX challenge) I work in this space. I don't envy this. Been through it more than once. Did you also have challenges with circular references?
- obeavs 3y agoWe've had "fun" solving this for Phosphor which has similar parts to Causal, but is focused more on real assets and emphasizes connection with computable contracts. For circularity, we found that we could keep the UX dynamic by making a deep copy of the circular part of the DAG behind the scenes, asking the user to determine which variable in that path should be "resolved", hard coding that variable in the copy, then solving that variable to zero through a newton optimization. Once optimized (in parallel to main graph), it feeds back into the main DAG just like any other dependency. Would be a silly approach in Excel, but not so much here.
- refrigerator 3y agoHi everyone, I'm one of the Causal founders — we actually launched a super barebones MVP here on HN in 2019[1], back when we were still tinkering around on nights and weekends, and the reception + signups from that gave us the confidence to quit our jobs and go full-time on this, so thanks for the early support! The product has come a long way since that first HN launch. The best way to think about it is as a 'multidimensional spreadsheet' — instead of writing formulas that operate on single cells, Causal formulas operate on "variables" that span lots of cells (e.g. multiple 'months', or multiple 'products', or multiple 'countries'), so you can express any kind of model with 100–1000x fewer formulas. Lot of other important functionality like live data integrations, dashboards, etc. but the multi-dimensional modelling system is really the secret sauce :) Sounds super abstract, but the main use-case today is financial planning/reporting for early-stage companies, although some of our users have actually replaced their BI tools with Causal as well. Anyway, thanks for the support and keen to hear feedback :) 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19704418 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19704418
- sksk 3y agoI am curious about your comment on 100-1000x fewer formulas. Is there a simpler example you can show how your product will do it relative to Excel? When I read your comment, I was thinking, SUM in Excel operates over many cells. You can have Arrays, etc. in Excel. So I am not sure how formulas work in your product that is fundamentally different. Is this like a function that I can define and call that function so it is easier?
- Lukas1994 3y agoGreat question! Quite often in financial models, you're dealing with "dimensions" (e.g. your revenue is broken down by product, geography, and time). To model this in Excel you have to write complex SUMIF/INDEX/MATCH formulas. Then you have to drag these formulas over 1000s of cells (if you make a mistake you're screwed, see https://eusprig.org/research-info/horror-stories/ https://eusprig.org/research-info/horror-stories/). Causal's building blocks are "variables" and "dimensions" which makes it much more powerful to work with dimensional data. This video explains this in a more visual way: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WELP2A5IzF4&ab_channel=CausalHQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WELP2A5IzF4&ab_channel=Causa...
- varadhjain 3y agoexcited by this launch
- parkaboy 3y agoVery excited by this and congratulations. I've been an avid causal user on the free plan at the early-stage startup I work for, and used it at my startup before that. It's been so great to see how the product has evolved. I can't overstate what a pleasure it has been to work with even when it was in its earliest stages. I would absolutely convert to paying if the jump to the next tier weren't so expensive ($250/mo), which has been really tough to digest right now.
- refrigerator 3y agoTotally get it — we know the $250 is too big a jump and we're currently trying to figure out the mechanics of a starter plan at $99/mo. In the meantime, we're pretty chill about offering $99 plans to early stage companies if you're under 10 people, or have raised under $500k. You can find the form for that on our pricing page under "Startup programme": https://causal.app/pricing https://causal.app/pricing Hope that helps, and thanks for the kind words and loyal support!
- toomuchtodo 3y agoSame pricing for a non profit by chance?
- refrigerator 3y agoYup we’ve done that a bunch - please fill in the form and we’d love to consider :)
- toomuchtodo 3y agoAppreciate it!
- martykausas 3y agothis is pretty great
- loremchecksum 3y agoLooks great! I work in enterprise planning and wonder what is keeping you from targeting larger firms. Is the startup-target temporary or do you expect to let your clients "scale out" of the product?
- refrigerator 3y agoWe do actually have a bunch of bigger companies using Causal (incl. public companies) so it definitely works for bigger companies depending on exactly what they need. If they're looking for a great modelling tool with nice dashboards then I think we're perfect, if they're looking for something with more "workflows" type of stuff with lots of stakeholders who need to contribute to things, then we're less good. Because of this, we're focusing on smaller companies as a self-serve product for a while, and then gradually plan to build out that kind of enterprise stuff for bigger companies. There's also a lot more competition in the mid-market/enterprise in this space, and 0 competition for SMBs/self-serve, so we thought it would be good to lean in there :)
- ig1 3y agoIf you're looking for something more enterprise focused then https://www.pigment.com/ https://www.pigment.com/ might be a good fit
- slinkypinky 3y agoCouple questions: 1. Where does the name come from? 2. I’ve seen a lot of startups with the business model of serving other startups. These remind me a lot of derivatives in the stock market in terms of the “risk” of their business model, and there have been instances of companies having to pivot when the economy goes down (i.e. Brex)… Do you have a contingency plan for this?
- refrigerator 3y ago1. It comes from the concept of 'causal inference' in statistics[1] — when we started out, we though the product would go in a much technical/statistical direction, but we were very wrong about that But 'causal' as a word is still relevant to modelling, etc. 2. Fair question haha. While a majority of our customers are startups/tech cos, a bunch of our customers are also non-tech small businesses (e.g. small agencies/consulting firms in various niches). Interestingly, we found that after the economy went down 18 months ago there seemed to be more demand for Causal from smaller companies (startups + regular SMBs) — our guess is that staying on top of finances is important when things are tough, and less important when there's tonnes of cash flying around! [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causal_inference https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causal_inference
- slinkypinky 3y agoInteresting, thanks. I’m pretty familiar with causal inference, so I’m curious — what direction did you think the product would head in?
- satvikpendem 3y agoThey're gonna make causal diagrams à la Judea Pearl, haha.
- seels 3y agoCongrats, Causal! I'm a fan and excited to see the 2.0 launch. A big part of our financial planning comes from manual syncing data from the tools we use for billing, expenses, and so on into our excel model — definitely going to try this out.
- refrigerator 3y agoAh nice, definitely sounds like something Causal can handle for you :)
- bryanmgreen 3y agoOne thing I have to really congratulate you on is your product video. I honestly think it's one of the best I've seen for any software. It showcases the functionality, displays the actual UI, doesn't rely on narration, is visually interesting, and succinct. Was it made internally or with an agency?
- refrigerator 3y agoAhh thanks, glad you liked it! We made it internally with the help of a video editor.
- killion 3y agoThis does look really good. Do you mind if I ask which one you used? Thanks!
- refrigerator 3y agoFeel free to drop me an email (taimur [at] causal [dot] app) and I'd be happy to introduce you to him :)
- zuhayeer 3y agoThe soundtrack actually goes so hard. Love it.
- pedalpete 3y agoAlong with an excellent use of music and pacing. Though it doesn't answer the "is this product for me" question, it does build excitement to make me want to learn more.
- habitue 3y agoDo you offer monte carlo simulations for forecasting?
- refrigerator 3y agoYes! Causal natively supports Monte Carlo simulation. E.g. instead of writing "7.5%" in a cell, you can write "5% to 10%" and it will turn that into a distribution, and automatically run a few thousand samples with different values every time it re-calculates. Docs: https://docs.causal.app/formulas/values-with-uncertainty https://docs.causal.app/formulas/values-with-uncertainty
- habitue 3y agoThat's amazing
- ttul 3y agoThis alone makes me want to try Causal. I run my business with a gargantuan Google Sheet. It works - we nail our numbers. But scenario testing is very hard.
- refrigerator 3y agoNice — definitely try Causal out! We have a 'scenarios' feature that lets you easily spin up "discrete" scenarios, and then you can use the Monte Carlo stuff to see continuous ranges of outcomes.
- satvikpendem 3y agoThis reminds me a lot of calculators I use for FIRE, ie the ones shown here [0]. Perhaps I should try Causal for personal use as well as for business use. I've also seen Maybe [1] for personal finances, which looks good too. [0] https://engaging-data.com/early-retirement-calculators-and-tools/ https://engaging-data.com/early-retirement-calculators-and-t... [1] https://github.com/maybe-finance/maybe https://github.com/maybe-finance/maybe
- jtwaleson 3y agoFirst thing I noticed is that the UI looks exactly like Linear. Have seen more companies copy the same UI but not sure if it was actually Linear that started it.
- refrigerator 3y agoHaha, I think the evolution was something like this: 1. Slack introduces "sidebar" concept 2. Notion takes it a step further 3. Everyone starts doing sidebars, including Linear We took inspiration from Linear's 'search button in sidebar' and 'profile pic in sidebar', which I think were maybe their unique contributions to the tradition :)
- deathanatos 3y agoReally, it's just a tab strip, no? (But with fixed heterogeneous tabs, as opposed to a set of homogeneous ones the user adds/removes from as they open/close docs.) Reminds me of the vertical tab strips in FF w/ TreeStyleTabs. Which reminds me of OS/2, where tab strips were on the side, with some nice skeuomorphism: https://www.landley.net/history/mirror/os2/history/os221/vxrexx_proj.gif https://www.landley.net/history/mirror/os2/history/os221/vxr...
- thearrow 3y agoDo you use a react component library? If so, which one?
- monkeydust 3y agoLooks interesting, any similarities to CausalLens product?
- refrigerator 3y agoNo similarities at all, just the name
- thecharleskerr 3y agoThis is pretty epic, have been testing it for a few weeks - top work!
- 1oooqooq 3y agoWOW! congrats! it's been ages I didn't see anyone actually manage to make a website that doesn't work with the non-dominant browser! I cannot even login using firefox.
- MattJ100 3y agoWorks for me (Firefox on Linux).
- dark_ph0enix 3y agoCurious to hear what issues you faced (please!). I use FF (on Linux) as my main daily driver and I haven't had any issues with Causal (disclaimer, I work for Causal). (granted, the experience is optimised for Chromium based browsers, but FF is not forgotten).
- 1oooqooq 3y agoi registered before ok. now i can only see the alert on top to use chrome. no other content.
- durmanhoth 3y agoThere seem to be some synergies that you can leverage with spend management and expense management platforms (such as Brex, Ramp, etc.). Is this a fair assumption, and if so, have you considered exploring any opportunities in this area? Interesting stuff!
- refrigerator 3y agoWe’ve done some marketing partnerships with Ramp before, would be great to eventually get that data live in Causal!
- djbusby 3y agoOr plug in a feed from SimpleFin?
- lharries 3y agoCongrats on the 2.0! If I remember right you started as a more general purpose excel competitor, how did you think about doubling down on the financial planning use case?
- refrigerator 3y agoThanks! We are still very much a general purpose tool, but until we're a household name like Notion or Airtable, we kind of concluded that we'll need to be much more specific about our messaging/targeting until we reach that critical mass!
- jgorn 3y agoUnderstand this is targetted at financial planning for startups/SMBs, but I'm curious as to if it could be adapted to work for personal financial planning (retirement wealth projections, modelling market downturns)? Curious if that's a use case you considered or a path the product may go down in the future
- refrigerator 3y agoDefinitely — we have a bunch of users doing that kind of stuff in Causal as well. The product is completely general-purpose (a bit like a spreadsheet), but for business reasons, we're trying to keep our messaging and targeting much more specific to the startups/SMB financial planning use-case :)
- gillesjacobs 3y agoLooks great, but I have my reservations about confidentiality of the data. The financial model, expenses, hiring/ salary plan and basically all thin ledger financials of most SMBs/startups are highly sensitive. If leaked or sold to third parties, it gives competitors (or maybe your own investors) insights in the technology, development expenses, and direction of the company. How do you handle data confidentiality? How is the data security?
- mahsima 3y agoGreat one. submit it to productivity.directory