Interesting - Equals aims to replace Excel

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Posted by jaslar
Jul 25, 2022 at 08:43 PM

Hah, I’ve done that. It wouldn’t have been the first time everybody else knew what the post was about, and I didn’t. Thanks for the update!

Posted by Andy Brice
Jul 26, 2022 at 02:16 PM

There is no way that Equals is going to replace Excel for 99.99% of Excel users. 0.01% of Excel users be might still be a market worth pursuing though.

Posted by satis
Jul 26, 2022 at 03:53 PM

Andy Brice wrote:
> There is no way that Equals is going to replace Excel for 99.99% of
>Excel users. 0.01% of Excel users be might still be a market worth
>pursuing though.

Microsoft Office excel has from 750 million to 1.2 billion active monthly users. Google Suite, which includes Google Sheets is used by approximately 2 billion users every month, although they don’t break down Sheets usage. (But last year, Google’s educational program alone accounted for 70 million users of G Suite.) It probably wouldn’t be out of line to say that Sheets has about a quarter of the usage of Excel.

So if a bulletproof free app like Sheets (or LibreOffice Calc, or Zoho Office Sheet) won’t dissuade Excel users (through features like specialized macros, or by dint of corporate torpidity) it’s unlikely that a small pay competitor with unknown future financing and stability will be able to pull away and substantial customer base.

Is it really a market worth pursuing? If you can get funded sure, but that funding tends to dry up quickly then the pressure is on to sell to someone or shut down. If you’re going against behemoths like Microsoft, Google and Zoho’s free and pay alternatives (remember, Using Microsoft Excel and other core Office programs is free via the web) you’d better have a plan upfront to pay for development *and* grab paying customers. I don’t see this being a particularly viable business to be in, though I could see it being a typical VC funding play to get something ready for market and flipping it to some sucke… I mean business that thinks they can integrate the product into their own pay-suite.

Posted by tightbeam
Jul 26, 2022 at 04:10 PM

Ridiculous. Nothing is going to replace Excel. Or Word, for that matter. It’s what people use. Of course there always is a fringe that will rock the sheets with Equal, or its equally trendy predecessors/successors, but the key word is fringe.

Good luck to Equal, though. Innovation is ever welcome. If history is any guide, however, useful features of Equal likely will find their way into future versions of Excel, either directly or via add-in.

Posted by Andy Brice
Jul 27, 2022 at 08:27 AM

>I don’t see this being a particularly viable business to be in

It certainly isn’t a business that I would like to be in!

The main competitor to all 3 of my products (PerfectTablePlan, Hyper Plan and Easy Data Transform) is probably Excel. But I am only trying to replace Excel for specific tasks (table planning, task planning, data transformation). I’m definitely not trying to replace Excel completely.

Andy Brice

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