Show HN: My spreadsheet automation suite is making $5K without VC funding

1 point

a year ago

I built SmartSpreadsheets to solve a problem I kept encountering: businesses were paying for 10+ SaaS subscriptions when most of their tasks could be automated directly in Google Sheets.

The core is a collection of 15 Google Apps Script tools that add functionality to Google Sheets without requiring users to leave the familiar spreadsheet environment. Each tool is a standalone add-on focused on a specific workflow:

=> Content generation (OpenAI/Claude/Gemini integration) => WooCommerce/Shopify management => Web scraping + data extraction => WordPress site building without code => SEO tools (indexing, keyword clustering)

The technical approach: We use Google Apps Script as the foundation, with custom JavaScript to handle the various API integrations. For things like AI content generation, we direct API calls to OpenAI/Claude without marking up the costs.

What makes this approach interesting is that users maintain complete ownership of their data and automation workflows, rather than being locked into a proprietary system. When a SaaS product shuts down (which happens regularly), users lose access to both the tool and sometimes their data. With this approach, everything remains in their Google Drive.

Happy to answer any technical questions about the implementation or specific challenges we encountered.