Show HN: My startup's first product - Trello for Sales | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: My startup's first product - Trello for Sales

clinchpad.com

17 pointscmadan19 comments

Hi, this is my startup's first product. It is basically Trello for Sales. I needed something to track sales for another application that I worked on and found the solutions in the market to be not 'lean' enough. It differentiates from run of the mill CRMs by focusing only on the sales process with the pipeline view that allows you to visualize your sales funnel and see where the leads are.

We're bootstrapping out of New Delhi, India since I quit my job in New York City and moved to New Delhi so that my savings could have a longer runaway. Appreciate the feedback guys!

Looks similar to Pipedrive http://www.pipedrive.com/en-US

Yes I agree it is quite similar, I discovered this application while doing market research. However, there are a couple of features that I have planned which will differentiate - such as a tighter email/Gmail integration.

Also, there is definitely space for both ClinchPad and Pipedrive to coexist.

Yep, just pointed out because I stumbled on Pipedrive. And actually Pipedrive was released before Trello.

That is interesting. Pipedrive has definitely done a good job so far!

We may be interested but I have 3 questions:

1 - Gmail integration is a strong point but security is a major concern. How do you intent to do it?

2 - Your signup form doesn't use SSL. When?

3 - Is there a way to export my data?

Anyway, congrats for shipping!

1. We'll be using a third party to do Gmail integration (context.io) and won't store any information beyond what is necessary. My email is below if you have any specific concerns.

2. It is on the cards, should be there by mid February.

3. An API is also on the cards, should be there by mid February.

You can reach out to me at cheenu@clinchpad.com if you want to discuss further, especially about plans for Gmail integration! We have some neat ideas.

Really love the simplicity of it. Salesforce is often overkill and the design is uninspiring.

Best of luck.

Thanks. We're focused on making it more and more simple and adding new features to it in a way that they remain out of the way. Love to hear any suggestions about how the UX and UI can be improved, that is my favorite part of working on it. :)

One thing: when I hover over the parts of the pipeline, the tips appear at the bottom of the screen - and are even obscured by Chrome/OSX showing the link destinations. Why not show the tooltips right by the mouse-over?

Great suggestion! I totally missed this thanks to the fact my gigantic 27'' iMac has sufficient padding between the link destination and tips but I see the issue on my MacBook 13''.

Tooltips are already used up in some cases, such as showing the user names in case of users and showing the stage names in case of stages (sometimes they're long and truncated so tooltips are neccesary) so using tooltips won't be possible.

I'll quickfix it with some padding shortly, and we'll have a little discussion on whats a better way to implement the tips.

Very nice. Gmail integration is a must. Also support for several pipelines would be interesting too...

Thanks! Yes, we are working on Gmail integration and we're going to do it intelligently so that ClinchPad is smart enough to attach your incoming mail to the correct lead.

Thanks for the suggestion for multiple pipelines. Wasn't really sure whether people would need that as it is single purpose vs. something like Trello which is multi-purpose. I've added it as a proposal to our issue tracker though and we'll implement if we get requests from the users.

Looks good . What are the features in pipeline and how do u want to differentiate ?

We're looking to roll out clever GMail/email integration, beautiful reports and iPhone application shortly.

We're basically carving a niche for ourselves in the CRM space by focusing on one thing - the sales pipeline and doing it well. This is evident from the fact when you load the main screen, you see your sales funnel visualize and you can change around the stages, add leads and drag and drop users to assign.

Looks interesting. How long did it take you to build that?

I built it in about five weeks and since then I've been adding new features and optimizing the UX. Its week 7 now and still fun!

looks interesting. how does this compare to competing options? i've been looking at zoho CRM, and pipeline looks interesting as well.

ZohoCRM, Salesforce and similar apps are traditional CRM applications. They've been around for awhile and they cover all bases.

ClinchPad is focused on a single thing - your sales pipeline. This is evident from the main screen - create, delete, edit stages and leads and assign users to leads using a rich UI. It is 'lean' in sense that it is built freelancers, web consultancies, brokers and other people who don't need really advanced features such as sales forecasting (which is the domain that Salesforce and ZohoCRM covers).

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