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Show HN: Personal CRM: Note taking, the way it should be
- nathanganser 6y agoI'm finally in love with my product! We're a bootstrapped team of 4 four and we've been building our personal crm app for over a year. As the original founder and CEO, I've been waiting for this day for a loooong time! I finally love my own app and use it on a daily basis (hopefully you will too). We've already launched a long time ago but today we're launching a new feature: Note taking, straight from your inbox. We email you before every meeting with all the notes you've taken about the person you're going to meet and you simply have to reply to the email to log a note! Making it the easiest way to build your database of notes about your contacts. I know that there are tons of people who tried to build a personal CRM and that everyone has his opinion on how the "right" personal crm should work. Personally, we've decided that: - it should be fully automated (sync with calendar and email) - super simple to use (no complex and clunky interface) - it should be magic (our app tells you who you're losing touch with based on your data) And you? What are you looking for in a personal crm?
- codegeek 6y agoLanding Page seems interesting but just a word of advice as a constructive criticism hopefully. A Show HN must allow for us to be able to signup or use the app immediately and it looks like we cannot do that right now since it requires onboarding due to gmail limitations.
- nathanganser 6y agoHey! It is immediately accessible, sorry for this not being clear! The note taking app within email is free and directly accessible, there are multiple calls to action on the page but here is a shortcut to get started: https://calendar.nat.app https://calendar.nat.app Our paying/main app (the personal crm app that tells you who you're losing touch with) is on a request-only basis because it works with Gmail and we're limited in the number of users we can onboard for now. Hope that clarifies things!
- fifnir 6y agoYou might also want to have some more proofreading done. I cought this "[..]Nat get's a good[..]" 5 seconds into your page
- nathanganser 6y agoOuch! Thanks for letting us know! Just fixed it :) You found our main landing page :)
- mkl 6y agoAlso "prep'" should be "prep.". I strongly disagree with your tag line. I think the only way such note taking should be is open source and completely private, otherwise a) you're locked in and b) you risk sensitive info leaking.
- nathanganser 6y agoThanks! Yeah that makes sense as well, it's a different way of looking at it. We found that you have to look at those things like a scale: Open source <------> Ease of use We've decided to focus on the ease of use but there are of course many other note takings apps focusing on the other side :)
- shock 6y ago"Open source" and "Easy of use" do not represent opposite sides of a spectrum.
- ycombinator_acc 6y agoExactly. They aren't mutually exclusive, as can be confirmed by many real world examples.
- Kiro 6y agoI think you overinterpret that rule: https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html I read it as referring to unfinished products that doesn't yet exist. What if you're making a Google Calendar extension? Wouldn't that be allowed as a Show HN?
- nathanganser 6y agoIn all cases you can get started with our app right away :) --> https://calendar.nat.app https://calendar.nat.app Thanks!
- noprivacy 6y ago"What are you looking for in a personal CRM?" Privacy and security. And your privacy assurances/policies are woefully insufficient. From https://nat.app/privacy https://nat.app/privacy > Your Gmail data is only used by machines. Our team won't read or access any of your email data unless you explicitly ask for it (for support for ex.) "Won't" means nothing. The word you're looking for is "can't" > By default, we don't share any data with third parties. The only exception to this rule is Mixpanel, our analytics apps, which receives information about how you use our app only. Yeeaaaaah your privacy policy directly states that if you're acquired or go out of business, user data will be transferred or sold. > As required by Google, the authentification tokens we use to retrieve your Gmail data are safely encrypted in our database. "We do what is required" isn't convincing me you take privacy seriously, and...encrypted how? A password in the database server's config file? > Access to production environments is limited to authorized team members only. And....who are authorized team members? "Authorized team members" could mean "the entire engineering and QA teams, plus the marketing intern collecting demographic data reports." Your statement doesn't distinguish between user data and the production environment as a whole, it doesn't commit to strictly keeping access to production AND user data to the bare minimum required. > We use the industry-standard 256-bit encryption with SSL. ...like everyone else? This does not inspire faith that your company has exemplary network security if you think this is worth mentioning. > Key passwords are updated on a quarterly basis to reduce risks. You think quarterly password rotation is a noteworthy, or even effective, security practice? You're using passwords as your sole authentication for employees? O_o You make no mention of your policies with regards to law enforcement. Do you commit to only releasing data when served with a warrant or subpoena, or can Officer Bob call you up and explain how he's investigating a Really Bad Person and you'll hand over their data? Seems the answer is yes, you will: > "Nat discloses potentially personally-identifying and personally-identifying information only in response to a subpoena, court order or other governmental request, or when Nat believes in good faith that disclosure is reasonably necessary to protect the property or rights of Nat, third parties or the public at large." What country is your organization incorporated in? What country is user data kept in and thus what laws is it subject to? Is the data stored in the cloud? A server in your uncle's basement? You make no mention of systems to assure only a minimum number of designated employees have the access they need when they need it. IE a support team member cannot access a customer's data unless there is an open case verified as initiated by the customer. You make no mention of how data or whether data is encrypted; it seems only gmail auth tokens are? You should be using hardware token 2FA for critical employee access and 2FA everywhere else...not rotating passwords quarterly. You should be using vaults for every password used in production. All access should be logged and audited by an outside party.
- criddell 6y agoI take notes on my iPad. I love it because I can type, record audio, sketch, include photos, annotate PDFs, etc... How would your service help someone like me?
- nathanganser 6y agoYeah, not sure you're the right fit. What makes us special is that: - you can write notes from your inbox without having to open a web app or so - you get those notes in an email before your next meeting If you care more about being able to draw/record, ... then evernote is a much better option.
- c1sc0 6y agoI am looking for something that integrates with the communication tools I actually use when so get in touch with them, and for me that is not email and calendars ... for me that is chat (WhatsApp)
- nathanganser 6y agoThanks for the feedback. This is something we hear a lot as well, unfortunately WhatsApp does not have an API we can connect to :( That's why we've decided to focus on Gmail, GCAlendar, SMS and Phone calls :)
- cocoflunchy 6y agoJust fyi there are APIs now https://www.twilio.com/whatsapp https://www.twilio.com/whatsapp
- nathanganser 6y agoThis is only for WhatsApp business, not sure people are open to use Whatsapp business for their personal account
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- MaximumMadness 6y agoLooks super interesting - would love if the homepage had some kind of demo/screenshot built in. I'd rather not have to click any buttons to see what I'm getting myself into here
- nathanganser 6y agoHey! That's an awesome piece of feedback! Give me 10m :) I'll get it done!
- nathanganser 6y agoI've added some screenshots! Let me know if you think that's better and what other screenshot you think might be relevant!
- NoNameProvided 6y agoI like the landing page a lot (with original header)! For me that quickly added image seems to be out of place and doesn't actually explain the usage of the app. In my opinion the original header was better at expressing a constant feel of the page.
- nathanganser 6y agoOuch ok haha :) I'll think of a better way of explaining how the app works. Maybe a little video demo?
- rememberlenny 6y agoLove this
- CharlesMerriam2 6y agoHey! Not done! Won't hit commits! Awesome to know!
- nazca 6y agoLooks interesting. A few initial reactions: 1) I'm assuming I won't be able to use this with my enterprise email? Even if my admin doesn't block my calendar sharing, it seems like I'd be running afoul of our rules by sending notes to some unknown platform. 2) um, what's the name? Is it personal CRM? (that doesn't appear in big font anywhere). nat.app? (I only see that in the url and email addresses). something else?
- nathanganser 6y agoHey, thanks for sharing your thoughts! 1) If your admin allows it you're fine. We work with G Suite as well. What concerns do you have? Please check out https://nat.app/privacy https://nat.app/privacy to understand how we treat your data, to summarize: - Your data is never accessed by a human - We don't share it with any third parties - Your data is safely stored and sent to you when needed (aka. before your next meeting). That's it. If you're fine writing down notes into a web app, sending them per email is the same level of safety/security. 2) Its Nat indeed. We were previously called Nat Bot (initially we tried to build a chatbot, but pivoted a bit. Nat it is :)
- monsieurbanana 6y agoYou might want to quickly fix the text in the privacy page, specifically removing the sentence.
- nathanganser 6y agoWhat do you mean? Not sure I get you?
- monsieurbanana 6y agoYou have this on the page: "Use this space to tell the customer how your product works and why it is different." Which seems to be a template text?
- 6y ago
- jamesjyu 6y agoThis is like the Posterous of notes.
- nathanganser 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posterous https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posterous This Posterous? Nice, didn't know about it :)
- petr25102018 6y agoI also created my own personal CRM (https://contactcache.com https://contactcache.com), but my main take was privacy. I believe that the information stored about our business partners or loved ones are really sensitive and therefore I opted for 100 % end-to-end encrypted notes. I am not working on the app now as I haven't figured out how to make money on it yet. However I will leave this idea here because I think that you guys should consider offering end-to-end encrypted notes (even just as an option for some selected notes).
- nathanganser 6y agoYeah great idea! Our friend Chris at https://mogulnetworking.com/ https://mogulnetworking.com/ has done exactly this. I had a call with him about this and he clearly explained to me how hard it was to implement and all the compromises you have to make. In our case, as we want to offer the most effortless experience, end-to-end encryption is going to be hard, but we definitely want to get there at some point. We're already encrypting some data though :)
- ketzo 6y agoI love the idea of resurfacing notes before meetings where they are relevant. Feels like there's a lot of software out there based on improving our note-taking, but very little that focuses on how we use our notes. Very cool.
- nathanganser 6y agoThanks Ketzo! We hope we'll be able to build the best note-taking app for this use case and make you a happy user :)
- rememberlenny 6y agoReminds me of Rapportative back when it was a gmail extension. This was my favorite part of it.
- nathanganser 6y agoThis is great to hear! Rapportive's story is really impressive as well :) We hope to become the Superhuman of contacts!
- devtailz 6y agoThis looks neat, will keep an eye on this! Good luck with the Google Security Assessment. The first one takes quite a bit of time to cover all the bases, but the future ones are much easier once familiar with the process.
- nathanganser 6y agoThanks! Yeah for now we're waiting to get more paying customers and then we'll pay for the security assessment ourselves (or get an Angel investor), probably in January. But 20k is a steep price :/ especially for a bootstrapped company like us. Some might say Google is trying to prevent small companies to innovate upon Gmail...
- throwaway888abc 6y ago> Yeah for now we're waiting to get more paying customers Don't "wait". Do something about it. P.S. Hate "waiting" mindset
- nathanganser 6y agoHaha sorry, used the wrong word. We're of course pro-actively acquiring new users. What I meant is that we're not pressured by time or so.
- devtailz 6y agoIt's tough. I see where they're coming from not wanting people to access people's emails without being properly vetted. At least it's an additional "badge" you can display on the security side of things. Don't forget to budget in the fact that it's annual...
- nathanganser 6y agoYeah! We saw that! But as you said, we're looking forward to it as a way to bullet-proof our security. It's a valid concern and getting vetted by a security company will be a huge plus! Especially given the privacy concerns raised by other comments. Just to clarify for readers, to use our note taking app, you only need to sync your calendar. Syncing gmail is only requires to use our paying personal CRM app as we use this data to find out who you're losing touch with (but we only access metadata, we can't read your emails).
- nathanganser 6y agoJust for information, our servers & database are getting hot and starting to break which might lead to some in-app emails not getting delivered! Too many users are signing up :P
- nathanganser 6y agoWe've upgraded our services. Everything should be running smoothly again. Please email tech@nat.app if you have any issues or if anything seems like it's not working!
- nathanganser 6y agoServers are down again! :P Getting them up again!
- ogennadi 6y agoTypo on the front page: "be we can't" -> "but we can't"
- nathanganser 6y agoThanks! Just fixed!
- racl101 6y agoOne thing that I noticed about this product is: I don't know what to call it. It's missing a definite logo with a name. Nat App? Personal CRM? If I was to Google this? How would I find it?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- nathanganser 6y agoIt's called Nat. Simply search for nat.app or "nat personal crm"
- CharlesMerriam2 6y agoI wonder what this is? My very first impression is a standard boot screen. No details. No screenshots. No idea what makes it special outside of "it works". On the first click, it wants access to my calendar. No. Mine. This is flirting. Show me why I should be interested before I bare my soul.
- nathanganser 6y agoLove the feedback! Because we're actually inside Gmail, it's pretty hard to show screenshots but we tried to describe the way the app works as precisely as possible. We'll add a demo video in the coming days.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- stakkur 6y agoThe least interesting 'feature' to me for note taking is a third party cloud-based tool storing and organizing them for me. I'm likely an outlier, because I (a)take notes in text files, (b)maintain complete control over them, and (c)value privacy over convenience. I realize the cloud is where all the sexy people try and make money today, but...I'm worn out by slight variations on the same old pitch: 'here's a database with a UI, and we'll host the database!'.
- ar_lan 6y ago> I'm worn out by slight variations on the same old pitch: 'here's a database with a UI, and we'll host the database!'. AKA - I learned how to make a CRUD app - pay me money (or your data) for it!
- ozim 6y agoDatabase with UI and CRUD apps are generally OK, because there is still loads of people who cannot do that and they something like that. What I don't like are "personal productivity applications", because those seem like they are created by people without imagination. Making another TODO app with email remainders, quantified self, CRM's to manage connections with friends and family. Those kind of apps that are created by "self improvement nerds" for people like them. Problem is those apps never solve any real world issues. Because people who are self improvement nerds would rather build their own system and people who don't care about it won't use it. For me those apps are in category of self improvement books. Where for most of the people investment in self improvement system quickly goes above return on that investment. Just when you start tweaking your .vimrc and at the end of the day instead of doing work you just played with your settings. Using such tools and tweaking those will quickly end up in using tool instead of actually living ones life. When you know your uncle Ted does not like you, using system that reminds you about his birthday is not going to change that. You are not going to become millionaire by using some system that "millionaires use". Using Elon Musk time management is not going to make you successful owner of multiple companies if you are working 9-5 drone job.
- 6y ago
- harryruhr 6y agoUnfortunately not a service for privacy-conscious people, since it heavily depends on google services. The site itself makes 57 third party requests to 13 different sites.
- dlhavema 6y agoPretty cool app and idea. I always struggle remembering little details before meetings and just in general about people.. Small typo in one of your images ( exec.png ) reads: "lastest notes about Marvin"
- nathanganser 6y agoThanks! Fixed!
- eddywebs 6y agoHow does it compare with monicahq.com ? its another personal crm, open source they tout themselves as rolodex of personal contacts. Congratulations on launching !
- nathanganser 6y agoThanks for the question! Monica has been around for a while and well known so we appreciate the comparison. Monica is fully manual. You have to add every interaction manually and open their web app if you want to add a note. We're much more integrated and proactive: you'll receive an email before every meeting with all the notes about the person you'll meet in that meeting for example. Our main app also tells you who you're losing touch with based on your data. Monica is really a sexy database, we add some "magic" on top of that.
- zSigma 6y agoThe website looks fantastic. What framework are you using for the front-end? How did you design it?
- nathanganser 6y agoWe're actually using a website building tool: Landen.co :)
- gexla 6y agoIs this the same CRM app which was using key loggers inside the application? I see they are using these keyloggers on the main page. I don't even want to try the registration process. Edit: Keyloggers which send your data to a third party service.
- nathanganser 6y agoI'm pretty sure we don't use any keylogger application. We use https://landen.co https://landen.co for our landing page.
- 3np 6y agoYou are using hotjar, which logs every keystroke from the user if they have JS enabled. Please, please, don't pretend like you "take security very seriously" when it's very clear that you pull stuff like this without even being aware of the implications, or looking it up when someone asks about it. The dismissiveness in your other comments on this post show, at best, a huge amount of naivety. If you're hiring, make sure your next technical hire is a (rational) security paranoiac.
- moralsupply 6y agoFor me, the way it should be is as simple as: - Take notes in markdown format - Commit to a private Github/GHE repository
- anonytrary 6y agoDemo or bounce. Too many note taking apps. What's your edge? >You don't need to open a new tab, just reply to the email to take notes. Why reply to an email when I can just open a new tab in my editor? These both seem to be the same level of effort. Landing page doesn't explain why this solution is better. > We'll send you an email before your meetings with all the notes you've taken about all the people that are present at the meeting. Automatically figure out who you're losing touch with and reconnect! We have built an algorithm that analyses your email and calendar data to figure this out. These features seem to be your edge. Give them a spot light with a demo. Maybe a user-flow that showcases these features to give people an idea of why this note taking experience is better for them.
- nathanganser 6y agoThanks! That's definitely something we're taking away from all the feedback we received. We'll make a giff or video to show how this is awesome :)
- anonytrary 6y agoAwesome! Good luck. I hope you incorporate the feedback and congrats on profitability. Cheers to the people who do things!
- zby 6y agoAt the HN frontpage there is another ShowHN notetaking app: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24898373 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24898373 - looks like this field is heating.
- technimad 6y agoSome feedback for the team: I read the landing page, and think, "oh this could be interesting, let's try it". Hit the 'write my first note' CTA button. Next question is 'sync your calendar to get started'. No explanation why, and it only seems to accept Google. So I dropped out. Read the landing page again, and still I have no idea why calendar access is mandatory.
- nathanganser 6y agoThanks for the feedback :) What makes our note taking tool special is that we send you an email before every meeting with all the notes you've taken about the person you're about to meet. Then you can simply write a new note by replying to the email. This is why the calendar integration is required. Hope that makes sense!
- wizzwizz4 6y agoCouldn't you use iCalendar (or h-event) files?
- nathanganser 6y agoThis could have been an option, but we wanted to prioritise ease of use :)
- technimad 6y agoAha. This definitely makes sense. Should make that more clear on the landing page!
- makach 6y agoLost me on login... I have to Sync to get started? AI involved to reach out? No thank you! I prefer you not to mess with this information.
- nathanganser 6y agoWait what? :P No AI involved on the note taking aspect. You have to sync your calendar data in order for us to know when you have a meeting :) Hope that makes sense! Our main personal crm syncs with Gmail and uses an AI in order to find out who you're losing touch if that's what you mean.
- makach 6y agoIt is what I mean, but might not be as dangerous as I initially assumed. If it is just for identifying contacts and the AI is just generating information instead of acting on it.