28 ms·

Show HN: I made a CRM system to make sales fun

275 points by drikerf 7y ago

leejcarol 7y ago
https://www.wealthwords.com/blog/earn-pocket-money-online-crossword/ https://www.wealthwords.com/blog/earn-pocket-money-online-cr...
luka-birsa 7y ago
Went to check the landing page, looks nice. Does not answer why I would choose this over all the other 1000000 of CRM offerings (just in our office we tried Zoho, Close.io, Salesforce, Pipedrive,....). Plus, not fully sold on the "Built to last - Wobaka is like your favorite craft beer or artisan coffee. Made with love and hand-picked ingredients. No mega-corp here." pitch. Great effort tho.
- drikerf 7y ago
  Thanks! I know there are many CRMs out there. I'm trying to build one that I enjoy using and that is specifically made for small businesses. This way I can remove a lot of the stuff I don't care about and still have a nice and efficient system that is easy to stay on top of :).
  - dawie 7y ago
    They shut down Highrise and I am pretty sure there is a place for small business CRM. When I looked a while ago, I could not find a good Highrise replacement
  - everythingswan 7y ago
    I'd echo the parent comment. I hope you can get some paying users to sign up. The first place I would spend money is on a top-notch copywriter. I really like some of the copy but it feels disjointed as a whole. When you say that it's for small businesses and it's really efficient and light, I think people will identify with that. As long as features keep getting added to platforms, we will always need a super lightweight version. Again, I hope you get some paying users right away! I think I'm just missing something and I see these as clashing messages that don't get fully explained: this platform will make you smile and you'll have fun using it, this platform is faster than other platforms, and it's built for small businesses. I'd ask you "How?" for all three of those. Just some thoughts from a marketer who thinks about positioning and looks at lots of landing pages. I hope you ignore all advice, trust your gut, and have tons of success :)
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - drikerf 7y ago
      Thank you :)!
    - wolco 7y ago
      At $49 per month with no free tier the author is setting themselves up for failure. Get people on board with free product than offer value add. A CRM requires trust.. so spend money on the brand or give a free tier and build trust.
      - smashthepants 7y ago
        Free tier comes with A TON of support demands from people who many not ever become customers. That'd lead to failure a lot quicker. Seems better to have a a few paying customers who are invested in the product providing feedback than hundreds or thousands providing 'feedback' that will never lead to a conversion
        wolco 7y ago
        I understand where you are coming from. Currently the website doesn't sell the product as is. I think you'll have trouble finding that paying customer. You need a good unique strategy if you want to break through.
- austhrow743 7y ago
  Yeah I wouldn't draw attention to the concept of software longevity anywhere. New SAAS by a solo developer is not what I think of when I think of things that will last. OP you're just straight up not going to get people for who stability is a priority any time soon. Your target market is people who like to fiddle with their work tools, likely beyond pragmatism and in to productivity as a hobby territory. Guy that wants to get his organisation on to something and know he wont have to think about it again, ie the guy who cares about "built to last", is going to go Salesforce and call it a day.
trumbitta2 7y ago
Nice UI, very much in the style of Basecamp / 37Signals.
- drikerf 7y ago
  Thanks! I like their work :)
Bouncingsoul1 7y ago
In your sample, Bruce Wayne should be in company Wayne Enterprise, nobody knowshe is also in the justice league
njsubedi 7y ago
I went through your tweets and visualized how Wobaka slowly grew into production. I also have a similar side-project (customer support system, tbh), and you launching your product helped me gain confidence that I can do too! Unfortunately, I cannot sign up for a demo because no cc info (3rd world problems). Anyway, congratulations! It looks simple and beautiful.
eden_h 7y ago
It's pretty! The Basecamp styling is really clear, and it's nice to see the interface on display There's a few unanswered questions that I hope it's helpful to point out; * Importers -> If I want to switch, how long will it take me to move from a potential system (Excel, Google Sheets, Salesforce, etc) into Wobaka? * Integrations -> If I send an email can that come from my Outlook Gmail and be shown? Can I see emails from my colleagues towards a contact if they want to? * What does a workflow look like? A gif of going from New Contact -> Adding them into an Org I'm talking to -> Sending the first message would do a lot here. * How do I engage with my colleagues? Can I tag them in tasks, or pass things along to them?
- drikerf 7y ago
  Thank you for the great feedback :)! I just finished up an importer this weekend so it's easy to import your contacts from csv files. Def going to make that GIF and look into colleague engagement more :).
- eitland 7y ago
  > The Basecamp styling is really clear, and it's nice to see the interface on display Promising. Anyone who seems to take inspiration from Basecamp is worth at least 30 extra seconds consideration in my book. Basecamp is the company behind Rails and they were IMO one of the driving forces that made Ajax accessible and web application developement enjoyable. Their UX was (and probably is) good, and their business philosophy flies right in the face of "unicorn or nothing" which means I wish more people would learn from them. Heh, I realize I'm probably not meant to say that here, but based on previous experience I expect it to be tolerated : ) - Signed: a Java (and other languages) developer that is happy for Rails
watbywbarif 7y ago
Same price for 5 ppl as for 500? WTF?
- dpcan 7y ago
  This is going to be a tough lesson to learn.
homero 7y ago
Misspelled https://wobaka.com/img/feature-tasks.png https://wobaka.com/img/feature-tasks.png
- benplumley 7y ago
  Also, at the very bottom, "Wobaka cost way less than lost deals" cost should be costs.
sswaner 7y ago
Congrats on building this. It looks great. Two bits of feedback: I didn’t see any mention of an API. Comments indicate an uploader function, but to get into anything close to enterprise you will need an API yo manage the data. The API will need to be able to get data in and out. After that, larger customers will expect customizations. Big companies always want to customize the software.
- drikerf 7y ago
  Hey! Thanks for the feedback! There will be an api later on. I'm building this for small businesses, so I don't want to bother them with enterprise features they won't use :).
  - mrunkel 7y ago
    I think you may be underestimating the need for an API. We're a small company (17 employees) and we wouldn't consider it without an API. Remember lots of systems generate leads/customers, so if you don't want to provide tools for all those various systems, you need to offer an API. Also on your sign up page, there's a typo: "Wobaka cost way less than lost deals" should be "Wobaka costs way less than lost deals" Unless Wobaka is plural?
    - drikerf 7y ago
      Thanks, I fixed the typo now :). As I mentioned, there will be an API soon (same as I'm using for the frontend). Just have to document it.
davedx 7y ago
Looks great, well done for launching it (and getting onto front page of HN!). What I really like is when there's a video showing what it's like to use the product. I launched my leave tracking app (https://leavetracker.app https://leavetracker.app) a couple of months ago and once I'm finally happy with the design I'll be making a video for it, I think it can really help with conversions. I'm always impressed when one person alone builds a product and actually ships it. It's a very different journey to working in a team on a startup. Best of luck!
- drikerf 7y ago
  Thanks! That makes sense. I'll def make a video/gif! The product has changed quite frequently so didn't want to redo it every other day :)!
  - drewp 7y ago
    How great would it be if you did redo it every other day, though? You'd automate the video publish pipeline, of course, and then it would be like a cross between a high-level UX test and a rehearsal for your pitch. You'd get really good at the workflows you demo, which would probably make the demo more impressive, and you'd be more likely to clean up any rough edges or annoyances that you come across repeatedly.
nickjj 7y ago
Looks really nice but I wonder if you went too far with Basecamp's look. The brand colors look so similar that you could get the impression that it's a Basecamp product. It almost looks like you took their background color and changed it by the smallest amount possible just so it wasn't an exact match if you compared the hex colors.
- barrkel 7y ago
  The background colour also looks like this site, Hacker News.
  - sergiomattei 7y ago
    It's a color, they're not exclusive.
userbinator 7y ago
Why the name? To those who know a little bit of Japanese, the name is rather amusing.
- malydok 7y ago
  I know a bit of Japanese and it didn't strike me at all. Is it just the "baka"? :-)
  - dpcan 7y ago
    Wo = The Baka = Fool Src: Typed "wo in Japanese" and "baka in Japanese" into Google.
    - grzm 7y ago
      Names can, of course, be whatever they want, so there's nothing to say whether or not the name is "right" or "wrong". From a language perspective, を is most commonly transliterated wo when used in isolation. When used as a particle, it's generally transliterated as o. It also follows the noun rather than proceeds it. So if the intent of wobaka is to mean something like idiot (as the object of a sentence) a number of liberties have been taken. There's an honorific o お that does precede a noun, which I've never seen transliterated wo.
- ptx 7y ago
  What would it mean in Japanese? If you know a little bit of Chinese as well, you could read it as 我 + ばか – meaning something like "I'm an idiot", perhaps. :) But then again, I guess an amusing meaning can be found for any word if you allow interpreting its parts in different languages.
chasd00 7y ago
I really like the site. How did you come up with 7 days as a trial period? Seems like it may take longer than a week for someone to really see the value. I could be totally wrong though.
- drikerf 7y ago
  I just picked a number. I want to offer a way to try it for free. However, My focus is to provide the best possible experience and support for paying customers, and I can't really do that if I'm supporting free users. If you need more time to evaluate, I can extend your trial :).
  - stunt 7y ago
    I agree 7 days is not enough to see the value. It is important to make the investment on your trial users and early adopters.
  - wingerlang 7y ago
    How about letting them use it for free until you are -sure- they have bought in. That is, you see they are adding colleagues, or acting a lot on key areas. Etc.
- mprev 7y ago
  We’ve been through several CRM evaluations since Highrise went into maintenance-updates only. During that time, we’ve seen some terribly unintuitive software and other offerings that look as though they’ll be great but lack some key feature. Every CRM has a gotcha that you won’t find until you use it in anger. IMO, seven days is not enough but I also think no evaluation is long enough unless you have the resources to run it fully in parallel to your existing process.
  - drikerf 7y ago
    If you're on the trial and need more time to evaluate. Just let me know :).
  - 7y ago
skrebbel 7y ago
A while ago I used Hubspot CRM for a bit. I think it's slow and quirky, and to me it's a big red flag how hard they make it to get the data out (or, well, 2 years ago at least). But Hubspot gets one thing right that I never understood other CRMs can't do. If Hubspot sees an email from name@company.com, they automatically make a new contact for that name, and a new organization for that company (derived from the @company.com), enrich it all with available data (employee size etc), which I guess they get from some Clearbit-like data. This is super useful, because it means all relevant organization about a new lead who just reached out is just there. The only manual logging I ever have to do is eg log calls or write internal notes. No bookkeeping whatsoever. Similarly, if I want to log someone I met at, say, a conference, I just enter their email address from their business card (or whatever) and -poof- the contact and organization are there. Maybe I'll add the phone number if they're oldschool like that, but that's it. All the otherfields are immediately in "good enough" mode. A while later I tried Close.io, who advertise loudly in the blogosphere about how much other CRMs make you click and type, and I had to make every contact and organization by hand! How is that automation? I simply don't understand how any CRM in 2019 can ship with so much manual data entry. What am I missing? Is my use case such an edge case? If you'd add stuff like this, then maybe I'd be interested in switching over. But having to manually maintain every single piece of data, when much information is publicly available from various sources, is just not worth my time. And if you have this feature, I'd highlight it proudly on the website :D To other HN'ers, if you have suggestions for CRMs that get this right, I'm interested.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- drikerf 7y ago
  Thank you for taking the time to write this :)! I populate some things based on the domain but not all that you mention. I like these little smartness things and I want to do this. It's one of the things I'm going to try to make this autumn :).
- jarvuschris 7y ago
  The open source Odoo does that too
bochoh 7y ago
On your sign up page, this one sentence isn't quite clear to me. - "That's a total, no matter how many people your are."
- dpcan 7y ago
  I agree, this sentence is strange. And when a company of 100 signs up...... oops.
wzy 7y ago
Can you tell us about the backend stack of this venture?
- drikerf 7y ago
  Backend is Clojure, frontend is ClojureScript :).
  - cpursley 7y ago
    Nice. I'd love to hear more about that.
    - drikerf 7y ago
      I'm very happy with it! I'll write a blog post about it soon, meanwhile I do tweet some development stuff about it on @drikerf :).
  - throw03172019 7y ago
    Nice to see a full Clojure stack! React based? If so, which library did you go with? Nice work!
    - drikerf 7y ago
      Yes! I use Rum :). Also Garden for CSS so it's 100% Clojure :D.
jve 7y ago
> We believe in a different type of CRM Marketing page doesn't convince me that it's a different CRM. Lists usual stuff. Actually quite lacking if the business cannot apply their customizations/business rules/validations/workflows.
- martin-adams 7y ago
  I found the same. It says it makes it fun, but what specifically does the software do differently to justify this statement.
rrggrr 7y ago
As someone who evaluates CRMs pretty much for a living I'm sad to report there's nothing new here. Great UI - Kudos. But, this is way more expensive than Pipedrive whose UI is arguably as user friendly. I think you've got potential here... but you're priced same as close.io with far fewer features and a similar UI.
- dotancohen 7y ago
  You evaluate CRMs for a living? If I may, an off-topic question. I am completely unsatisfied with any addressbook software and have been looking at a ton of CRMs for personal use. I would prefer something open source, but anything self-hosted would do. The one feature that most CRMs are missing is CardDav and CalDav syncing. I need my contacts on my phone. Do you know of any opens source or otherwise self-hosted CRM that supports CardDav and CalDav for contacts and appointments? Thank you!
  - ckluis 7y ago
    Check out https://www.monicahq.com/ https://www.monicahq.com/ for a self-hosted CRM (personal).
    - dotancohen 7y ago
      Thank you, I have looked at Monica in the past but it was rather rough then. I see now that CardDav support is now in the "alpha" phase for the project. I will take a renewed look. Thank you!
    - smush 7y ago
      I love the idea of Monica but I've had serious challenges getting it going in self-hosted land. I plan to keep trying though as the idea of a personal CRM is nearly irresistable. My most recent attempt a few weeks back (following the debian guide in the GH repo + a few fixes on Stack Exchange) resulted in a page that lets you 'register' your first account but for some reason does not load any page. It just appears to either infinitely load or returns nothing, not even an empty HTML file. I'm sure the hosted offering is great, I'd rather not invest any more personal information onto someone else's servers. OT -> At some point I'm gonna get up the nerve to crack open a F# giraffe site and write up a small Personal CRM site. I would want to track things like name, high school graduated, favorite color, name of dog, relationship to me, relationship to other people in the site, reminders to write them a letter every X days, 'on deck' lunch dates I need to plan, etc. Something like a mobile web-ready email-reminder enabled Farley File (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farley_file https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farley_file).
taphangum 7y ago
Is there a guide or a book you'd recommend on designing software like this (in terms of the UI)? You've done very well.
- drikerf 7y ago
  Design of everyday things is the only book I've read on design and it's great :)! I also learn from others and save design inspiration all the time and share it on Klart.io/pixels.
  - taphangum 7y ago
    Thanks a lot for sharing. I have it, but have never gotten around to reading. Will do now.
jaequery 7y ago
Kudos for the launch! Is there a way to demo the product? Or see it in live w/o having to pull out the CC?
- drikerf 7y ago
  Thanks! I'll make sure to put up a video/gif on some workflow this week :). Also, I'm using Stripe to handle payments and will not charge anything for the free trial.
chpmrc 7y ago
Great design! Is this some known scheme/template or is it all custom? Because it resembles Notion's design a bit. Did you start from a reusable framework (e.g. bootstrap)?
- drikerf 7y ago
  No framework, just CSS :).
jaequery 7y ago
For me, the biggest pain points I face with CRMs are in integrations and customizations. Even Zendesk Sell+Support was awful when integrating to our ecom app. Does this CRM offer anything better in this area?
- drikerf 7y ago
  Not really atm. I will publish documentation for the API and will also make it work with Zapier. But if you're after lot's of integrations maybe Pipedrive is better :).
knadh 7y ago
Looks nice. For anyone looking to self-host or develop their own CRMs, I can't recommend https://erpnext.com https://erpnext.com enough. It's written in Python and is FOSS.
holografix 7y ago
Is the name a play on Wookiee Chewbacca? Asking for a friend.
- drikerf 7y ago
  Haha, I honestly don't know where I got it from. It used to be a word game I made in 2012 and I've just had the domain since :D.
jkaufmann_ 7y ago
I found it a little hard to understand the differentiators. I think in a space like this, where there are already a host of established players, you should have the differentiating feature up front and easily consumable. I'd love to hear more about what other CRMs were missing (in a particular use case) and then hear what you did to fix it.
- drikerf 7y ago
  Thanks! That makes sense, will work on it :)!
chrisperkins 7y ago
Congratulations on your product launch! I am not your potential customer but as a fellow software developer I would like to know the technology/programming languages driving your product if you don't mind.
- drikerf 7y ago
  Thank you! It's Clojure + ClojureScript, using a view library called Rum :).
  - chrisperkins 7y ago
    Wow! I love Clojure. Unfortunately never got to use at work and of course never built anything serious with it. Would you like to share more about your experience building a live product with Clojure? Did you face any challenges due to the smaller community and smaller set of libraries compared to something mainstream like Python or Go?
    - drikerf 7y ago
      I love it :)! I've built products with Python, Ruby and Node before and Clojure has been super fun! Not missing anything particular. Since it has interop with both Java and JS you can often find libraries if you like to.
  - sslash 7y ago
    awesome
aschismatic 7y ago
I clicked because you said that you made something I'll "enjoy using." It made me interested to see what a CRM is. I can tell by visiting your site what purpose it generally serves, but nowhere did I find mention of what CRM stands for. Maybe you don't need to spell it out for your target market, but I think it would still be nice to establish the acronym for unfamiliar guests. To be fair, maybe I'm in the minority, as a quick web search provides me plenty of results clearly stating that it's "customer relationship management." In any case, good luck with your business!
ryanmccullagh 7y ago
May I ask how you did the product screenshots?
- drikerf 7y ago
  Sure! Just screenshot and some editing in Figma
algodaily 7y ago
The look and feel reminds me a lot of basecamp!
tryitnow 7y ago
I would still go with a major CRM. It's not so much about having a great product as it is about having software that a lot of people already know how to use. Even if people don't like the major players at least they're familiar with them, so recruiting and training is a lot easier even if the product is not a good as it should be.
- perfunctory 7y ago
  This reasoning has certain merit, but I still get sad every time I hear it. With this kind of attitude we would have never gotten out of the caves.
  - lukevdp 7y ago
    Not everyone is an early adopter
- mritchie712 7y ago
  I'd disagree in this space for their target market. They are targeting startups and many people that join startups like using new / cool tech. Also, most sales people I've talked to don't like the bloat of SalesForce, so I'd imagine they'd be cool with trying something new. There are other reasons this will be tough, but I don't think this is one. The issue that comes to mind for me is integrations.
puranjay 7y ago
The copy says "tired of bad, boring software" Bad, yes. But boring? I really don't look for fun and excitement from work software. Excel wouldn't become any more useful if it was painted pink and had wacky icons
ge96 7y ago
Any chance the domain is Japanese? haha
jayyeh 7y ago
The title of the Show HN grabbed me and the design on your homepage had me leaning in. I think it's hard to differentiate on design fully as a basic CRM. One idea you could look into as both a feature set and a focus of your marketing is leaning into the idea that you're the ideal first CRM and you make migrating to Salesforce dead simple. You can snag ppl like our company who have been told you'll eventually need to be on Salesforce but aren't ready for all of that overhead. Then once you've got a community of users, you have a chance at adding more and more functionality that will get people to stay with you instead of migrating. I've always thought there was a market opportunity around that. Good luck
- drikerf 7y ago
  Thank you! That's interesting. I'll always help you export your data whenever you want manually until I've built a good export tool :).
  - jayyeh 7y ago
    i love love businesses that start with services before automating with technology. Fully support this approach - def don't build until you need to and have requirements from your experience / your customers. I also really encourage you to think through the messaging that i described (your best 1st CRM with zero pain migration to Salesforce)!
jstsch 7y ago
Looks nice! What about self hosting? I’d copy the Gitlab model. Open source community edition, and a quite pricy Enterprise edition that is full of features that only larger companies need (compliance stuff, audit trails, fine grained permissions, etc).
- drikerf 7y ago
  Hi! I'm making this for myself and other small businesses. So not really interested in enterprise :). Open source model is interesting though and I've thought about it before. We'll see :)!
hackathonguy 7y ago
Out of curiosity - can you share if you received any new paying users through this Show HN, and if so, how many? I realize there's a 7 day trial so even number of trial signups would be interesting. Trying to gauge the HN effect for a product like this.
JaggerFoo 7y ago
No API information. This is what I look for first when evaluating CRM software, which gives me an idea of the underlying schema and how to extend or integrate the software. Most smaller CRM's do not support multiple price books, for example, that can be critical to businesses that have price differences between sales channels and regions. A typical use case, customer story, for your solution would be helpful. Cheers
- garysahota93 7y ago
  Agreed! Having APIs helps me integrate better into our current work flows. Also, I'd love to see some analytics / visualization features (or integrations into Looker/Tableau)!
  - drikerf 7y ago
    I'll be making some basic analytics features this autumn. Pipeline overview over time, per-user metrics, maybe extrapolated deals etc, nothing super fancy :).
- drikerf 7y ago
  Thanks! I also check API docs :)! I'll be working on documenting the API in September.
westoque 7y ago
IANAL but I don't see a "Legal" or "Privacy Policy" in the app itself. Maybe someone in the know can say if it's required or not. I do skim through these document if they exist and I can't find it here. At it's current state, it screams like an open source project since it says "Made with coffee by @drikerf"
iliaznk 7y ago
Seems inspired by Notion.
awillen 7y ago
This looks nice, but when you say "you'll enjoy using" it sounds like the "you" is a salesperson. As an enterprise software PM who works with a lot of CRMs from a partnership/integration perspective, I can tell you that whether or not salespeople like it doesn't matter. CRMs are tools for sales managers (and folks further up in the hierarchy) to know what's going on in their org. An incidental benefit is that reps have useful views of what's going on with their prospects, but ease of use for them is just not a concern of the buyer (hence the wild success of Salesforce, which just sucks to use). In some categories of enterprise software, ease of use is a benefit. I was at Box in the early days when one of the big value props is that people would actually use it, because at the time they were using unsanctioned tools like Dropbox. The issue there was that managers didn't have an easy well of telling when people were using those tools, so the idea that good UX would entice users to stick with company-approved software was a good selling point. With CRMs, that's not the case. As a rep, you're judged on your performance, and the way people see your performance is via the information you put in your CRM. If you're tracking a bunch of leads outside of your CRM, your manager will know (because you have to keep them in the loop on your deals). Thus, there's no reason for sales management to be concerned about ease of use - their CRM is going to get used because the alternative is that the reps are going to get fired. My impression based on your marketing pages and this post is that you didn't really take the time to understand the CRM market and buyers before you built this. Your $49/month for a whole team pricing structure makes no sense - companies are absolutely willing to pay more (and are very willing to pay per user). Having a price point that low is more likely to scare off serious buyers than entice them. The fact that all of your messaging is directed at a rep is a huge problem. You need to focus on things that matter to your buyers (reporting, lead routing, pipeline management, etc.). "Wobaka is the CRM system that will make you smile" is a bad tagline - the folks buying this don't care if the people using it smile. They care about money. If your product doesn't make money (by improving time to close and/or likelihood of close), then they're not buying it whether people smile or not. The good news is you've solicited this feedback early, and the fact that you have a well-designed UI definitely isn't a bad thing. If I were you, though, I would stop development and spend most of your time getting this in front of people in sales management to see what their feedback is. Find out what problems they have with their existing CRMs and try to solve those.
rglover 7y ago
Hey Fredrik, this is great :) Really dig your styling. Have been looking for a less-clunky CRM. Just signed up for a trial.
- drikerf 7y ago
  Thanks! I hope you'll like it :)!
j2bax 7y ago
Trying to sign up in Firefox and when I click the Start 7 Day Free Trial button, nothing is happening. I get a brief spinner on the submit button, and nothing. Assuming maybe some validation is failing but its not telling me anything.

275 points by drikerf 7y ago

https://www.wealthwords.com/blog/earn-pocket-money-online-crossword/ https://www.wealthwords.com/blog/earn-pocket-money-online-cr...

luka-birsa 7y ago

Went to check the landing page, looks nice. Does not answer why I would choose this over all the other 1000000 of CRM offerings (just in our office we tried Zoho, Close.io, Salesforce, Pipedrive,....). Plus, not fully sold on the "Built to last - Wobaka is like your favorite craft beer or artisan coffee. Made with love and hand-picked ingredients. No mega-corp here." pitch. Great effort tho.

drikerf 7y ago
Thanks! I know there are many CRMs out there. I'm trying to build one that I enjoy using and that is specifically made for small businesses. This way I can remove a lot of the stuff I don't care about and still have a nice and efficient system that is easy to stay on top of :).
- dawie 7y ago
  They shut down Highrise and I am pretty sure there is a place for small business CRM. When I looked a while ago, I could not find a good Highrise replacement
- everythingswan 7y ago
  I'd echo the parent comment. I hope you can get some paying users to sign up. The first place I would spend money is on a top-notch copywriter. I really like some of the copy but it feels disjointed as a whole. When you say that it's for small businesses and it's really efficient and light, I think people will identify with that. As long as features keep getting added to platforms, we will always need a super lightweight version. Again, I hope you get some paying users right away! I think I'm just missing something and I see these as clashing messages that don't get fully explained: this platform will make you smile and you'll have fun using it, this platform is faster than other platforms, and it's built for small businesses. I'd ask you "How?" for all three of those. Just some thoughts from a marketer who thinks about positioning and looks at lots of landing pages. I hope you ignore all advice, trust your gut, and have tons of success :)
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - drikerf 7y ago
    Thank you :)!
  - wolco 7y ago
    At $49 per month with no free tier the author is setting themselves up for failure. Get people on board with free product than offer value add. A CRM requires trust.. so spend money on the brand or give a free tier and build trust.
    - smashthepants 7y ago
      Free tier comes with A TON of support demands from people who many not ever become customers. That'd lead to failure a lot quicker. Seems better to have a a few paying customers who are invested in the product providing feedback than hundreds or thousands providing 'feedback' that will never lead to a conversion
      - wolco 7y ago
        I understand where you are coming from. Currently the website doesn't sell the product as is. I think you'll have trouble finding that paying customer. You need a good unique strategy if you want to break through.
austhrow743 7y ago
Yeah I wouldn't draw attention to the concept of software longevity anywhere. New SAAS by a solo developer is not what I think of when I think of things that will last. OP you're just straight up not going to get people for who stability is a priority any time soon. Your target market is people who like to fiddle with their work tools, likely beyond pragmatism and in to productivity as a hobby territory. Guy that wants to get his organisation on to something and know he wont have to think about it again, ie the guy who cares about "built to last", is going to go Salesforce and call it a day.

trumbitta2 7y ago

Nice UI, very much in the style of Basecamp / 37Signals.

drikerf 7y ago
Thanks! I like their work :)

Bouncingsoul1 7y ago

In your sample, Bruce Wayne should be in company Wayne Enterprise, nobody knowshe is also in the justice league

njsubedi 7y ago

I went through your tweets and visualized how Wobaka slowly grew into production. I also have a similar side-project (customer support system, tbh), and you launching your product helped me gain confidence that I can do too! Unfortunately, I cannot sign up for a demo because no cc info (3rd world problems). Anyway, congratulations! It looks simple and beautiful.

eden_h 7y ago

It's pretty! The Basecamp styling is really clear, and it's nice to see the interface on display There's a few unanswered questions that I hope it's helpful to point out; * Importers -> If I want to switch, how long will it take me to move from a potential system (Excel, Google Sheets, Salesforce, etc) into Wobaka? * Integrations -> If I send an email can that come from my Outlook Gmail and be shown? Can I see emails from my colleagues towards a contact if they want to? * What does a workflow look like? A gif of going from New Contact -> Adding them into an Org I'm talking to -> Sending the first message would do a lot here. * How do I engage with my colleagues? Can I tag them in tasks, or pass things along to them?

drikerf 7y ago
Thank you for the great feedback :)! I just finished up an importer this weekend so it's easy to import your contacts from csv files. Def going to make that GIF and look into colleague engagement more :).
eitland 7y ago
> The Basecamp styling is really clear, and it's nice to see the interface on display Promising. Anyone who seems to take inspiration from Basecamp is worth at least 30 extra seconds consideration in my book. Basecamp is the company behind Rails and they were IMO one of the driving forces that made Ajax accessible and web application developement enjoyable. Their UX was (and probably is) good, and their business philosophy flies right in the face of "unicorn or nothing" which means I wish more people would learn from them. Heh, I realize I'm probably not meant to say that here, but based on previous experience I expect it to be tolerated : ) - Signed: a Java (and other languages) developer that is happy for Rails

watbywbarif 7y ago

Same price for 5 ppl as for 500? WTF?

dpcan 7y ago
This is going to be a tough lesson to learn.

homero 7y ago

Misspelled https://wobaka.com/img/feature-tasks.png https://wobaka.com/img/feature-tasks.png

benplumley 7y ago
Also, at the very bottom, "Wobaka cost way less than lost deals" cost should be costs.

sswaner 7y ago

Congrats on building this. It looks great. Two bits of feedback: I didn’t see any mention of an API. Comments indicate an uploader function, but to get into anything close to enterprise you will need an API yo manage the data. The API will need to be able to get data in and out. After that, larger customers will expect customizations. Big companies always want to customize the software.

drikerf 7y ago
Hey! Thanks for the feedback! There will be an api later on. I'm building this for small businesses, so I don't want to bother them with enterprise features they won't use :).
- mrunkel 7y ago
  I think you may be underestimating the need for an API. We're a small company (17 employees) and we wouldn't consider it without an API. Remember lots of systems generate leads/customers, so if you don't want to provide tools for all those various systems, you need to offer an API. Also on your sign up page, there's a typo: "Wobaka cost way less than lost deals" should be "Wobaka costs way less than lost deals" Unless Wobaka is plural?
  - drikerf 7y ago
    Thanks, I fixed the typo now :). As I mentioned, there will be an API soon (same as I'm using for the frontend). Just have to document it.

davedx 7y ago

Looks great, well done for launching it (and getting onto front page of HN!). What I really like is when there's a video showing what it's like to use the product. I launched my leave tracking app (https://leavetracker.app https://leavetracker.app) a couple of months ago and once I'm finally happy with the design I'll be making a video for it, I think it can really help with conversions. I'm always impressed when one person alone builds a product and actually ships it. It's a very different journey to working in a team on a startup. Best of luck!

drikerf 7y ago
Thanks! That makes sense. I'll def make a video/gif! The product has changed quite frequently so didn't want to redo it every other day :)!
- drewp 7y ago
  How great would it be if you did redo it every other day, though? You'd automate the video publish pipeline, of course, and then it would be like a cross between a high-level UX test and a rehearsal for your pitch. You'd get really good at the workflows you demo, which would probably make the demo more impressive, and you'd be more likely to clean up any rough edges or annoyances that you come across repeatedly.

nickjj 7y ago

Looks really nice but I wonder if you went too far with Basecamp's look. The brand colors look so similar that you could get the impression that it's a Basecamp product. It almost looks like you took their background color and changed it by the smallest amount possible just so it wasn't an exact match if you compared the hex colors.

barrkel 7y ago
The background colour also looks like this site, Hacker News.
- sergiomattei 7y ago
  It's a color, they're not exclusive.

userbinator 7y ago

Why the name? To those who know a little bit of Japanese, the name is rather amusing.

malydok 7y ago
I know a bit of Japanese and it didn't strike me at all. Is it just the "baka"? :-)
- dpcan 7y ago
  Wo = The Baka = Fool Src: Typed "wo in Japanese" and "baka in Japanese" into Google.
  - grzm 7y ago
    Names can, of course, be whatever they want, so there's nothing to say whether or not the name is "right" or "wrong". From a language perspective, を is most commonly transliterated wo when used in isolation. When used as a particle, it's generally transliterated as o. It also follows the noun rather than proceeds it. So if the intent of wobaka is to mean something like idiot (as the object of a sentence) a number of liberties have been taken. There's an honorific o お that does precede a noun, which I've never seen transliterated wo.
ptx 7y ago
What would it mean in Japanese? If you know a little bit of Chinese as well, you could read it as 我 + ばか – meaning something like "I'm an idiot", perhaps. :) But then again, I guess an amusing meaning can be found for any word if you allow interpreting its parts in different languages.

chasd00 7y ago

I really like the site. How did you come up with 7 days as a trial period? Seems like it may take longer than a week for someone to really see the value. I could be totally wrong though.

drikerf 7y ago
I just picked a number. I want to offer a way to try it for free. However, My focus is to provide the best possible experience and support for paying customers, and I can't really do that if I'm supporting free users. If you need more time to evaluate, I can extend your trial :).
- stunt 7y ago
  I agree 7 days is not enough to see the value. It is important to make the investment on your trial users and early adopters.
- wingerlang 7y ago
  How about letting them use it for free until you are -sure- they have bought in. That is, you see they are adding colleagues, or acting a lot on key areas. Etc.
mprev 7y ago
We’ve been through several CRM evaluations since Highrise went into maintenance-updates only. During that time, we’ve seen some terribly unintuitive software and other offerings that look as though they’ll be great but lack some key feature. Every CRM has a gotcha that you won’t find until you use it in anger. IMO, seven days is not enough but I also think no evaluation is long enough unless you have the resources to run it fully in parallel to your existing process.
- drikerf 7y ago
  If you're on the trial and need more time to evaluate. Just let me know :).
- 7y ago

skrebbel 7y ago

A while ago I used Hubspot CRM for a bit. I think it's slow and quirky, and to me it's a big red flag how hard they make it to get the data out (or, well, 2 years ago at least). But Hubspot gets one thing right that I never understood other CRMs can't do. If Hubspot sees an email from name@company.com, they automatically make a new contact for that name, and a new organization for that company (derived from the @company.com), enrich it all with available data (employee size etc), which I guess they get from some Clearbit-like data. This is super useful, because it means all relevant organization about a new lead who just reached out is just there. The only manual logging I ever have to do is eg log calls or write internal notes. No bookkeeping whatsoever. Similarly, if I want to log someone I met at, say, a conference, I just enter their email address from their business card (or whatever) and -poof- the contact and organization are there. Maybe I'll add the phone number if they're oldschool like that, but that's it. All the otherfields are immediately in "good enough" mode. A while later I tried Close.io, who advertise loudly in the blogosphere about how much other CRMs make you click and type, and I had to make every contact and organization by hand! How is that automation? I simply don't understand how any CRM in 2019 can ship with so much manual data entry. What am I missing? Is my use case such an edge case? If you'd add stuff like this, then maybe I'd be interested in switching over. But having to manually maintain every single piece of data, when much information is publicly available from various sources, is just not worth my time. And if you have this feature, I'd highlight it proudly on the website :D To other HN'ers, if you have suggestions for CRMs that get this right, I'm interested.

deleted 7y ago
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drikerf 7y ago
Thank you for taking the time to write this :)! I populate some things based on the domain but not all that you mention. I like these little smartness things and I want to do this. It's one of the things I'm going to try to make this autumn :).
jarvuschris 7y ago
The open source Odoo does that too

bochoh 7y ago

On your sign up page, this one sentence isn't quite clear to me. - "That's a total, no matter how many people your are."

dpcan 7y ago
I agree, this sentence is strange. And when a company of 100 signs up...... oops.

wzy 7y ago

Can you tell us about the backend stack of this venture?

drikerf 7y ago
Backend is Clojure, frontend is ClojureScript :).
- cpursley 7y ago
  Nice. I'd love to hear more about that.
  - drikerf 7y ago
    I'm very happy with it! I'll write a blog post about it soon, meanwhile I do tweet some development stuff about it on @drikerf :).
- throw03172019 7y ago
  Nice to see a full Clojure stack! React based? If so, which library did you go with? Nice work!
  - drikerf 7y ago
    Yes! I use Rum :). Also Garden for CSS so it's 100% Clojure :D.

jve 7y ago

> We believe in a different type of CRM Marketing page doesn't convince me that it's a different CRM. Lists usual stuff. Actually quite lacking if the business cannot apply their customizations/business rules/validations/workflows.

martin-adams 7y ago
I found the same. It says it makes it fun, but what specifically does the software do differently to justify this statement.

rrggrr 7y ago

As someone who evaluates CRMs pretty much for a living I'm sad to report there's nothing new here. Great UI - Kudos. But, this is way more expensive than Pipedrive whose UI is arguably as user friendly. I think you've got potential here... but you're priced same as close.io with far fewer features and a similar UI.

dotancohen 7y ago
You evaluate CRMs for a living? If I may, an off-topic question. I am completely unsatisfied with any addressbook software and have been looking at a ton of CRMs for personal use. I would prefer something open source, but anything self-hosted would do. The one feature that most CRMs are missing is CardDav and CalDav syncing. I need my contacts on my phone. Do you know of any opens source or otherwise self-hosted CRM that supports CardDav and CalDav for contacts and appointments? Thank you!
- ckluis 7y ago
  Check out https://www.monicahq.com/ https://www.monicahq.com/ for a self-hosted CRM (personal).
  - dotancohen 7y ago
    Thank you, I have looked at Monica in the past but it was rather rough then. I see now that CardDav support is now in the "alpha" phase for the project. I will take a renewed look. Thank you!
  - smush 7y ago
    I love the idea of Monica but I've had serious challenges getting it going in self-hosted land. I plan to keep trying though as the idea of a personal CRM is nearly irresistable. My most recent attempt a few weeks back (following the debian guide in the GH repo + a few fixes on Stack Exchange) resulted in a page that lets you 'register' your first account but for some reason does not load any page. It just appears to either infinitely load or returns nothing, not even an empty HTML file. I'm sure the hosted offering is great, I'd rather not invest any more personal information onto someone else's servers. OT -> At some point I'm gonna get up the nerve to crack open a F# giraffe site and write up a small Personal CRM site. I would want to track things like name, high school graduated, favorite color, name of dog, relationship to me, relationship to other people in the site, reminders to write them a letter every X days, 'on deck' lunch dates I need to plan, etc. Something like a mobile web-ready email-reminder enabled Farley File (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farley_file https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farley_file).

taphangum 7y ago

Is there a guide or a book you'd recommend on designing software like this (in terms of the UI)? You've done very well.

drikerf 7y ago
Design of everyday things is the only book I've read on design and it's great :)! I also learn from others and save design inspiration all the time and share it on Klart.io/pixels.
- taphangum 7y ago
  Thanks a lot for sharing. I have it, but have never gotten around to reading. Will do now.

jaequery 7y ago

Kudos for the launch! Is there a way to demo the product? Or see it in live w/o having to pull out the CC?

drikerf 7y ago
Thanks! I'll make sure to put up a video/gif on some workflow this week :). Also, I'm using Stripe to handle payments and will not charge anything for the free trial.

chpmrc 7y ago

Great design! Is this some known scheme/template or is it all custom? Because it resembles Notion's design a bit. Did you start from a reusable framework (e.g. bootstrap)?

drikerf 7y ago
No framework, just CSS :).

jaequery 7y ago

For me, the biggest pain points I face with CRMs are in integrations and customizations. Even Zendesk Sell+Support was awful when integrating to our ecom app. Does this CRM offer anything better in this area?

drikerf 7y ago
Not really atm. I will publish documentation for the API and will also make it work with Zapier. But if you're after lot's of integrations maybe Pipedrive is better :).

knadh 7y ago

Looks nice. For anyone looking to self-host or develop their own CRMs, I can't recommend https://erpnext.com https://erpnext.com enough. It's written in Python and is FOSS.

holografix 7y ago

Is the name a play on Wookiee Chewbacca? Asking for a friend.

drikerf 7y ago
Haha, I honestly don't know where I got it from. It used to be a word game I made in 2012 and I've just had the domain since :D.

jkaufmann_ 7y ago

I found it a little hard to understand the differentiators. I think in a space like this, where there are already a host of established players, you should have the differentiating feature up front and easily consumable. I'd love to hear more about what other CRMs were missing (in a particular use case) and then hear what you did to fix it.

drikerf 7y ago
Thanks! That makes sense, will work on it :)!

chrisperkins 7y ago

Congratulations on your product launch! I am not your potential customer but as a fellow software developer I would like to know the technology/programming languages driving your product if you don't mind.

drikerf 7y ago
Thank you! It's Clojure + ClojureScript, using a view library called Rum :).
- chrisperkins 7y ago
  Wow! I love Clojure. Unfortunately never got to use at work and of course never built anything serious with it. Would you like to share more about your experience building a live product with Clojure? Did you face any challenges due to the smaller community and smaller set of libraries compared to something mainstream like Python or Go?
  - drikerf 7y ago
    I love it :)! I've built products with Python, Ruby and Node before and Clojure has been super fun! Not missing anything particular. Since it has interop with both Java and JS you can often find libraries if you like to.
- sslash 7y ago
  awesome

aschismatic 7y ago

I clicked because you said that you made something I'll "enjoy using." It made me interested to see what a CRM is. I can tell by visiting your site what purpose it generally serves, but nowhere did I find mention of what CRM stands for. Maybe you don't need to spell it out for your target market, but I think it would still be nice to establish the acronym for unfamiliar guests. To be fair, maybe I'm in the minority, as a quick web search provides me plenty of results clearly stating that it's "customer relationship management." In any case, good luck with your business!

ryanmccullagh 7y ago

May I ask how you did the product screenshots?

drikerf 7y ago
Sure! Just screenshot and some editing in Figma

algodaily 7y ago

The look and feel reminds me a lot of basecamp!

tryitnow 7y ago

I would still go with a major CRM. It's not so much about having a great product as it is about having software that a lot of people already know how to use. Even if people don't like the major players at least they're familiar with them, so recruiting and training is a lot easier even if the product is not a good as it should be.

perfunctory 7y ago
This reasoning has certain merit, but I still get sad every time I hear it. With this kind of attitude we would have never gotten out of the caves.
- lukevdp 7y ago
  Not everyone is an early adopter
mritchie712 7y ago
I'd disagree in this space for their target market. They are targeting startups and many people that join startups like using new / cool tech. Also, most sales people I've talked to don't like the bloat of SalesForce, so I'd imagine they'd be cool with trying something new. There are other reasons this will be tough, but I don't think this is one. The issue that comes to mind for me is integrations.

puranjay 7y ago

The copy says "tired of bad, boring software" Bad, yes. But boring? I really don't look for fun and excitement from work software. Excel wouldn't become any more useful if it was painted pink and had wacky icons

ge96 7y ago

Any chance the domain is Japanese? haha

jayyeh 7y ago

The title of the Show HN grabbed me and the design on your homepage had me leaning in. I think it's hard to differentiate on design fully as a basic CRM. One idea you could look into as both a feature set and a focus of your marketing is leaning into the idea that you're the ideal first CRM and you make migrating to Salesforce dead simple. You can snag ppl like our company who have been told you'll eventually need to be on Salesforce but aren't ready for all of that overhead. Then once you've got a community of users, you have a chance at adding more and more functionality that will get people to stay with you instead of migrating. I've always thought there was a market opportunity around that. Good luck

drikerf 7y ago
Thank you! That's interesting. I'll always help you export your data whenever you want manually until I've built a good export tool :).
- jayyeh 7y ago
  i love love businesses that start with services before automating with technology. Fully support this approach - def don't build until you need to and have requirements from your experience / your customers. I also really encourage you to think through the messaging that i described (your best 1st CRM with zero pain migration to Salesforce)!

jstsch 7y ago

Looks nice! What about self hosting? I’d copy the Gitlab model. Open source community edition, and a quite pricy Enterprise edition that is full of features that only larger companies need (compliance stuff, audit trails, fine grained permissions, etc).

drikerf 7y ago
Hi! I'm making this for myself and other small businesses. So not really interested in enterprise :). Open source model is interesting though and I've thought about it before. We'll see :)!

hackathonguy 7y ago

Out of curiosity - can you share if you received any new paying users through this Show HN, and if so, how many? I realize there's a 7 day trial so even number of trial signups would be interesting. Trying to gauge the HN effect for a product like this.

JaggerFoo 7y ago

No API information. This is what I look for first when evaluating CRM software, which gives me an idea of the underlying schema and how to extend or integrate the software. Most smaller CRM's do not support multiple price books, for example, that can be critical to businesses that have price differences between sales channels and regions. A typical use case, customer story, for your solution would be helpful. Cheers

garysahota93 7y ago
Agreed! Having APIs helps me integrate better into our current work flows. Also, I'd love to see some analytics / visualization features (or integrations into Looker/Tableau)!
- drikerf 7y ago
  I'll be making some basic analytics features this autumn. Pipeline overview over time, per-user metrics, maybe extrapolated deals etc, nothing super fancy :).
drikerf 7y ago
Thanks! I also check API docs :)! I'll be working on documenting the API in September.

westoque 7y ago

IANAL but I don't see a "Legal" or "Privacy Policy" in the app itself. Maybe someone in the know can say if it's required or not. I do skim through these document if they exist and I can't find it here. At it's current state, it screams like an open source project since it says "Made with coffee by @drikerf"

iliaznk 7y ago

Seems inspired by Notion.

awillen 7y ago

This looks nice, but when you say "you'll enjoy using" it sounds like the "you" is a salesperson. As an enterprise software PM who works with a lot of CRMs from a partnership/integration perspective, I can tell you that whether or not salespeople like it doesn't matter. CRMs are tools for sales managers (and folks further up in the hierarchy) to know what's going on in their org. An incidental benefit is that reps have useful views of what's going on with their prospects, but ease of use for them is just not a concern of the buyer (hence the wild success of Salesforce, which just sucks to use). In some categories of enterprise software, ease of use is a benefit. I was at Box in the early days when one of the big value props is that people would actually use it, because at the time they were using unsanctioned tools like Dropbox. The issue there was that managers didn't have an easy well of telling when people were using those tools, so the idea that good UX would entice users to stick with company-approved software was a good selling point. With CRMs, that's not the case. As a rep, you're judged on your performance, and the way people see your performance is via the information you put in your CRM. If you're tracking a bunch of leads outside of your CRM, your manager will know (because you have to keep them in the loop on your deals). Thus, there's no reason for sales management to be concerned about ease of use - their CRM is going to get used because the alternative is that the reps are going to get fired. My impression based on your marketing pages and this post is that you didn't really take the time to understand the CRM market and buyers before you built this. Your $49/month for a whole team pricing structure makes no sense - companies are absolutely willing to pay more (and are very willing to pay per user). Having a price point that low is more likely to scare off serious buyers than entice them. The fact that all of your messaging is directed at a rep is a huge problem. You need to focus on things that matter to your buyers (reporting, lead routing, pipeline management, etc.). "Wobaka is the CRM system that will make you smile" is a bad tagline - the folks buying this don't care if the people using it smile. They care about money. If your product doesn't make money (by improving time to close and/or likelihood of close), then they're not buying it whether people smile or not. The good news is you've solicited this feedback early, and the fact that you have a well-designed UI definitely isn't a bad thing. If I were you, though, I would stop development and spend most of your time getting this in front of people in sales management to see what their feedback is. Find out what problems they have with their existing CRMs and try to solve those.

rglover 7y ago

Hey Fredrik, this is great :) Really dig your styling. Have been looking for a less-clunky CRM. Just signed up for a trial.

drikerf 7y ago
Thanks! I hope you'll like it :)!

j2bax 7y ago

Trying to sign up in Firefox and when I click the Start 7 Day Free Trial button, nothing is happening. I get a brief spinner on the submit button, and nothing. Assuming maybe some validation is failing but its not telling me anything.