Comment by airstrike | Hacker News Reader

Comment by airstrike | Hacker News Reader

congrats on launching and putting something out there. I know it isn't easy and I'm sure you've worked long and hard on the product and on the page

so I thought I'd offer some (solicited?) feedback:

* $169 for "starter projects" down from $369 feels like something I don't even want to try out. I don't know if you're trying to make the upsell to $199 easier to digest, but I got sticker shock from a 3 digit number for a starter project. I can host stuff online today for $0 on starter plans and you're charging nearly $200. then you say "The average senior React Native developer charges $120/hour." in relatively small print which I only read after I started proofreading this comment. as a solo founder, I don't pay any react native developers. I'm a full-stack company on my own, so I'm saving wherever I can

* exactly how is this better than just using Expo or something like Flutter or SwiftUI? the fact that you can "fetch from an API" shouldn't be a selling point on your one screenshot -- that's a given these days

* I don't even know what this does other than for some vague marketing words on the page. if you're expecting users to take your word for it and sign up, I think that's going to be tough. at a minimum you ought to show a video of what this does

you're claiming the experience with HyperFast is better than alternatives. prove it. then prove to me that it is better by $169 dollars, because SwiftUI, Flutter, and regular React Native are all free

Thanks so much for this valuable feedback. I want to make the service/the sales site as convincing as possible so it's good to know what I'm missing. I'm gonna write responses to your feedback just in case someone sees this and has the same questions:

Language around pricing

Your point about the pricing makes sense to me, and I think it's an issue with my intended market. I wrote the copy speaking to other React Native devs like myself, or freelance React devs who want to jump into app development, but I think I need to consider gearing it towards founders.

How is it better than Expo?

It uses Expo actually! Expo is just a tool, like Rails or NextJS. HyperFast is a template built on top of Expo, which has pre-built screens that you can swap out your content for. It has push notifications already set up (e.g. has code that you can uncomment to launch recurring scheduled notifications), it has best-practice UX patterns (e.g. 'app intro' screens that appear when you first launch the app that describe what the app is before you ask for signup), it's pre-integrated with a BaaS (Supabase) so all you need to do is sign up, pop in your env vars and it just works.

I've basically built a white-label general purpose app, and you can put your images/text/API URL in there and have your own custom app (with a feed, likes/favourite content, account settings, login in/log out/sign up) extremely quickly.

I don't know what this does other than vague marketing words

Point taken, I think a demo video is in order!

Thanks again for the great feedback

happy to help! it's hard to have enough perspective on things we build ourselves, so I'm always happy to try to contribute with some user confusion feedback

> I've basically built a white-label general purpose app, and you can put your images/text/API URL in there and have your own custom app (with a feed, likes/favourite content, account settings, login in/log out/sign up) extremely quickly.

NOW I get it and I think that's great! it's like a CMS for apps, I guess. you can show that upfront. "Why waste time reinventing the wheel writing basic functionality when you can have your app up and running in one day with hyper fast?"

you want to make the description of your product as short and easy as possible. "when you confuse, you lose"

the challenge there is proving to me that the "framework" will allow me to continue building when it inevitably needs to, as is the case with any framework. so one of your product goals should be to allow people to stay within HyperFast to move fast without feeling they can't customize it enough. at some point, though, you become as complex as React Native because of all the customization. but I do love sane defaults. that's why I use vscode and not vim anymore—just gotta have those vim keybindings and I'm game ;-)

good luck! and if you'd like advice from a real authority on building a clearer message check out https://www.amazon.com/Building-StoryBrand-Clarify-Message-C...

or even better, go to Donald Miller's workshops ;-) they cost $995 (!!) but he was a guest speaker in something else I attended and I learned more from him in a couple hours than I learned in a 2-year MBA at Kellogg...

his website is https://storybrand.com/

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