It's amazing to see so many open source companies in YC
Yes there seems to be a trend! Way behind the number of LLM-related startups, but still quite a large group within the current batch
Launch HN: Twenty.com (YC S23) – Open-source CRM
231–240 of 317 posts
Re: Launch HN: Twenty.com (YC S23) – Open-source CRM
#232ooooh, this is nifty. I was just thinking we needed a good CRM! Are there any other good, self-hosted alternatives I hsould be aware of?
We use Espo ( https://www.espocrm.com/ ) and while it's not the most "shiny object" ever it gets the job done relatively ok for our small team
And it's great for a team of thousands. Speaking from experience.
Re: Launch HN: Twenty.com (YC S23) – Open-source CRM
#233tbh - when i noticed, i can't delete my account, i instantly stopped going further. As an european citizen: it might be interesting for you to cover aspects of GPDR, to attract european users (that are forced to use GPDR-conforming data handling).
Sorry about that, it's not an intentional dark pattern, just the result of a very short timeline to build this. I've just created an issue to prioritize this soon: https://github.com/twentyhq/twenty/issues/774
We are trying to be conscious about data privacy too (e.g. no tracker or third-party cookie on our website)
Re: Launch HN: Twenty.com (YC S23) – Open-source CRM
#234My 2 cents as a founder evaluating CRMs. I would prefer to not use Salesforce until I have to - I know it's expensive, slow, and hard to customize. At the same SF users who I know tell me that nothing else works for orgs of above 100 people. The demo looks great and I like that you are focusing on UX and performance - I would expect Linear-like experience for a tool I use every day. I would prefer a hosted version (m…
I 2nd this, minus Salesforce being hard to customize. It's probably too customizable.
At a certain stage of a company, sales reps expect Salesforce. So much so, that even when we finally caved and got it, I had reps specifically turn off Lightning and stick with Classic mode. It's like Bloomberg - it's what they know and can move fast in.
As much as it pains me to say this, it may make sense to have an option that can mirror the Salesforce UI vs reinventing the wheel. Or maybe even an integration / escape hatch to migrate everything off of Salesforce to this. Basically, if you want reps to adopt it, make it close as possible to what they know.
Re: Launch HN: Twenty.com (YC S23) – Open-source CRM
#235I thought CRM choices were a management decision, not a developer one. How do you plan on overcoming that, when management will just go with Salesforce or Freshworks?
Yes agree being open-source is not enough of an argument to win. It will help us build a community, foster innovation and thus making the product better. But at the end of the day, I agree the product needs to be the best for users, not just for developers.
Re: Launch HN: Twenty.com (YC S23) – Open-source CRM
#236Earlier quoted context omitted.
We have a dated IP PABX. But would happily switch to another system to enable a new CMS. Thanks for the mention of close.com. As far as integrations go, for us it's an API that is critical. Our accounting system is Myob Exonet. So old that nothing integrates but it was an API so we can write an ETL process to dump data out of it into a CRM. Our Ecommerce platform is NopCommerce but that's a bit obscure and so heavily…
Thanks a lot for sharing this precious experience. Do you like what Close is doing for instance? https://www.close.com/pricing
Yeah that does help.
Packages of users draws the attention away from the per user pricing model. I don't know why but they just don't like it. Even if the numbers are the same.
Re: Launch HN: Twenty.com (YC S23) – Open-source CRM
#237My 2 cents as a founder evaluating CRMs. I would prefer to not use Salesforce until I have to - I know it's expensive, slow, and hard to customize. At the same SF users who I know tell me that nothing else works for orgs of above 100 people. The demo looks great and I like that you are focusing on UX and performance - I would expect Linear-like experience for a tool I use every day. I would prefer a hosted version (m…
I 2nd this, minus Salesforce being hard to customize. It's probably too customizable. At a certain stage of a company, sales reps expect Salesforce. So much so, that even when we finally caved and got it, I had reps specifically turn off Lightning and stick with Classic mode. It's like Bloomberg - it's what they know and can move fast in. As much as it pains me to say this, it may make sense to have an option that ca…
In terms of UI, Notion has been our main source of inspiration.
Targeting the bucket of Salespeople who enjoy the Notion UI is definitely a smaller one than those who know how to use Salesforce, but I feel like it might be a faster-growing one. It's a good point that it will become harder as we move to larger companies with a higher share of experienced sales reps that don't want to change.
Re: Launch HN: Twenty.com (YC S23) – Open-source CRM
#238I've been tempted to do something similar over the years. I've worked with Salesforce quite a bit, and I dislike almost everything about it. I settled on doing open source company data: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35977057 . I think an open source CRM with the all the world's companies could be pretty killer. I created an account and will play around with it. Pretty cool so far.
Nice! Agree this could be great. Is this hosted as an API somewhere?
Re: Launch HN: Twenty.com (YC S23) – Open-source CRM
#239I did a CRM bake off for a startup about 5 years ago.
It is a super crowded market, probably the most crowded SaaS market in the world.
There are even a half dozen open source CRMs.
Good luck.
Re: Launch HN: Twenty.com (YC S23) – Open-source CRM
#240Earlier quoted context omitted.
HubSpot recently launched something to do this by providing a Lambda runtime to generate components within the CRM dashboard. https://developers.hubspot.com/docs/cms/data/serverless-func...
+1, thanks for the link
We built a version of this which goes far further.
- Monaco (embedded VScode inside the target app/platform)
- Typescript
- NPM modules
- Linting/autocomplete including custom fields/objects, so you basically know it's going to work before you even run it
- breakpoint debugging
- Version control with diff view
- Magic utilities to call the platform's own APIs in an easy typesafe way
The breakpoint debugging provides an amazing experience for the embedding app. It's pretty magic. But because the runtimes like Lambda don't ship the Inspector API we had to create a custom compiler to make it work.
We are actively looking to license this stack to other SaaS looking to build platforms.
If you want a demo leave your email and I'll reach out.