Profig (YC S12) Launches An Affordable, Feature-Rich Instant Phone System | Hacker News Reader

Profig (YC S12) Launches An Affordable, Feature-Rich Instant Phone System

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73 pointsyabbadabbadoo38 comments

This is a YC company that finally really excites me.

The best technology removes problems from the equation all together. Profig (which is kind of a silly name despite its amazing core service) provides a virtual phone system that can be developed like web infrastructure.

Once their account creation is automated (which it sounds like that's their main to-do based on yabbadabbadoo's responses and product description), build-up and tear-down of virtual communication infastructure would be like going to pick up pens and pencils for your business (a trip that might take 20 minutes).

The faster and cheaper critical business infrastructure (e-mail, "productivity", research, communication) can be integrated into an organization the more market opportunities exist for smaller players, as new or temporary opportunities could be capitalized on with much less foresight or risk.

YC companies like this that use other YC companies as initial users sounds like something Xhibit would do, but what PG is essentially doing is actively researching into building virtual companies at increasingly marginal rates, directly on the market itself with real companies.

I will be watching this one more closely for sure!

Yes, our name doesn't fully match our product :) That's because it's from our original idea. When we pivoted, we considered getting a new name, but pg's advice was - "If it's short and can be easily spelled, you're good. Move on." - so we stuck with it.

As for the product, you hit the nail on the head. Our goal is to disrupt the process of setting up communication infrastructure. We want our users to be able to spin up/down solutions on demand.

Fontacto is a 500Startups company doing the Virtual Phone System thing (The Google Voice for businesses) outside the US, which is a heavily overlooked market.

At $30 a month, it offers less in terms of low priced options to get started compared with, say, these guys:

https://secure.grasshopper.com/

I have no idea about anything else though - I ended up not using Grasshopper because they rejected my credit card for whatever odd reason.

Edit - changed the wording to make it clearer what I mean about pricing tiers.

Actually, we offer way more. You can compare what we offer - http://profig.com/virtual-phone-system - with what grasshopper offers.

Plus, we'll be launching our mobile apps soon, which are SIP clients, and that'll cut down the bill even further, up to half.

yabbadabbadoo, the website stylesheets are broken on Chrome at the moment. Looking forward to seeing it when its back up.

I'm on chrome as well. OSX? Windows? Linux?

It's on my end - sorry, stylesheets called from github are not loaded, as github's blocked at my work. Sorry for the false alarm. But I would imagine others would be in the same boat, so perhaps move the stylesheets over to your server, at least for demo day? ;) Good luck! I'm rooting for you.

Moving to s3 now :)

> github's blocked at my work

8-/ I hope no one is supposed to write software at your work

Wow, why would they block github? I hope nobody needs to code at your work place. That's almost as bad as blocking google.

I'm afraid to dig into this further!

I called your main number and hit 2 for sales and it rang and rang and no answer.

I am interested in your solution for a large client who is moving offices (they are a very successful YC alumn)

Can you contact me?

Sorry about that. We're flooded with user sign ups. I just emailed you.

Just sent you an email.

Thanks

I've sent you several emails now with meeting invites to talk and have received no response.

Are you focusing on the US only?? or are you planning to expand outside?

Sorry for the late reply. We're running betas in Europe, Asia and Latina America. We'll be out of beta in these continents soon :)

yabbadabbadoo: Profig looks interesting, but I can't discern why or whether it's better than using existing cheap SIP providers like OnSIP, which allow startups, small business, and even medium-sized corporations to use Android, iOS, Windows, OS X, and Linux softphone SIP clients as well as brandname SIP phones from Polycom, Cisco, etc.

Please help me understand, how exactly is Profig better?

First, onsip requires SIP handsets. With our virtual system (http://profig.com/virtual-phone-system), you don't need anything other than your current phones, even cell phones. You can be up and running in minutes.

Second, if you do need SIP handsets, we have those as well (currently in beta). So we match OnSIP in every regard there.

But where take the lead is our add-ons. On top of the regular phone system, we offer a whole lot more:

- Call Tracking

- Voice Broadcasting

- Sales Call Center - dials over 1000 numbers/min, skips dead #s, leaves pre-recorded msgs on answering machines, only connects live pickups

- Support Call Center - integrates with our CRM to show relevant info about your customers as soon as the phone rings

- Click-2-Call - put a button on your site and allow your visitors to talk to you directly

- Surveys

and more in the pipeline...

All these features come in a single dashboard - a business can use 1 or as many features as they want, on demand.

Please see our site for details.

So, if I bought your service for my company, would it be running across my data network?What would happen to my "phone system" if my connection to the internet were to go down?

There really should be screenshots of the app, especially since there's no free trial.

Is this anything like what Plivo (another YC company) is doing? What are the differences, if any? Sorry if these are stupid questions, I know next to nothing about telephony or the market opportunities therof.

Plivo is an API. We're a GUI. We're Plivo's target customer (in fact, we're built on top of plivo). Our target customers are businesses who want a powerful, affordable business phone system but don't want to spend time worrying about setup. Our focus is on customer service - we handle all new customer setups personally, and any follow on issues after that.

Do you support automated extensions? For example, if we wanted to offer pro support to users and give them a unique PIN code to reach us faster. Also, you mention SIP handsets, so I assume this would work for SIP desktop apps?

I don't think Plivo (the underlying core of Profig) is supporting handset registration yet (but it is native to FreeSWITCH, so it should be relatively straightforward).

You're looking for REGEX in callflows (only certain users with codes can get through) and this is totally doable in FreeSWITCH, but, again, I don't know if this functionality is exposed within Plivo (although it's feasible for the underlying core, the APIs may not be done yet).

SIP Desktop apps are WAAAAY easier to work with than Handsets, so if they support any kind of registrations, I would imagine desk apps would be supported.

Just to state on the record, We do support SIP registration and we dont use FreeSWITCH for that. You can manage all of this via both APIs and UI.

Profig does provide this to businesses in a seamless fashion and eliminates the use of regex etc. They have the capability to support both Desktop and mobile SIP Clients.

Hi marquis,

Yes, we support automated extensions, and can set them up for you. And yes, we work with SIP desktop apps as well (although our SIP offerings are currently in beta at the moment).

josh2600, do you mind if we handle the support questions ourselves? Thanks! Really appreciate it :)

I don't work at Plivo, but I have a lot of respect for those guys because of their open-source roots. I might bicker with them here or there online, but I only do out of admiration.

Plivo is an XML ---> infrastructure play. Their bait is to developers to come in and use their Twilio-ish code and then realize that what's under the hood is pretty badass and build bigger apps.

From what I can tell, Profig is a hosted VoIP play with black box infrastructure. I'd love to know what's under the hood, but I don't see any infos. They're more like a RingCentral or a Packet8 than a Twilio.

Does that help? I think Plivo is a lot more innovative than Profig, but I've learned not to judge startups by their first forays into the wild. I'm interested to see where they'll go from here.

(Disclaimer: I write thepbxblog.com and I work at 2600hz, a communications infrastructure company).

Looks like from the comment below me that Profig runs on Plivo.

Have you taken a look at TelAPI.com?

1) How is this any different than uReach, which is what we currently use? It starts at 24.99 a month. 2) The logo looks too much like Simple's (simple.com)

Pls see our features here - http://profig.com/virtual-phone-system - and compare.

Plus we offer much more than a regular phone system:

- Call Tracking

- Voice Broadcasting

- Sales Call Center - dials over 1000 numbers/min, skips dead #s, leaves pre-recorded msgs on answering machines, only connects live pickups

- Support Call Center - integrates with our CRM to show relevant info about your customers as soon as the phone rings

- Click-2-Call - put a button on your site and allow your visitors to talk to you directly

- Surveys

and more in the pipeline...

All these features come in a single dashboard - a business can use 1 or as many features as they want, on demand.

Please see our site for details.

I get frustrated when people just paste generic answers so I'll help out by answering in more detail.

Basically, when you buy from UReach, the underlying technology is very different. I don't know what UReach runs for sure, but they're what we call BlackBox infrastructures. You have no idea what keeps this company up and running, and given that UReach's CTO is a former Director for the Members of Technical Staff at AT&T, and since UReach has been around forever, it's probably safe to say that they're not running FreeSWITCH as their core (More likely big iron hardware; which is antithetical to a SaaS service like this).

Profig will have a faster feature iteration time period because they're a smaller company, whereas it's much harder for UReach to dev new features. Also Profig has the added advantage of having a small core market: hosted PBX. They aren't (at least at this time) targeting providers; something UReach is doing actively.

TL;DR: Profig runs on a great core, and they don't have 10+ years of embedded stuff to work through so their pace of feature iteration will be higher.

Does that help answer the Question?

We're dealing with a flood of TC and HN visitors and sign-ups, hence my response above. I was going to come back and expound a bit more, but thanks for the elaboration.

No problems buddy :).

It's a pain in the ass to dig up BlackBox infrastructures and see what's inside. It basically boils down to: is it Open-Source, or is it Big Iron. If they don't talk about it, and the folks have tons of legacy Experience, it tends to be Big Iron (like AudioCodes Blades/Gateways or other such stuff).

Keep kicking butt guys!

It tells me how uReach is different from a technical standpoint, and I realize that matters with respect to how their service (Profig) may evolve over time. Thanks.

Do you support Canadian numbers? I can't find the answer in the FAQ's or else where on the site.

Hi Matt. We'll update our FAQ. Currently, we're US only, but we're in beta for Europe, Asia and Latin America. We also have a beta for Canada. Hit ua up at contact@profig.com and we can let you into our beta.

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