Crestfall
The Pitch

Photo by Jesse Bowser on Unsplash

The Pitch

“If you can not measure it, you can not improve it.” - Lord Kelvin

Josh's photo
Josh
·

3 min read

I just love that quote. Anyway, let's get to it.

Crestfall

  • Your core back-end needs for your early-stage apps.

The Market

  • For students, hobbyists, solo developers, small teams, and small businesses.

  • For developers of early-stage apps that need to iterate fast and ship fast.

The Problem

  • Setting up your back-end infrastructure is hard and time-consuming.

    • How to provide Authentication (for identity management)?

    • How to provide Authorization (for access management)?

    • How to provide Storage (for storing files)?

    • How to provide Analytics (for tracking metrics)?

The Solution

  • Crestfall solves this by providing you with easy-to-use APIs for Authentication, Authorization, Storage, Analytics, and more.

  • These REST APIs let you solve your immediate back-end needs in any programming language you are familiar with.

  • With Crestfall, you can easily set up a monolithic architecture, letting you iterate fast and ship fast, all while being cost-efficient.

  • It's like Heroku, but with your core back-end needs.

  • It's like Supabase and Firebase, but with full access to your servers.

  • Our code will be fully open-source, intended for self-hosting and cloud-hosting.

Technical Details

  • Crestfall Agent

    • Connects to local Docker UNIX socket.

    • Connects to the Crestfall Server thru WebSocket.

  • Crestfall Server

    • The Crestfall Agent connects here.

    • The Crestfall Studio web app is served here.

  • Crestfall Studio

    • Start / Stop APIs. Easily turn on the features you need, and turn off the ones you don't.

    • Setup and Teardown Scripts. For your runtime dependencies, and graceful shut-down.

    • Deploy from GitHub, GitLab, and BitBucket. For automated deployments.

    • One-click deployments from Docker Hub, etc. Easily deploy from your favorite container registries.

    • Logging and Monitoring. No need to call docker ps and docker logs.

  • Crestfall Authentication

    • Provides JWT-based sign-up and sign-in.

  • Crestfall Authorization

    • Provides Role-based Access Control (RBAC).

  • Crestfall Storage

    • Provides S3-compatible object storage.

  • Crestfall Analytics

    • Provides basic web analytics.

Traction

  • Private Preview (current)

    • The product is made available to a select group of users.

    • Earlier drafts of our APIs are already deployed in production with real users.

    • Currently creating the Crestfall Studio web app for ease of use.

    • Currently rewriting our APIs for public beta.

  • Public Beta (under development)

    • The product is made available to a wider audience for testing.

  • General Availability (soon)

    • The product is made available to the general public.

Funding

  • Received cloud credits at AWS, GCP, and DigitalOcean from YC Startup Deals.

  • No funding (in exchange for equity) yet.

  • We are looking to get into YC S23.

Revenue

  • No revenue yet.

Growth

  • No data yet.

Team

  • Just me (Josh). I currently do the coding and the pitching.

  • No one else yet.

Ask

  • For YC: $125k for 7% capped SAFE + $375k uncapped MFN SAFE.

  • For others: $125k for 5% to 7% capped SAFE.

  • This is for engineers, marketing, support, and sales. This will give us a better runway for the next 12 to 24 months.

  • If not funded by YC, I'll try with others. Otherwise, I'll continue working on the side to keep things going, simple as that.

  • Thanks.

Links

References

StartupsYC