coopr

You can add alerts on summary metrics - and you can have up to five summary metrics on a plugin.

If you are consuming a published plugin, you get alerts on whatever summary metrics the plugin author selected. If you are authoring a plugin, you can pick up to five metrics to be your summary metrics, then you can create alert thresholds on those metrics.

I agree - we (New Relic) have left the install process up to the plugin authors. Hence, plugin installation effort varies widely ; )

In the future you are likely to see some improved installation options, however because you can truly monitor _anything_ with New Relic plugins (at least, for now, anything that emits or can be made to emit time-series numerical data) it is unrealistic to expect that there will be only one, consistent install experience for everything.

In other words, installing the plugin agent to monitor your MongoDB will probably always be different from installing the plugin agent to monitor your John Deere tractor.

Longer term - yes: See data retention details here http://newrelic.com/pricing2 (and note that you can get a free New Relic Standard account here http://newrelic.com/sendgrid

More granular - no: The SendGrid plugin presents roughly the same data you could access via the SendGrid API (at least AFAIK).

Correct, this is a new feature, in addition to all our existing features. This feature is available at all plan levels, but some other New Relic features require a paid plan.

Try a New Relic plugin and you'll find out why ;)

The experience of adding monitoring with a New Relic plugin should be MUCH better than with any other monitoring approach.

Using, authoring, and publishing plugins is free. If you have a paid New Relic account, all this goodness costs $0 extra - same if you have a free New Relic account.

Yes!

This has been my main project for months - I'd love to hear what the HN community thinks.

Costco executive membership offers 2% rebate on everything you buy - this is probably a non-trivial source of revenue for Instacart.

"Reselling against their membership agreement"?! Uh, not likely - I think half of the corner stores, and most of the low-end restaurants and delis, around here buy at least some of their inventory from Costco.

I'm guessing Costco's business is at least somewhat dependent on having successful resellers buy from Costco!

Wow, thanks everyone! I'm incredibly lucky to have such talented, motivated, and kind people around me.

I remain really interested in startups and growing companies that are part of the "integration economy" - those that have, as a core part of their business, the publication and/or consumption of APIs - those that make the whole equal more than the sum of the parts.

After being on the app developer side of integration platforms for a while, I'm now launching a platform and welcoming developers.

Any interest in integrating your app with New Relic? Get in touch! connect@newrelic.com

Wishery, my previous startup, was trying to solve most of the same problems that Zenbox is tackling - and they are doing an amazing job. Congrats on the pivot!

Absolutely loved contextIO when we built our Email Analytics feature at Wishery - great API, and great dev support.

When you a programmer you can work for a while, finish your code, have it pass tests, and then you are done - with 100% confidence that your work resulted in the outcome you sought (code that works).

When you are product/marketing/sales person, you typically work for a while, aren't sure if what you are doing is correct or optimal, maybe find out later it did or didn't work, and then you have to do it again and again and again.

So, to make the transition, you have to get comfortable with the uncertainty inherent in business activities. To put it another way: You'll "fail" far more frequently in business than in programming, and the causes of your failure will be far less obvious.

Sensible, practical, and very clear advice - this is a must-read for founders and startup marketers.

This looks remarkably like http://kout.me/ - are there substantial differences?

If your users uses Twitter and Facebook as a primary communications channel, then "going to where they are" is a good strategy.

However, if they aren't already there, then focusing on Twitter/Facebook will cause you to miss many users.

Also, as a startup you have multiple audiences - your users might be on FB/Twitter, but I doubt your investors are (to the same extent) - you must match the communications channel with the audience's existing preferences and behavior - they won't switch channels just to hear from you ; )

In their earliest days, startups tend to depend much more on their relationships with investors than with customers. In fact, for some startups, there may be a period of many months where they have, essentially, not relationship with customers because they have nothing for the customers to use (because they are still building it - with the money the investors invested).

That is exactly why this post is about a CRM for a startup that can be easily grown out of as the relationship management needs change.

Does your CRM have an API? Perhaps Wishery could integrate with Less Annoying CRM!

An un-targeted email blast isn't a great way to build a relationship - but a message sent to a specific segment of your audience might be just as effective as a message sent to a single person. Founders are constantly making tradeoffs - I'm advocating for trading a little personalization (sending to a group instead of to an individual) for a lot of time savings (sending one message through MailChimp instead of sending a personal message to each person on your list).

Yes, you should have a personal relationship with your investors - but sending all your potential investors the same "progress update" is just as relationship-building as sending that progress update to one potential investor at a time.

Which part?

Spreadsheets can make simple and flexible CRMs - and Google Spreadsheet's notification feature helps keep everyone informed of changes.

Keep an eye out for some Google Spreadsheet features coming soon from Wishery.

I'd love to hear your thoughts - is Gmail + MailChimp + Wishery an effective and efficient startup CRM?

Um, because for developers, integrating with PayPal and dealing with the payment issues it (potentially) entails sucks compared to integrating and dealing with a modern, credit card-only payment system like Stripe.

Why exactly do you care so much about giving your credit card details? You have, typically, $0 liability for unauthorized charges on your card.

The only thing I think about is the (minor) hassle of dealing with getting unauthorized charges reversed in the highly unlikely scenario that your credit card is stolen from the site at which you just paid. I compare that with the potentially major hassle getting PayPal to put money back in my bank account that was transfered out by a hacker. I'll take the credit card companies over PayPal any day.

I love it! What a clever promotion - it'd be awesome if you could post some summary of results back to HN so we can learn from your experience.

If you've got such an awesome domain, that others are valuing, why not build your own company on that domain? Busy? Hire someone to build something that gets you even 2-3x your adwords revenue - and you'll no longer care that you can't sell the domain.

I graduated from the previous AngelPad class and I highly recommend the program. The experience was challenging, tough, fun, amazing, and totally transformative - my startup, and my entrepreneurial skills, were helped tremendously by our time at AngelPad.

One thing that exacerbates my startup depression (yep, I've got it too) is the fiscal pressure of being a founder - even if I stick with founding startups for many years, and do so many times, the odds are that I'll end up with significantly less wealth than if I just got a "real job".

The #1 reason for this is that investors require that founders "stay hungry" (aka get paid less than market compensation). Couple that with the periods of getting paid nothing (before you raised money, and when you are in-between startups) and the very low likelihood of a significant exit (thus all those founders shares are usually worth $0) and the result is one more thing to be depressed about; the fact that you are working your ass off, and being mostly miserable, without getting paid for it.

It looks great with the new Gmail UI! Have a look at https://skitch.com/cmarcus/gj5r1/wishery-in-new-gmail-ui