Thymer - a week after the launch | Hacker News Reader

Thymer - a week after the launch

stunf.com

24 pointsdan_sim24 comments

The first pie chart is an abomination. Firstly, it's about time series data so that chart itself is not appropriate and secondly it's next to impossible to spot the difference between 10/20 and 10/21 without the figures.

See http://www.jgc.org/blog/2009/08/please-dont-use-pie-charts.h...

Haha. The use of 3d pie charts was deliberate, and I know they convey almost no information (and often give a skewed impression). We would never use a pie chart for real decisions, but in this case we only cover 7 days worth of sales, which is way too little for any meaningful analysis.

In this case, the 3d pie charts just look shiny :)

Still beating you down with a copy of Tufte.

Sorry for nitpicking, but using a pie chart for your first graph is grossly inappropriate. It's notoriously difficult to differentiate small differences using pie charts.

If you're comparing revenue per day, a line graph or even a bar graph can convey that information a lot better.

Or even a table.

Someone should write a book or summary or whatever on How To Show Data.

Ahem.

http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/books_vdqi

http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/books_ei

http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/books_visex

(edit: i realize you're probably being sarcastic, but i'll just leave these links here for the unenlightened)

Yes, but also I think that there's even more basic stuff. For example, make numbers line up on the decimal point.

It'd be fun to put together a one-pager.

Is it me or those numbers are impressive for "yet another project management app"? How can it be explained?

We're happy with the numbers, but I think they can be partially explained by our long beta period. People have been asking us "when can we start paying?" since the beginning of the summer.

We are entering a crowded market, but it's not as bad as you may think. A lot of the competing project management software startups take the exact same approach. So we see Basecamp and all the Basecamp clones as just a single competitor, and we deliberately take a different approach. As a result, some people will prefer their approach, and other people tell us they've been looking for something like Thymer for over ten years, and that's the kind of feedback that confirms we may have found a good niche.

Where did you talk about your product during the beta period? Did they come at you or you came to them?

I just replied in the comments section of our blog to a similar question (it's a bit long to paste here). In short: a combination of posting on some forums, using beta invites, word-of-mouth and finally contacting blogs about our private beta launch. From there on we got thousands of sign-ups, as people kept sending more invites and mentioning us on places like twitter and (small) blogs. A lot of those mentions on twitter where about our the interface, the time in which we reply to feedback :), and even our sign up form, so I guess all the small things help!

These numbers are very impressive. I'm building such a tool too, with a twist. I'll tell how it goes when I'll launch.

I wonder if they're attracting more European customers. Also, could price be a factor (one user for $5, six for $25)?

But yet, the price is comparable to other products of that kind that I saw.

I wonder if the simple, clean design is attracting people? Or perhaps it has to do with the pricing (which as you've said is competitive) or the presentation video. If every site that I checked out had a 2 minute "Here's how our site works, in a nutshell" I might find myself staying interested a little longer, and it would probably stick with me a little bit more.

This looks like a really cool product, but where are the TOS and privacy policy? I know not having them is the in thing now (I'm looking at you, StackOverflow), but there's no way I'm signing up for anything and giving my data without them.

They are presented during the second stage of signup.

Yet I would never go to the second stage without seeing them. This sounds like a paradox.

... and I just signed up without seeing any TOS, so...

The links I got from the second stage(Which I had to agree to via a checkbox) are these: https://a.thymer.com/accounts/tos https://a.thymer.com/accounts/privacy

Why did I not get this second stage???

It was a bit of a dilemma for us. On the one hand, we realize the importance of the TOS and Privacy policy, on the other hand, we don't like the "Hi there, thanks for visiting. Please sign our TOS" kind of welcome; it's so cold.

EDIT: added links to the TOS and Privacy policy to the footer on thymer.com

Right but it's silly to say, "Make sure you - and, when using Thymer in a team, all other team members - ("you") read these Terms carefully before subscribing to Thymer. By using Thymer you agree to become bound by these Terms. If you do not agree to all Terms, you may not subscribe to Thymer," and then not put a link to these terms anywhere in the signup process.

Thanks for pointing that out. We meant to give people the chance to first try it without having to bother through all kinds of forms, so our initial idea was to reflect these terms onto the (free) subscription period after the testing. But I agree the way it's presented now is a bit confusing. So we're going to change that, thanks!

Awesome. I realize I'm probably in the minority on reading TOS, but when I'm paying for something (or trying something which I might pay for), I like to know all the details, especially when I'm likely to be submitting personal data to the site.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com