Is my value proposition resonating with frontend devs?
I've recently launched http://pipegears.com and have been assimilating a lot of feedback to hone my message. PipeGears lets you create a Web or REST API backend quickly by snapping it together visually.
One of the consistent things I've heard is that the product is quite technical and would benefit from better examples of how to use it. In response, I've just created this short video demonstrating the creation of a REST API and a simple client consuming data from the API. Demo here: https://youtu.be/MvuXWLDBa6E
I'm targeting frontend developers who either don't have a lot of server-side expertise or who want to focus their limited time on the UI where they can differentiate their products.
I'd like to hear your honest feedback on two things:
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Does the value proposition resonate with frontend developers (if you are one)
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Does the video demo linked above clearly demonstrate the value of the product
Thanks in advance!
Hey mate great job with your product.
Here's my thoughts as a front-end dev:
perhaps change the logo - I don't really get it.
I'd love to see some fast loading gifs or series of static images which clearly articulate the benefits/features
the navbar blends into the first section a bit weirdly. either make them the same colour or do something that contrasts more.
Regarding your two specific points:
I like the idea but I've often strayed away from similar products for fear of locking myself to someone else's tech. What if I hit a ceiling in what it can do after I've already invested the time in getting it up and running? I might just not be the early adopter you're looking for perhaps
The video on the homepage was very corporate. I got put off by that. The demo video was good but definitely not landing page material. It does a good job of explaining the steps to get working but not the value prop.
All the best with your product. I hope you succeed!
Hey! thanks for the great feedback on the landing page! I've been considering changing the "corporaty" overview video to something a bit less formal.
Regarding your comment about lock-in, would you consider this a more viable option for prototyping? Otherwise, what would be some acceptable ways to mitigate that risk from your perspective? (E.g. export code, allow users to code their own modules etc)
I'd love to hear more of your insights as a front-end developer. Would you be open to an offline chat? Also, shoot me a link to your product if and when you want a review. Cheers!
Hey Fred,
Yeah definitely I think prototyping and MVP stuff would be my priority usage for something like this. That's the angle I think it would be best suited to marketing towards for me, at least during the early days until you have more people using it (i.e. it is 'battle tested') and more features.
Maybe a good way to market it would be to do blog series / videos / streams on building a (real) product with it. I think this is called value based marketing? or something like that... Maybe marketing people could add more insight on this.
Happy to discuss offline further if you'd like. My email is pgord1 [at] gmail [dot] com.
My product is not yet launched / usable but I have a landing page at www.albertrm.com
Great suggestions! I just signed up on albertrm.com. I'll definitely give it a go when it's ready. Will email you shortly.
Looks really interesting, I’m a designer who does some front end so probably in your target market, I watched the demo video on yt and I have a ton of questions.. I think the interface itself could do a much better job of guiding the user through the steps required to get an api up and running, the steps you take in the video assume a lot of prior knowledge of how things fit together. Could you package blocks into groups? So if I want a login form for example, I could drop that onto the canvas with the required blocks?
Thanks for having a look! I'd love to hear more from you about the stumbling blocks you faced and where you think it could be better. Would you be willing to chat offline?
So I'm a traditional CS guy whose spent majority of my professional building large scale web applications.
I've been around a lot of startups through the early stages and am currently working on my own. Being someone who loves the frontend more than any other aspect I find the backend work building out API's and running jobs to be tedious and highly automateable because a ton of it is boilerplate.
I haven't tested your product out yet so will provide feedback when I do. I think there definitely is a good market opportunity there, as primarily a frontend person, I would really love this tool at the very least just to quickly prototype. I haven't seen full capabilities yet to decide if I would use it in production.
Thanks for the feedback, I look forward to hearing about your experience. Let me know when you are ready and I can provide direct assistance if you have questions or run into stumbling blocks. I'd really like to get your perspective of what works and what doesn't, given your experience.
Hi!
I checked your video. Well, what I noticed:
it still not clear how it works. What is inside the blocks? How can I specify something to be implemented as API without coding?
not clear how it can be integrated with a backend.
I would suggest to grab a real task and show how your service could help with it - and it doesn't need to have fancy photos and video effects, just show us what problem it solves and how.
Best
Thanks for taking the time to review it! Is your comment about the product overview video on the website (which indeed may be a little too vague), or this new demo video? https://youtu.be/MvuXWLDBa6E which shows the creation of an API that retrieves user info from a database.
If it's the latter, can you provide input on specific areas that are still too vague? For example, do you want to know more about the technical underpinnings of the platform, or the data attributes that are produced by each "block"? And, do you have a real-world use case in mind that you'd like to see implemented?
Thank you!
Hi Fred,
I see what you mean. I talked about the video on your main site, yes.
I also watched another video where you create some API.
I still feel confused!
I like very much the graphical implementation but it's still not clear how to use this approach for the real apps. It would be great to review some end-to-end case.
I actually thought about something like that for my own app - if you checked my profile (I know you did, thanks for following) - it's a SaaS template (starter kit) and one of the future feature would be generating (scaffolding) APIs and other stuff for any entities (tables). But it will generate a code, and for your case it's still not clear for me how to use it in practice.
So I would like to give you some examples I want to see but because I don't understand 100% how it works it's hard for me.
You put the layout right in the block and it looks very strange to me - it should not be so...
I just checked out SaaSIdeA... It certainly looks like a great starting point for a SaaS application with all of the common features provided. Very cool!
I've done something similar that I use personally when I create a new project (but mine is written in Java). Saves a lot of time, and you can refine it over time. There should be a market for that (imho), in the same way that there's a market for things like CMS templates and themes.
I'm realizing that there are a couple things I didn't explicitly mention about PipeGears that might help with the confusion. First, it's not a code generation tool. It's actually a runtime environment that's programmable via the UI. When you press 'start', the application is already running in the cloud (in this case AmazonAWS). Additionally, it's important to note that it's really intended to be used as the backend to a frontend that is completely decoupled, for example, where the UI is an AJAX driven rich client Web app, or even a mobile app, that doesn't live on the same server as the backend. Hope that helps!
Thanks for your explanation. Now I understand it better. What confused me though is a way you implement output. You suggest to create a page first, and then insert its code into the area of your block. It's not practical. Imagine, you have dozens of pages that you will change often - there is no way to copy it there every time when you change it. Why wouldn't you just specify the page to be rendered like "/main/index.html"?
Another question to you is which exact problem are you trying to solve? I found creation backend hard before I discovered Flask, Python framework that has supersimple interface to create a backend. What you are doing with several blocks, copy-paste and etc. can be done in one line of code, it's not a problem at all, and a developer doesn't need to specify page's code to be returned or other details.
I love how your product looks but I'm puzzled how to use it on practice.
Good luck.
Good feedback nonetheless, thanks!