Hey @yonasbe! I have a bit more backstory to Leanstack since we met a month or two ago but do you want to share how you came up with the idea?
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Hunter
Stumbled across this today and thought it makes quite a nice compliment to the wonderful Product Hunt! I think theres a lot of value in being able to 'group' products that have been tried and tested that work well together so this is quite a nice way of seeing that.
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Maker
Hey! Founder of Leanstack here. Happy to answer any questions you may have. Also feel free to email me at yonas@leanstack.io.
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Maker
Sure @rrhoover! I'll give the "short" version :)
I got the idea for Leanstack after going to a hackathon in SF and finding the perfect API for a video chat project that I was working on. That's when I realized that we're still finding out about these tools at in-person events.
At the same time, it's always been a pain for me to research tools and services to use every time I wanted to build an app. Coming up with a short list, vetting them, and deciding. It's a common problem.
So I created a simple directory that organized all the services out there, (there were too many open source tools to be able to effectively tackle those as well). And I wanted to focus on quality, because that was part of the problem. Way too much noise out there, there's new "aaSs" popping up everyday. So I created a curated static directory.
While I was building it, I realized there was a lot of good data out there about what tools companies are using (case studies, testimonials, blog posts, etc) so I started organizing that, and that became the entry point to Leanstack for a lot of people (called "Cloud Stacks").
Since then, the site has shifted towards user-generated content so developers can learn from each other. But at the end of the day, this is about helping people find the best tools so they can work smarter. Using the best tools doesn't ensure success of course, but it's a huge piece of the puzzle that no one has really nailed yet.
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Hunter
@yonasbe I love the way that you are grouping products together that 'play nicely'. I think in this day and age of the lean startup, people aren't just looking for 'stuff as a service' that do the job they need, but that will gel seamlessly with their existing suite of apps. Tools like Zapier (http://www.producthunt.co/posts/...) help a lot but are never quite as frictionless as two apps that have made a conscious decision to work together and often are more seamless than regular API access would allow.
As an example we just moved from our desk.com helpdesk over to zendesk, there were lots of factors but one of the largest was the fact it plays nicely off the shelf with Woopra (http://www.producthunt.co/posts/...) a tool we use heavily.
Thanks for creating a valuable service!
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Maker
Thanks for the praises @jasondainter! Really glad to hear the site is useful for you. Agreed regarding native integrations, super important. It always amazes me how difficult it is to get that information; some vendors bury it in their documentation or even in blog posts.
You should totally enter "Woopra integration" as a one-liner for Zendesk http://leanstack.io/zendesk#reasons :)
Thanks for sharing Leanstack on PH!
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