How much would you pay for BI that actually feels simple?
Hey Indie Hackers! 👋
I've been looking at how small businesses actually answer questions about their business data, and something keeps bothering me.
The data is everywhere:
- Excel / Google Sheets
- Stripe
- Shopify
- Accounting software
- CRMs
- Ad platforms
But getting a simple answer can still mean building reports, learning Power BI or Tableau, writing SQL, or asking someone else to pull the numbers.
So we're exploring a much simpler idea:
Connect your data. Ask a question. Get the answer.
No SQL. No DAX. No data team.
We're calling it AskPandas, and we're currently validating the idea before going too far down the development rabbit hole.
The question we're trying to answer is pretty simple:
Would you actually pay for this?
If something let you connect your existing business data and ask questions in plain English, what would feel reasonable?
- $10–15/month — simple and affordable
- $20–30/month — if it actually saves me time
- $50+/month — if it replaces other reporting tools
- I wouldn't pay for it — I'd rather use Excel/Sheets/Power BI/etc.
And more importantly:
How are you currently getting answers from your business data?
Do you do it yourself? Have an employee do it? Hire someone? Use Power BI/Tableau? Or mostly just wing it?
We're testing the idea with a simple landing page as well:
I'd genuinely love to hear how other founders and small-business owners handle this today.
What would make a product like this worth paying for?
The strongest part is that you're validating willingness to pay before building. The real question isn't whether people like “ask your data in plain English”; it's whether that convenience is valuable enough to replace the reporting workflow they already tolerate.