Comment by npace12 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by npace12 | Hacker News Reader

Congrats on your launch! I have some feedback, but please don't take it negatively, it's just my thoughts.

I love to see anyone taking on salesforce.com, but your product so far is way too barebones. It reminds me of something I'd get from just using some admin UI for a database.

I was a salesforce technical architect and consultant for a number of years (hated it.) and what I've seen is that some of the first things people look for are reports, dashboards, workflows, integration. A lot of people think their sales process is super unique and want to see a path of implementing it in a system and that includes integrating it with a bunch of other systems already in place.

For smaller companies, sourcing leads, creating and tracking email campaigns, is probably the first thing they look for.

Some feedback for your website:

* gifs/videos take a while to load and stay blurred

* The linkedin example is great, show more like this

* Ability to add custom fields/objects is expected, doubt anyone would be impressed by that

* Show some canned dashboards and reports on the data

Totally agree we're way too barebones to say we're an SFDC alternative today. Reports and dashboards/views are the next two things on the roadmap. For workflows we've been using our Zapier app so far, but we're looking to potentially do that built-in. Integrations is going to be a long list of work. Going to feel like working at Segment again. :)

For sourcing and campaigns, our initial plan is a two-way Apollo integration. Not sure if you have thoughts on the necessity of doing everything in-house (the Hubspot approach) or just focusing on integrating with the best tools (the Salesforce approach).

Your feedback on the website is well taken. We've got a lot of work to do there.

Reports are a big time sink. Have you thought of integrating a pre-baked tool? A quick google shows up Carbone[0] (I don't know if it's good; I'm not a customer/investor) but that sort of thing might get you going.

[0] https://github.com/carboneio/carbone

Yep! Agree -- we're currently evaluating some vendors. I don't see much reason to build a bunch of stuff here if we can simply buy it.

No decisions yet on who best fits our needs, so thanks for raising Carbone; it wasn't on our list yet.

vega charts are also decent and very configurable. LLMs know about them and can generate their schema too, which helps.

Yeah, integration work never ends but having a few popular ones built in + api and docs goes a long way. I've honestly never seen anyone in mid/big companies consider Zapier, but it's been a few years since I was in that space, so could have changed. Getting into those bigger companies, you're basically going to need everything, or hope for a small team within the company to like your CRM.

Those small teams/companies basically want a simple Hubspot, not salesforce, but a lot of times, they don't really know the difference. Something that can take Apollo leads, build some "simple" email campaigns [1], some landing pages [2], track one-off emails and report on all that for cheaper than the $25k/yr or whatever hubspot charges would be a great tool. I know, not exactly a CRM, but people call it that.

I don't think it matters if you integrate other providers or build it in, but having an easy setup where users don't have to go sign up, manage and integrate with a bunch of other services could help you get the small/startup space.

[1] Lots of things to deal with if you're taking on the email sending & tracking part, automated clicks, safari privacy, etc. [2] This is a can of worms, but being able to build simple landing pages for people to click on from an email is pretty important.

While the boundaries continues to fade, what you described is generally called a Marketing Automation system. Hubspot is becoming more CRM now, but its roots were and still are Marketing Automation.

(I'm one of the cofounders of Okapi)

You're 100% right.

We're missing a bunch of stuff simply because we're early :)

Regarding custom objects and fields, I agree this is not very interesting when compared against Salesforce, but these things actually aren't common in the products we can currently compete with! These are typically low-end, self-service products designed for simplicity and don't afford their users much freedom.

In this sense, we've been able to offer some of our early customers the flexibility of a SFDC product without all the other stuff. A decent chunk of people want exactly that.

A few things on the roadmap include:

* Reporting

* Custom views

* Open API

* Built-in automations (right now we piggyback on Zapier)

All this stuff will take a long time to get right

Do you have a public roadmap available?

Not yet, but we're thinking about it!

Nice, I'll put myself in the mailing list on your page and keep a look out

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