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Launch HN: Twenty.com (YC S23) – Open-source CRM

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Re: Launch HN: Twenty.com (YC S23) – Open-source CRM

#271

Post by tgtweak »

douglascorrea wrote: post #115

Hi Ifelix, I have been working as Siebel Consultant implementing it in many companies and then later moved to Salesforce which I also work implementing/changing it for companies needs. As a fullstack developer I already thought multiple times to "create my own Siebel" or "create my own Salesforce". But I faced that, the CRM part of it is very easy to implement. That is why there are so many players on commercial CRM…

I think bringing in typescript as a privileged "plugin" language and all the libraries available under it, would speed up any custom development on the long term. Those "custom" use cases can become native ones and the base platform can gradually grow to be more powerful.

I think it's smart to bring in a common language for plugin/application design and focus on making the plumbing and interface (not just UX) first class.

Re: Launch HN: Twenty.com (YC S23) – Open-source CRM

#272

Post by tgtweak »

casablancatoast wrote: post #215

Alright so I'm going to say it: Make a local install please I'm begging you. As a 1-man consultant, I really don't want to: 1. Download docker or some other LAMP stack 2. Compile and run it 3. Launch a local database everytime I open it from my laptop 4. Voila! I'm into my locally server DB with a nice fronted. No thank you. If you want adoption it has to be adoptable, and most open source crms (SuiteCRM, Odoo, ERPNe…

I think you need a js engine to run the entire thing which entails shipping that with the product to make it "locally installable". Then you get into complex version dependencies and require support for upgrading and upgrade paths... yarn is pretty straightforward and so are docker containers.

Re: Launch HN: Twenty.com (YC S23) – Open-source CRM

#273

Post by rodolphoarruda »

arethuza wrote: post #258
rodolphoarruda wrote: post #257

I worked as an implementation consultant during the 1st or 2nd generation of CRM apps back in the fist decade of this century. Then, since 2010 I became a CRM end-user, mainly of Salesforce. After all those years listening to sales people complain about workflows and broken UI/UX, I realized the perfect system for this type of user is a message driven minimal UI app. System would send email/IM to users all day long a…

"message driven minimal UI app" Via Slack/Teams/WhatsApp?

I don't know about Teams. To me, it is more like a web conferencing tool. In case of Slack and WhatsApp, yes, they would be perfect channels to push the update requests for the sales teams. IMHO.

Re: Launch HN: Twenty.com (YC S23) – Open-source CRM

#274

Post by CPLX »

tgtweak wrote: post #269
nickelcitymario wrote: post #46

I work at a company that uses Salesforce as the system that runs the whole business. CRM barely touches on what we use it for. We use it for inventory, logistics, accounting, customer support, managing our partners (dealers), managing our suppliers... as well as sales. I spent 2 years as a Salesforce developer, and still dabble in APEX from time to time. All of that is context for what I'm about to say: Salesforce is…

To be brutally honest, Airtable is a dog to get data out of... the sync is delayed, the API calls to pull data are atrocious and the cost/complexity to exfiltrate data from Airtable is hugely prohibitive. I wouldn't use that as a source of inspiration, at least not on the "connectivity" end.

Maybe so but it’s incredible as a rapid prototyping tool to solve actual business problems at reasonable scale and it’s one of the few platforms that is constantly improving in intuitive ways.

Emulating AirTable usability with a CRM focus would be a category killer if successful.

Re: Launch HN: Twenty.com (YC S23) – Open-source CRM

#275

Post by ganarajpr »

Can you talk a bit more regarding your go to market strategy ? How will you approach potential customers and what is your pitch going to be for them to get rid of SF in favour of your "untested" product - as how they would see it ?

I am more interested in the marketing strategy since I am working on a very similiar problem, but in a slightly tangential software which is monopolising the market. Any advice / insights on this would be appreciated.

Re: Launch HN: Twenty.com (YC S23) – Open-source CRM

#276

Post by hoofhearted »

charlesTwenty wrote: post #204
hoofhearted wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Awesome! Congrats on the launch! Is the pricing for the hosted version?

The pricing is for the cloud version: you can use it for free if you stay under 100 contacts. Self-hosting is completely free!

Awesome! Good stuff Charles :)

What's the best way to contact you?

Re: Launch HN: Twenty.com (YC S23) – Open-source CRM

#277

Post by amerf1 »

Congrats on launching! Great tool, love the minimal UI and the "coming soon" features

I've used CRMs for the last 10 years, starting with an internal built CRM for a bank that I worked at and moving on to the salesforce, hubspot etc..

Here's what I've noticed being a user/developer - Users will always complain! If it takes more than 2 minutes to get something done they'd rather not do it

- All CRMs have a learning curve, once users get used to the workflows they're comfortable with, they don't want anything to change. (e.g. when one of the CRMs relaunched with a new UI, a few users refused to use it for a long time)

- Users prefer the work done for them, no one wants to spend time thinking. If you have a library of pre-built workflows it goes a long way. Even better, do all the analysis and let users make a binary decision

This is one space that really interests me, let me know if you wanted to chat. My twitter is in my bio

Re: Launch HN: Twenty.com (YC S23) – Open-source CRM

#278

Post by N-Krause »

tgtweak wrote: post #272
casablancatoast wrote: post #215

Alright so I'm going to say it: Make a local install please I'm begging you. As a 1-man consultant, I really don't want to: 1. Download docker or some other LAMP stack 2. Compile and run it 3. Launch a local database everytime I open it from my laptop 4. Voila! I'm into my locally server DB with a nice fronted. No thank you. If you want adoption it has to be adoptable, and most open source crms (SuiteCRM, Odoo, ERPNe…

I think you need a js engine to run the entire thing which entails shipping that with the product to make it "locally installable". Then you get into complex version dependencies and require support for upgrading and upgrade paths... yarn is pretty straightforward and so are docker containers.

Haven't looked into the technical details of it, but it seems like this should be as simple as slapping it inside of electron to have a fully local and cross platform install.

Re: Launch HN: Twenty.com (YC S23) – Open-source CRM

#279

Post by texas2toss »

Could you elaborate on where this sits between a custom Airtable/Notion CRM and something more purpose built like Wobaka, Attio, Folk, LessAnnoyingCRM?

Both focus and solve CRM issues for smaller companies. Would love to hear three main items:

1) Which company profile (size, revenue, industry/use-case, etc) is Twenty best suited for and which of the above do you has at the closest target profile overlap?

2) Which aspects of a CRM does this solve now and in near future (Q4 2023)? eg: is it email sequences, existing customer tracking & BI, prospect enrichment, etc?

3) What sales/CRM stack are you using internally at Twenty // what are your peers using? How do you send bulk emails? How do you track signed contracts, revenue start dates, and so forth? Would love to get some info about not just dogfooding your own product but what you/peers use for your GTM.

Re: Launch HN: Twenty.com (YC S23) – Open-source CRM

#280

Post by cccybernetic »

tgtweak wrote: post #269
nickelcitymario wrote: post #46

I work at a company that uses Salesforce as the system that runs the whole business. CRM barely touches on what we use it for. We use it for inventory, logistics, accounting, customer support, managing our partners (dealers), managing our suppliers... as well as sales. I spent 2 years as a Salesforce developer, and still dabble in APEX from time to time. All of that is context for what I'm about to say: Salesforce is…

To be brutally honest, Airtable is a dog to get data out of... the sync is delayed, the API calls to pull data are atrocious and the cost/complexity to exfiltrate data from Airtable is hugely prohibitive. I wouldn't use that as a source of inspiration, at least not on the "connectivity" end.

I'm the founder of a startup (www.getsubsystem.com) that builds solutions on top of Airtable, so I'm familiar with their systems. While it's true that their REST API has some sharp-edges, particularly around linked fields (columns), rate-limiting, and filtering records, I think it’s mostly solid and user-friendly.

Getting records from a table is as straightforward as making an API call to: `/{baseId}/{tableId}`. For getting the actual ids, there's a metadata API. The docs are also quite comprehensive. I’m curious as to where you have run into issues?

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