Why do Indian startups have many sheets being used for everything?
How much of this can be done on software. Any reason why more of this is not being done. Is this only India problem?
Well, if you think about it, most so called "apps" and "software" are sort of spreadsheets themselves.
Yea sure. I'm speaking about, data getting lost, leaked. Process being with one person. One guy goes and things break. Everything being manual. You need ops people just to sit and upload and some some basic work which is useless.
Cheapo mindset of founders. We are nt good system builders.
It’s a common tool everyone can use without any learning. People have used it as database as well. So I don’t see a problem but sure, custom applications or automation could bring up productivity. But it won’t drive revenue so not a priority
It can reduce cost to run the org. Profit is selling price - cost price.
By keeping folks productive and focused on the right things, company can move forward. I've seen companies spend years not moving to better structured systems. They make it so manual so tiring and make it hard for employees
A lot, if not all admin/growth/analytics can be done Google sheets, what's the issue here ?
Data security. Data being a blocker. It takes so much time to scan through and validate and ensure it's correct. Processes.
For example finances are not at all documented correctly. It's just spread across.
A lot of companies lose time to unproductive work. Because things are not organised.
Eventually it helps if your Data is connected to a db with some basic rbac.
Okay, I think you're talking about startups using Google sheets as a database?
I don't see data security as an issue, because it's access is restricted to company emails only.
Making sure it's correct, is a process problem and not a tool problem. If you're spending too much time checking if the data is right, ensure there is a proper analytics and data engineering team which creates and maintains data properly.
Finances have traditionally used excel/sheets in combination with their accounting software's, they know it gets the job done.
Google sheet becomes a problem when there are manual interventions to data and not systematic, then it starts to get fucked.
I've personally seen both sides of it, at a startup where it was fucked and at a place where it's used incredibly well.
They want to save money by not using ms-excel.
Because Google sheet is highly versatile and used by everyone not just Indian startups
Example: levels.fyi scaling to millions user with sheets as backend https://www.levels.fyi/blog/scaling-to-millions-with-google-sheets.html
Levels.fyi is probably not the right benchmark. It's a simple workflow there. They are just listing information.
I'm talking about more larger workflow. Like deal management, issue management, Document processing etc.
Another is communication. Ive observed half the time is to get other persons approval, comment or input. A lot of the things I've actually automated and used simple no code systems for them. It vastly improved outcome. In some cases they have 80000 rows of data and 20 people working on it. Without even a simple vlookup
People don't like to break things that aren't broken.
Sheets is what works for most applications, that's why it's used widely. Airtable is pretty good too.
Migrating to software or worse, building it from scratch, has a cost attached to it. Most use cases don't require it.
So it's lower when compared to the west. I have seen startups with 4 developers and some 120 non tech folks. In the west priority for keeping data safe, As well as cost minimum is a lot. I'm not saying people don't, but the cost of breaking laws are much higher there
Low learning curve. Lala does not know software, warna they would use Maconomy not Excel or Sheets 😂
Googlesheet is simple, easy to use and versatile. Why to subscribe any tool/app when it comes with Googlesuite ?
Use BARD or other AI Tools to simplify this
Just plain simple fact that labour is cheap
For me it was always startups and now looking at the landscape I think it’s very hard. For 8 years, I just wasted my time.
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