331 karma · joined February 15, 2014
There’s a lot of focus (and money) on scaling LLMs, but while building Twenty [1] we’ve observed that current models are already capable enough for most use-cases. We think that what’s missing today is a new kind of software architecture. One that evolves, learns from feedback, and compile complex patterns to adapt to users. I wrote about this and some of our learnings in the article above, curious to hear your thoughts!
The vision is definitely to have something extensible and more powerful than force.com ; we aren't there yet because we need to build strong foundations before that. We already try to separate our business apps from the core engine in the code base to learn what will be the right api and get ready for that next step when it's time.
We have a model with 1-schema per tenant + we can create a dedicated Postgres user, so we don't have the same security risk multi-tenant apps would have. And I felt like passing SQL was the right long-term direction with text-to-sql LLMs. But I get your point.
I guess what we're looking for is more "open source frontend lib for embedded analytics" than just a query builder then. This does not exist but seems like a lot of work to build.
We're doing just that with our own CRM [1]. It couldn't have been a side-project as you need thousands of engineering hours to build something decent. But with only a few millions in engineering spend, we'll have something that is genuinely as good as the products from billion dollar behemoths. Open Source software will never be able to monetize as well as closed-source. We might only capture 10% of the value we create. But being open source inherently creates strong network effects that tends to push towards a limited number of winners, and the addressable market in CRM is so big that it's still possible to build a multi-billion dollar company while massively driving the costs down for everyone.
It's kind of like the Prisoner's Dilemma: If every company keep their software proprietary, they can all make moderate growth/profit. But if one goes open-source, they could attract a large community, drive innovation, and potentially reap long-term profits while reducing the overall market size.
There are still a lot of things we need to develop to be at feature parity with big players but we are shipping fast and we will get there!
We'll work on a real demo environment with a lot of records, we just haven't prioritized it yet. Right now it's not really a demo environment, but a real account that happens to be provisioned with a few example records. Putting more records wouldn't really make sense (you have to delete those records manually to start using the CRM).
As for the cloud version, I replied here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37808121
TLDR is that the cloud version hasn't been our primary focus yet and we put a high pricing on purpose that is not the final pricing, while we figure out the good pricing strategy. As of today everything is free without any limitation, we don't enforce any limit. And when we rollout the real pricing, it will be more compelling
We definitely need to work on that page!
Storybook here: https://storybook.twenty.com
When it's mature enough we'll isolate this into a UI lib anyone can use
We will focus on a narrower scope and try to do it very well instead of going into that many directions
We're currently rewriting the backend and will ship a new version on October 30 that will be much more powerful (with a flexible data model)
The actual pricing will likely be significantly lower. Initially we thought of introducing a pricing system that's more aligned with the value created (with a generous credit system, based on number of actions taken), because we found that Salesforce charges by seat but in large orgs most of the seat companies pay for are unused, so the incentives aren't aligned. I'm not sure we'll go this way because people also want a simple and predictable pricing they can understand.
(Note: I was not asked to post this)
I'm not entirely convinced we made the right choice. Considering your feedback and we will see in a few months what people want to build and if we should revisit.
The key challenges I foresee are:
- Backend: offer extensibility that is powerful while secure in our multi-tenant cloud service.
- Frontend: ensure that custom plugins don't feel limiting while not disrupting the unified design, as the overall software appearance, not just the core, shapes the end-users' brand perception/experience
1) Building a full-featured CRM is a long-journey. Our strategy is to start working with companies in our YC batch which have simple needs, and then deliver improvements fast enough so that these companies never outgrow us and have to switch.
2) We're focused on a simple B2B Sales use-case for now (log tasks, kanban, etc.). Next we will focus on data integration, connectors and extensibility. The goal is to become the best system of records for the company. That should allow connecting external tools to bring the best of breed app for each category (e.g. customer engagement, support tool, phone). Later on we will eventually invest in building our own Marketing/Support apps like Salesforce did but we're still very far from there.
3) Prior to this launch we only had a handful of people we were talking to so a simple Kanban in Twenty, no automation. And after that, we will remain focused on product development in the coming months so our team is probably not the best example in terms of Sales playbook. But once we want to scale the team and have built integrations, we will likely take the "best of breed" approach I was mentioning above, using Twenty as the central piece to connect Aircall, Braze, Docusign, etc.
(Great questions by the way, thanks)
I've followed you on Twitter!
It's a tedious process to get off a CRM, and particularly Salesforce, so it's much easier to target companies that are not using any tool at first and grow with them.