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Funny story. Before pivoting my startup to Loom, we were a user testing company named Opentest. Instead of spinning up a DB and creating a dashboard for my co-f

Funny story. Before pivoting my startup to Loom, we were a user testing company named Opentest. Instead of spinning up a DB and creating a dashboard for my co-founders to look at who requested certain user tests, I just dumped everything into a Google Sheet. It was so good. No downtime. Open access. Only 3 people looking/editing, so no conflict. Didn't have to deal with database upgrades or maintenance. I often think about this decision and feel like I've learned a bunch of "good engineering practices" that pale in comparison to how being truly scrappy can be a genius unlock at any level.

ydant 2y ago
Agreed. Google Sheets is a great scrappy option for a startup / small company. I've used it for a lot of system data that needs to be modified by a few people at most. With a little bit of careful code and caching (I like validating and syncing to S3) you can easily use it as a crud frontend for important system data. It also can make great adhoc dashboards - plug into APIs (even private ones if you add in custom Google Scripts code) or push data updates to the sheets. I've had rather large reports auto updated on a schedule with multiple views of the data (pivot tables, queries, lookups, etc). Fully focused customized views into the data needed to solve specific internal problems with really quick delivery times. Sure, a custom developed option should be substantially better than Google Sheets, but you won't develop it quicker. By the time you actually need something bigger/better, you should be at a place where your needs are better defined and you can afford the resources to develop something better.
- xcrunner529 2y ago
  Yeah my client uses Google forms for some simple use cases and it goes straight to google sheets and I just pull from that for verifying submissions and such in code. Not bad at all.
- niutech 2y ago
  Why anybody would like to store their sensitive business data on a public cloud such as Google Sheets?
joaovcoliveira 2y ago
its a honor to hear from a loom founder, Ive been using your product for a long time and I love it! 100% onboard on what you said.
- vhiremath4 2y ago
  Thank you for recording with us! And good luck with this product. There's definitely a bunch of use cases for scrappy prototyping or early mocks!
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
hot_gril 2y ago
Google Sheets is the backbone of several projects I work on, even though I'm a SWE at a large company. It's used as a fronend in some places or a backend in others. But part of this is because we have too much red tape around using simple eng tools like React or Postgres.
2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago
Sounds neat, let me ask permission first before I put company data into Google Sheets.
- xtracto 2y ago
  If your email is Google based , chances are your company already have plenty of its data on Googles services.
- NSMutableSet 2y ago
  All five employers in my work history used Google Workspace / G-Suite. I wouldn't say it's uncommon.
datascienced 2y ago
Google sheets can also be thought of as a managed nosql DB with a built in management UI.
jakjak123 2y ago
If you can do this one-way data dump, it sounds like a good idea. The issue starts when you have seven different sheets that is supposed to authoritatively control some other processes. The people writing in the spreadsheet can basically do any kind of mutation to the spreadsheet, so it will break extremely easily.

ydant 2y ago

Agreed. Google Sheets is a great scrappy option for a startup / small company. I've used it for a lot of system data that needs to be modified by a few people at most. With a little bit of careful code and caching (I like validating and syncing to S3) you can easily use it as a crud frontend for important system data. It also can make great adhoc dashboards - plug into APIs (even private ones if you add in custom Google Scripts code) or push data updates to the sheets. I've had rather large reports auto updated on a schedule with multiple views of the data (pivot tables, queries, lookups, etc). Fully focused customized views into the data needed to solve specific internal problems with really quick delivery times. Sure, a custom developed option should be substantially better than Google Sheets, but you won't develop it quicker. By the time you actually need something bigger/better, you should be at a place where your needs are better defined and you can afford the resources to develop something better.

xcrunner529 2y ago
Yeah my client uses Google forms for some simple use cases and it goes straight to google sheets and I just pull from that for verifying submissions and such in code. Not bad at all.
niutech 2y ago
Why anybody would like to store their sensitive business data on a public cloud such as Google Sheets?

joaovcoliveira 2y ago

its a honor to hear from a loom founder, Ive been using your product for a long time and I love it! 100% onboard on what you said.

vhiremath4 2y ago
Thank you for recording with us! And good luck with this product. There's definitely a bunch of use cases for scrappy prototyping or early mocks!

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

hot_gril 2y ago

Google Sheets is the backbone of several projects I work on, even though I'm a SWE at a large company. It's used as a fronend in some places or a backend in others. But part of this is because we have too much red tape around using simple eng tools like React or Postgres.

2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago

Sounds neat, let me ask permission first before I put company data into Google Sheets.

xtracto 2y ago
If your email is Google based , chances are your company already have plenty of its data on Googles services.
NSMutableSet 2y ago
All five employers in my work history used Google Workspace / G-Suite. I wouldn't say it's uncommon.

datascienced 2y ago

Google sheets can also be thought of as a managed nosql DB with a built in management UI.

jakjak123 2y ago

If you can do this one-way data dump, it sounds like a good idea. The issue starts when you have seven different sheets that is supposed to authoritatively control some other processes. The people writing in the spreadsheet can basically do any kind of mutation to the spreadsheet, so it will break extremely easily.