Redwood Rockstars,
I am happy to help fan the flame of startups that are using RedwoodJS.
Primary goal: Moral support and encouragement
Secondary goal: Talk shop about tech choices
Other goals: We’ll see!
This thread can be the starting point. Version one, simply engage in this discussion 
Cheers,
Keith
My startup Everfund.co.uk uses redwood and pushes it in every single way!
If you want talk about tech choices me and @dom would love to talk!
Thanks for sharing Chris. I’m all for putting one of your donation links to use! Any live ones that you can share?
©2020 ‘everfund’ is a trading name of TapKit Limited
its 2021 mannnnnnnn. you livin in the past.
@mikebobadilla New website out very very soon 
@keith.t.elliott yes! evr.fund/oevb
Right now it is only for United Kingdom charity’s and non profits only but we are looking to expand to the us hopefully q2/q3
Thanks for setting this up @keith.t.elliott, I’m glad we’re starting to formalise this.
I built https://tape.sh on Redwood - started using Redwood way back in 0.6. What I suppose is different about it, is that Redwood not only runs the main web application (the dashboard), but also powers the APIs for the CLI and mac apps, using its gql API. What they don’t tell you about building your own startup → you have to take care of every little detail. Design, frontend, backend, analytics, exception tracking, compatibility testing, infrastructure, marketing - the list is endless. This is where redwood shines I think, it gives me enough control to do whatever I need to, while letting me not worry about many of the details.
I’m keen for any feedback from anyone willing to try, I genuinely think it makes working together with a team remotely a lot easier, when you can just show them what you mean, and the screen recording process is as friction free as possible.
Growth and marketing has been an issue for me, as its quite outside my comfort zone (I especially don’t like doing “hot takes” on twitter). Anyone with experience with this?
Maybe the pricing needs tweaking too! Can I ask what you guys would see as a more enticing free tier?
I’m in, since I’m pushing RW in startup hiring processes for CTO I’m definitely interested and willing to help move this forward.
From my recent experiences if yielding interest on the tech is rather easy, confirming it is not because there’s the everlasting argument of “let’s see if it stands the test of time and others can build upon it before us”.
Not sure how I can beat this one but I’ll have another opportunity as soon as next week, if anyone has ideas… I’ll run them by the fieldtest 
and provide due feedback.
This being said I think the community should organize more about promoting RedwoodJS (I hang mostly around Discourse so maybe it’s already the case somewhere else…). There are some projects live but none of them (alone or as a whole) can convince a company to rely on RW for business, which is a shame.
I know there are a couple of projects by the community which are more ecommerce, maybe there’s a lot of value to yield for RW from team building around these and getting to the point where the community can ship its first business platforms - as demonstration Redwood can take the charge painlessly. We would have to find a place where to promote these work then ( @thedavid you know, that place! ) and the association of developers willing to list Redwood in the job description.
Thanks for the topic @keith.t.elliott
Yes, 100% agreed.
getting to the point where the community can ship its first business platforms - as demonstration Redwood can take the charge painlessly
Yes again!
We would have to find a place where to promote these work then ( @thedavid you know, that place! ) and the association of developers willing to list Redwood in the job description.
And, yes, you correctly know I know 
Bottom line, it’s great to see this getting some momentum. And to all of you in this thread, please keep nudging things in this direction. Lots more to come.
Keen to be involved, thanks for kicking this off.
If you’re not already aware of it, I’d really encourage checking out Indie Hackers - it’s a community where mostly devs (but lots of non technical people too) discuss all the challenges of building businesses.
There’s a wide variety of topics - sales, marketing, design, support, pricing, and of course tech - all areas that need just as much focus when building a business.
Maybe we could start a Redwood group over there, help spread the word
Love this! Def in for building great products and eventual businesses with Redwood.
Great start to this discussion - lots to absorb!
@Chris I just donated to Lincoln Foodbank, via my I-phone. It just worked - Smooth and quick!
@danny Thanks for your detailed note and for talking shop in the meet-up today. I checked-out Tape on my phone, and will spend more time with it once I get to my laptop.
@noire.munich Agreed, it’ll be nice to see more all-in apps behind successful businesses. I think we are heading in that direction…
@hamishirving I spend time periodically at Indie Hackers. Good stuff, I just feel like I don’t have enough hours in the day to join another community…
@williamimoh I love your just-get-it-done style! You set a great example of getting an MVP out the door ASAP!
Hey everyone! I am working on a product called UserVitals. - we are close to launching and getting ready for the early access period. We use redwood for the web app, but also the API interacts with different components such as our chrome extension, Slack app, Intercom app etc. Our web app has two parts which is a admin app and a customer portal - both served by redwood and deployed via Vercel.
As we gear up for deployment and going into production, would love to hear how others are thinking about the following or handling it already (which I assume will become an eventual need for your apps).
Hey @viperfx looks great, I’m a Product Manager by day and this hits on a lot of pain points I experience with aggregating user feedback. Happy to chat through in more detail if you want to jump on a call sometime
@viperfx thanks for sharing! I have your same technical questions, but unfortunately no answers.
Anyone have insight on any of these?..
@danny I had some time today to checkout tape.sh. Unfortunately I don’t own a Mac (super UNcool, I know) so I cannot use the app. But, I browsed the site and have a couple thoughts…
I recently used clyp.it to submit a question to the Shoptalk podcast. I used it because the hosts, Dave Rupert and Chris Coyier, suggested it as the best way to communicate. It is different in that it is just audio, but similar in concept. All that to say… maybe there’s an equivalent groove with Tape. For example, a software vendor requires customers to send screen shots via Tape. Maybe the vendor pays for this service, not the customers. So a sales channel could be: target customer software support folks, with a solution that helps them better help their customers.
I am kinda anchored on clyp.it… Their pricing is similar to yours (starts at $2/mo). You could call them and talk shop. You don’t compete with each other, so they (or maybe it’s just one person) may provide their experience with pricing.
I hate to say it, but I don’t think that I would use Tape unless someone asked me to (the competition or alternatives being live screen share zia Zoom or recorded YouTube videos). So, I think a targeted customer group is really necessary to help with early marketing/sales efforts. Once you have a customer that totally loves it, you can ride that wave (the first jazzed customers may be hardest ones to get).
I hope I’m not out of line giving my candid feedback & brainstorming ideas in this venue - just trying help.
Hang in there! I’d be interested in the hearing about your early sales wins or challenges - that being the hardest part for us techie types.
All the best,
Keith
As said last week I’ve had another interview with a startup in its early days, for the position of cto/founder.
They cooked me on using RedwoodJS to support a project of a professional backoffice in the area of sports.
Two main concerns for them was:
As for the product in itself, it is a management tool with some narrow ecommerce features ( online subscriptions ).
Alpha is expected around the 15th of June and initial release Q4-2021.
I don’t know yet if I’ll do it, if so I might turn to the community as we’ll need to hire extra help ( sadly, on a budget :-\ ).
I’ll keep the crew posted if this moves forward.
Not at all Keith, especially because I’m reading this as if you’re speaking in a calm, soothing voice . I appreciate you taking the time to give me some feedback.
I know I’m missing something in the pricing/targeting for sure, but also I think I under estimated the challenge trying to get people to try a new way of doing things.
This is my key problem: Tape is the product that lets you do it (and there are a few others with huge funding in the space, but the CLI is pretty unique) - I’m asking people to think “this video call is a waste of time, let me wrap it up in 30s to get the point across”. Changing the way people collaborate - that’s a much taller order than I was expecting. 
The other thing is people don’t want to pay for software (just look at LastPass getting so much flack!). I’m thinking I might make the free tier a lot more generous, but I think fundamentally I think I need to give people a lot more reason to pay.
Sorry for the essay, but I hope my thoughts will help other people building their own stuff too!
Just my 2c here - consumers don’t want to pay for software, but businesses absolutely do.
Look into building up your offering so that it can be easily used within a software team. Make sharing and collaboration really easy. E.g. make sure you have Teams support, invite etc, support @domain login/signup, have some distribution channels that make sense for your tool to acquire some free leads.
I think Tuple would be a great one to look for inspiration. They have a pair programming tool and only do it for macOS.
@noire.munich thanks for the update and the details. We are here to help and encourage. Sounds like an interesting option - Keep us posted!