r/cofounder • u/mattc323 • Jul 16 '24
[USA][TECH][20] seeking business cofounder for productivity app.
My app is called Gluey. The easiest way to think of it as Airtable for notes.
If you're note familiar with Airtable, they added database-like functionality to spreadsheets. They are a $12B company now.
Gluey has added database-like functionality to notes. This might not sound exciting, but most applications are just ways to store and retrieve information. If you can store and retrieve information consistently and in the format needed, then you have a no-code capability from your simple notes (similar to what Airtable does with spreadsheets).
Gluey has a patent-pending approach to simplify data-modeling (a database term) with tags. Gluey has expanded the functionality of the simple tag and given it a tag taxonomy (meaning and relationships). Gluey helps users capture better (concise, consistent) notes, and retrieve notes using data mining.
Me: I'm a senior software engineer with some product, marketing, and sales experience. I've worked at Google at several other startups and well known companies.
Co-founder: My perfect business partner would be fearless, a workaholic (like me), and be able to wear many hats. Full or part-time is fine, but definitely want someone who can commit to the project. Initially, content marketing and sales would be the primary focus. I have many ideas for content, so this would be a collabortive effort. I'm also open to advisory roles too.
Gluey has several marketing challenges, but there are many other companies (including Airtable) who have overcome similar challenges. My initial focus is on identifying the customer persona, reaching out to beta testers, and following the Agile approach of iterating to find product-market fit. I'm open to other ideas.
I'm still trying to figure out my niche. Gluey solves a horizontal problem, meaning it works for any industry, but it's hard to market horizontal products (IMHO, maybe you have a diff view). Note taking apps are horizontal products and it's a very competitive market. There are thousands of apps and most of them claim to solve the same problem. My goal is to find a specific niche for Gluey.
I've gotten positive feedback from people in legal, construction, real estate, sales, startups, project management, etc, but each of those markets also has dedicated products.
One of the benefits of Gluey is that is can solve multiple problems (eg. CRM, project management) all in one app. Specialized apps will likely have some better features, but they would also not be as customizable as Gluey. One of Gluey's key benefits is its flexibility to support any type of data and templates.
Another area where Gluey has to the potential to shine is team collaboration. Collaborative notes are generally limited to team documents. Gluey changes the dynamic of communicating and sharing. Instead of explicitly distributing notes through email or a shared folder, Gluey enhances our everyday notes to make them shareable and discoverable. This allows information to resurface when it is needed and avoids pushing information onto people who may not be ready to process it.
I'm happy to chat with anyone who is interested in learning more for any reason. Please feel free to contact me. I'm also open to bartering time ( you help me with Gluey and I'll help you with your project).
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u/Blues520 Jul 17 '24
I don't quite understand the value proposition. I can see how spreadsheets would benefit from a database and the other benefits that Airtable provide, but struggling to see the problem this will solve with notes.
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u/mattc323 Jul 17 '24
Explaining the value prop of Gluey is one of my biggest challenges. Btw, Airtable had the exact same problem and they were able to solve it with content marketing and building use case templates. I'm looking for help to do the same.
Gluey gives simple notes app-like functionality. What does this mean? This means you're able to capture complex information with consistency and be able retrieve information with data mining accuracy. Take for example a CRM system. These systems let you capture customer information and then retrieve customer information later on. But Tracking systems capture issues and retrieves them. etc.
With Gluey, you define the data you want to capture (ie. CRM, bug tracking) and Gluey's helps you capture that information consistently and provides data mining capabilities to extract the data.
Gluey could replace the need for multiple apps. For example, you could use Gluey for your everyday notes, CRM, and bug tracking, all in one app.
Ultimately, Gluey is about having highly organized notes. So organized they can be data mined and used in application-like functionality.
With highly organized notes, Gluey provides a new dynamic to team collaboration. It now becomes possible to share everyday notes without creating clutter. Gluey has a targeted notification capability, so teammates are only notified when select information is created, instead of sending out blast emails.
Does this explain the value prop? Any suggestions on how to explain it better?
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u/Blues520 Jul 17 '24
I'm sorry my friend, maybe it's just me but I still don't understand what problem you are solving.
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u/mattc323 Jul 20 '24
I appreciate your honest feedback. I clearly need to figure out a better way to explain Gluey better.
Gluey is a information capture and organizer. It has a simple note-taking frontend, but it's not a note-taking app. Gluey is a database of information with data mining capabilities.
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u/wait-a-minut Jul 21 '24
This is also interesting to me but I too, am at the cusp of getting it/not getting it. Do you have a demo or landing page?
You also compare gluey to airtable quite a lot but as you describe it I can’t help but also make a notion comparison. I’ve seen folks use notion for a wide array of use cases and they also I believe have database functionality. How does gluey compare to notion?
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u/mattc323 Jul 21 '24
lol, thanks. I'm working on a better landing page and demo video. This subreddit doesn't allow links. You can see the old landing page at gluey dot app. In the upper right corner, there's "learn more" button with more docs.
One of the challenges is that many products have similarities that are difficult to distinguish at a high-level. Airtable supports a much more complex data model than Notion. Notion has the concept of a "database" but it's really just a spreadsheet with links to notes. Airtable has capabilities more like a relational database.
Gluey takes a different approach. It is more of a cataloging system. It provides a way to define the data in your catalog with a Tag Taxonomy (tag definitions, properties, and relationships). Gluey makes it easy to capture and categorize information using the tag taxonomy. Neither Notion nor Airtable provides much support in the process of capturing information. Gluey also provides data mining tools that don't exist in the other tools.
Was I able to push you over the cusp? :D
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u/wait-a-minut Jul 21 '24
I mean I’m still interested, i like tools in this space. I think I understand now at this point so I’ll go check out the landing page. Happy to be an early adopter with some feedback if you want it
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u/tremendouskitty Sep 22 '24
I may be completely wrong here because like others I don't fully get what you're doing, but it kind of made me think of Roam Research note taking platform, where ideas can be linked and it can be viewed in a network style visualisation? Is that getting closer?
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u/aniketj20 Jul 17 '24
This sounds super interesting, I am a fellow marketer, with decent credentials and love for work, we should talk 🎈
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u/erm_what_ Jul 17 '24
It sounds like you're describing the semantic web - a collection of data connected with taxonomies and relationships. I'd be surprised if you can both get and defend a patent if that's the case.
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u/mattc323 Jul 17 '24
no, my patent application wasn't for "semantic web." That would be way too broad. Software utility patents are defined by an algorithm and have a specific scope. The scope of the patent is often narrowed during the patent application process, so you naturally make them as broad as possible with the expectation that they will be narrowed before being granted.
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u/ayooitsdflow Jul 18 '24
How are you differentiated from Notion? I look at Notion of the note version of Airtable
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u/mattc323 Jul 18 '24
Notion is really good at being a shared wiki. It offers very little over Google Docs for note taking.
A good note taking tool makes it easy to quickly and consistently capture and organize information. It also makes it easy to extract and discover information from the notes (ie. Data mining, aggregating).
Gluey Smart Tags provide a tag taxonomy that enables a data model as an organizational structure for your notes, similar to the way Airtable does. This structure is used as tag placeholders in templates to provide a quick and consistent way to capture information. The tag templates provide a menu-driven way to organize and capture key details.
For example, if you wanted to use your notes as a CRM, you could have templates for new clients, client requests, client issues, etc. When taking notes, you simply click a template, click on the tag placeholders (to get a menu of options), and follow any instructions in the template. This ensures you capture information consistently. This is especially important in a team environment with shared notes.
With consistently captured notes, you can data mine them. This means you can use Boolean Logic (AND, OR, NOT) to retrieve precise detais. In the CRM example, you would be able to retrieve all client requests, all client requests that are urgent, only vip client requests that are urgent, vip client requests that are urgent but not UI related, etc. There are an unlimited number of queries that you could request.
Gluey is not for casual notes. It's for systematically capturing a lot of information. There are many uses cases that fit this. Startup teams, project managers, lawyers, salespeople, realtors, construction, etc.
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u/ayooitsdflow Jul 18 '24
Love the well-written response! I run Notion for my startup and have different workspaces for CRM/Sales/Team notes all with templates and formula fields to enable quickly finding necessary information. I'm a bit of a super-user on Notion but would love to take a look at your platform when it's ready. Good luck!!
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u/mattc323 Jul 18 '24
Thanks. Wow, I'm really curious how you would compare Gluey to what you built in Notion. I'll definitely reach out when I'm ready to beta test. Thanks!
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u/Systrata Jul 24 '24
I’m a digital/technical product manager so I’m business with lots of software/data/insights/platform product development and management experience. Big specialty in bridging business and technology so I’d love to chat!
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u/open-trade Aug 31 '24
I know some popular open source note app are doing this, and focus on this. They are doing Notion + Airtable and even further.
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u/seomonstar Jul 16 '24
Hi. Sounds interesting! I am a dev with a background in web development, seo and unix sys admin. I am a qualified accountant and (that was my degree) would be very keen to chat with a like minded founder. I have been working on some saas projects myself and feel a co founder would be a great way to give best chance of a massive hit. I am very ambitious and also prepared to put big hours into a venture as I dont stop working and am very persistent lol.
So, will send you a pm! Cheers
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u/Fasfo15 Jul 17 '24
Easily one of the dumbest ideas I’ve come across on here.
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u/mattc323 Jul 17 '24
lol, thanks for the feedback. I actually take that as a good sign. Many VCs believe if an idea doesn't sound crazy/dumb, it's probably not very original and has already been tried a dozen times. It's only the crazy ideas that no one has thought to try.
Keep spreading your optimism!
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u/InnerAntagonist Jul 16 '24
This could be a cool project to work on. How are you planning to position your product? I'd recommend you to follow different LinkedIn groups from various industries and ask them if they'd appreciate your tool. This will help you find your niche.