+1 for plaid. It's awesome, I built something similar to OP about 6 months ago just using plaid and my existing bank account.

this is so good

This post makes me sad.

I almost worked with The Grid about a year ago, from my experience everyone there is nothing but kind and talented. From what I saw, the team really wants to build a great product and is extremely passionate about what they do.

Sure they have flashy marketing and throw the word AI around a lot. Clearly its working better than “Hey we use automated A/B testing, analytics, fluid auto-changing layouts, dynamic color schemes, and whole bunch of cool photo filters to tie together a unique website based on your content!”

Regarding the delays, I think the same would be true for any startup with really good pre order sales, who is feeling the mounting pressure to meet the bar they have set for themselves. This is called caring about your work.

I think the author is misguided here and took liberties on what The Grid is actually promising. I don’t understand why people feel the need to blog scathing reviews about startups they have researched for 20 minutes. Ignore the haters Grid team.

There is a line between (legal) puffery and the objective claim that they have built "AI that allows websites to design themselves."

Is it AI that allows "websites to design themselves", obviously not, even saying "a /unique/ website based on your content" (given the likelihood for small scale repetition) is a massive stretch.

Is that still just puffery or can people argue over the definition of AI? Obviously you and OP disagree but you can see his point.

This post reminds me of those who had invested considerable sums into Mt.Gox prior to their declaration of insolvency.

+1, I use sails for most of my projects. Works great in production

great writeup, thanks for sharing the progression

Loving the progression from a newsletter to a hacker news style site, great stuff, I hope a solid community forms around it.

The IAP for the bear, lets you ski as the bear https://twitter.com/davechenell/status/545580869696888833, Chasing monsters coming soon http://thewaterbear.com/obstacle-avoidance-a-i/

Yeah, its the sound from the game, a sort of white noise to add atmosphere? Real music and sound effects will be coming in an update :)

Thanks I appreciate it. I do design and code yet I work with my friend Eric on everything. I think working with someone is good for your product and sanity :) We also got extremely lucky that Apple featured the game.

Thanks! It was built in Unity3D

Will you be releasing an android version?

Can someone explain something to me. When using a cross-platform engine, like Unity3d, why don't developers release it on more platforms? Is it difficult to do so? Is it a lot more work to release on other platforms?

Yeah, Android version is coming soon, hopefully before the end of Jan. I did use Unity3D, and while it is very easy to port, releasing on two platforms can be time consuming for one person while I'm freelancing fulltime. Dealing with tracking bugs, IAP, GameCenter, Google Play, optimization, Screen sizes etc adds up. Also I lack an android device at the moment for reliable testing.

I built a cross platform app a while back. The major barrier to releasing it right away for every platform was QA testing it on the myriad devices and OS versions we wanted it to be stable on. The framework only went so far for working out issues on devices with so many combinations of screen sizes, resolutions, and ratios, not to mention memory, cpu, and graphics capabilities.

Android users often harp about apps that are released first for iOS, but it's much easier to QA on a fairly limited number of devices, launch the app and start proving your idea/generating revenue on iOS first. At least in my experience, releasing a cross-platform app for both operating systems at the same time means either delaying iOS to QA Android properly, or releasing a half-baked Android version that gets 25 1-star reviews right out of the gate because of a weird edge case bug with some device you didn't test on.