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Launch HN: Okapi (YC W24) – A new, flexible CRM with good UX

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Re: Launch HN: Okapi (YC W24) – A new, flexible CRM with good UX

#62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suggest you ask ChatGPT to name 10 CRM systems which support custom objects. The list didn't include the three mentioned in the comments here (Attio, Twenty, Monday). My strong suggestion is that you look at the current entrants and try to find some differentiation. Response from ChatGPT: "CRM systems with the capability to support custom data objects are designed to offer businesses the flexibility to tailor the C…

Shame that this is downvoted, I assume for tone - this is the feedback the founders need to hear

I don't have any skin in this game, but I personally think "Your relatively long thoughtful reply is wrong; source: this paragraph a glorified Markov chain threw together" is really offensive. I would have zero interest in engaging with somebody who values my input so little.

Re: Launch HN: Okapi (YC W24) – A new, flexible CRM with good UX

#64
post #31

Cool stuff, I've considered building something similar for my own needs. For me, I would never invest the time to learn and integrate something like this into my business processes if its not open source. But there is a large market of folks who don't care about that (obviously, as Salesforce isn't open source and does well enough), so you have a lot of potential. I played with the demo for a couple of minutes- one t…

You should check out Twenty! https://twenty.com/ (YC S23) -- they're an OSS CRM. I totally agree the object management UI is too clunky right now. I want to redo that set of pages, they were the first ones we shipped. Not gonna lie, idk if anyone except me and Ned are really pining to learn hotkeys for managing object schemas, since in practice we're the only ones doing that on a regular basis -- we do initial setup…

Sounds like you guys have a great plan. I will check out Twenty, thanks!

Re: Launch HN: Okapi (YC W24) – A new, flexible CRM with good UX

#65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shame that this is downvoted, I assume for tone - this is the feedback the founders need to hear

Always downvote copy-pasted LLM garbage seems to be a good heuristic. HN is a valuable community exactly because human beings provide their valuable insights here.

In this case the point was that the concept is so common that even ChatGPT can list endless examples.

The low effort required to find endless examples was the point.

Re: Launch HN: Okapi (YC W24) – A new, flexible CRM with good UX

#66
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shame that this is downvoted, I assume for tone - this is the feedback the founders need to hear

I don't have any skin in this game, but I personally think "Your relatively long thoughtful reply is wrong; source: this paragraph a glorified Markov chain threw together" is really offensive. I would have zero interest in engaging with somebody who values my input so little.

In my defence the long thoughtful reply I posted the ChatGPT list to was my own. And I'm fine with it.

Re: Launch HN: Okapi (YC W24) – A new, flexible CRM with good UX

#67
post #55
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adding another simple point: we're simply earlier than Attio by several years. Our long-term differentiation will be more obvious as we mature the product and distribution model.

Don't you mean later? You ought to have a clear idea of your differentiation from the beginning.

If I were any good at following best practices, I wouldn't be a startup founder :)

Re: Launch HN: Okapi (YC W24) – A new, flexible CRM with good UX

#68

My personal objective with CRM is always the sales/cs team productivity at different stages and I don’t see the impact of your product yet on that. Every sales or CS agent needs to know what is their next task: they shouldn’t go through the list of the deals or customers to figure that out. Ideally they get their tasks assigned in some round robin algorithm taking into account their availability and skills. If agents…

Task management, lists/views, and general "journeys" management are all on the roadmap. There's a lot of stuff you need to do to be generally competent in this space, we're definitely launching very early here.

When I talked about Apex, I really mean the "scripting language that sees data mid-transaction" aspect of the language. Sounds like you're not really seeing the value there either? I totally agree that good old webhooks or some other trigger is seems almost always good enough if the API is fast.

Appreciate the suggestions re: comms and consent management. We're still not sure how we want to handle dialers.

Re: Launch HN: Okapi (YC W24) – A new, flexible CRM with good UX

#70
There are several African energy startups named Okapi, I don't think it's an appropriate name for a CRM startup considering competition for visibility.

https://www.unhcr.org/us/news/stories/refugee-led-business-p...

https://www.okapi-oil.com/ (maybe not a startup)

(I built the Okapi Green Energy pilot minigrid funded by USADF in Kakuma)

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