Title: Please review my startup:
<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;hypernumbers.com" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;hypernumbers.com</a><p>We finally have a ‘quantum of utility’ - a product like a spreadsheet but better at doing some things...<p>I would love to get your thoughts and opinions on what a native-web spreadsheet should be like - and in which ways hypernumbers meets (or fails to meet) your expectations.<p>BACK STORY<p>When I started writing this submission I googled for Paul Graham’s &#x27;Startup Ideas We&#x27;d Like to Fund&#x27; No 22 - web spreadsheet (<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;ycombinator.com&#x2F;ideas.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;ycombinator.com&#x2F;ideas.html</a>) from 2008 – so I could point out we started full time work on it in 2007. Through the miracle of Google I found this article of Paul’s from 2005 (<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.paulgraham.com&#x2F;ideas.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.paulgraham.com&#x2F;ideas.html</a>) which predates us. I have no idea if I read that article at the time :(<p>That got me thinking. Reading Paul’s articles today it all seems so simple and obvious, but it took 6 years for me to come to think that thought – and it has taken another 4 years to execute it.<p>In Web 1.0, I was Chief Technical Architect at if.com – a bank on the internet. There was an anti-pattern around called ‘how come it takes me a day to do this on a spreadsheet, but it takes 10 developers 4 months in Java?’ to which the answer was just a shrug. We had a pile of innovative product designs prototyped in Excel a mile high which we actually just could not implement.<p>One day I stumbled across the Functional Programming FAQ which used spreadsheets as an example of a Functional Language: Eureka! We left to start our own bank with an offer engine written in an (initially undecided - later Erlang) Functional Language on the 4th September 2001 – turned out not so good...<p>‘spreadsheetieness of Erlang’ to ‘spreadsheet in Erlang’ took another 5 years...<p>3 hours sleep, filthy hangover, rural airport in Sweden, yet another failed (Erlang) start-up, depressed, I knocked up the first prototype of hypernumbers in sort of migranetic&#x2F;hungover ecstasy of coding just to cheer myself up.<p>Another 4 years later – here we are...
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