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Yes. Having been in this space for a bit, there are a few reasons why it hasn't worked (yet): 1. The problem of deduplicating contacts is tough (but solvable

by nlh 4y ago

Yes. Having been in this space for a bit, there are a few reasons why it hasn't worked (yet): 1. The problem of deduplicating contacts is tough (but solvable). If you don't solve it well, then the utility of personal CRM goes wayyyyy down and you're getting notifications about the same people with different email / WhatsApp / Instagram addresses and that gets annoying. 2. People haven't shown a big willingness to pay very much for this (so far), despite everyone saying they want it. So we're left with the open source solutions that don't solve the problems very well. 3. People are SUPER concerned about privacy. See a comment above about someone who wants the system to automatically scan email, etc. and extract contacts, but that it must be 100% local and privacy-centric. You can't have both of those - to intelligently extract contacts without duplicates (and figure out that @mybestie on Instagram == mybestie@gmail.com == my.c.bestie@corporate.com) you need a big database of who's who to match against. Everything is solvable I think - we're not talking cold fusion here. But it's tougher than it might seem on the surface.

BeefySwain 4y ago
Could you expand on what options exist currently? You say you are in the space, does that mean you have been keeping an eye on it, that you are working on something, or ?
- nlh 4y ago
  I'm in the space in that I co-founded a company called Connect The Dots (ctd.ai) that certainly has the potential to solve this problem, but we're not focused on the PRM space right now (see point above re: unwillingness to pay). Perhaps down the road. The two commercial tools that come to mind are: * Dex (https://getdex.com/ https://getdex.com/) * Clay (https://clay.earth/ https://clay.earth/) Although neither have really nailed it (yet). Clay is more like a Superhuman-for-Contacts, whereas Dex is really going hard at being a true PRM. The big open source tool out there is: * Monica (https://www.monicahq.com/ https://www.monicahq.com/)
rcme 4y ago
One problem I've had adopting such a system is that you want the system to help manage some load of work, e.g. maintaining your personal relationships. But using the product is itself work: you need to set it up, remember to use it, keep it up to date, etc. So, just as you've procrastinated keeping up with old friends, you procrastinate using the tool. And, of course, the tool doesn't reduce the workload of keeping up with friends. In fact, done successfully, your work has increased as you need to talk to your friends more often. So you're basically adding work (using the tool) to do work you didn't have the energy for in the first place (talking to your friends). Everyone loves the idea of talking to their friends, conceptually. But, given ample time and opportunity, many choose not to keep up with friends. It's almost as if people only "want to want" to keep up with friends, rather than actually want it.
- nlh 4y ago
  Yes yes absolutely 100x. That's another problem with the existing tools - they're a lot of work! You can say "we'll solve the duplicate contacts problem by ignoring it and letting using de-dupe themselves" welllll that's a lot of work! And then there's the empty-database problem. I installed Monica a while back and the first thing it prompted me to do was.....input all my contacts. No Facebook import, no LinkedIn import, etc. Are you kidding me? I'm not rebuilding my friend graph from scratch. So I ditched the tool immediately (note: I haven't looked at it in years so it might have fixed some of those issues in the meantime). And absolutely yes - there's the actual work of being in touch with people that you can't (or shouldn't, in a non-dystopian world) automate away. I'm sure someone will figure out how to rig up GPT-3 to do that but ughhhh...shiver please don't.
random3 4y ago
I believe a plugin (e.g. in Obsidian, Notion, Superhuman) could work better than Monica. In fact I think Superhuman has the bets oppportunity to create this product.

by nlh 4y ago

BeefySwain 4y ago

Could you expand on what options exist currently? You say you are in the space, does that mean you have been keeping an eye on it, that you are working on something, or ?

nlh 4y ago
I'm in the space in that I co-founded a company called Connect The Dots (ctd.ai) that certainly has the potential to solve this problem, but we're not focused on the PRM space right now (see point above re: unwillingness to pay). Perhaps down the road. The two commercial tools that come to mind are: * Dex (https://getdex.com/ https://getdex.com/) * Clay (https://clay.earth/ https://clay.earth/) Although neither have really nailed it (yet). Clay is more like a Superhuman-for-Contacts, whereas Dex is really going hard at being a true PRM. The big open source tool out there is: * Monica (https://www.monicahq.com/ https://www.monicahq.com/)

rcme 4y ago

One problem I've had adopting such a system is that you want the system to help manage some load of work, e.g. maintaining your personal relationships. But using the product is itself work: you need to set it up, remember to use it, keep it up to date, etc. So, just as you've procrastinated keeping up with old friends, you procrastinate using the tool. And, of course, the tool doesn't reduce the workload of keeping up with friends. In fact, done successfully, your work has increased as you need to talk to your friends more often. So you're basically adding work (using the tool) to do work you didn't have the energy for in the first place (talking to your friends). Everyone loves the idea of talking to their friends, conceptually. But, given ample time and opportunity, many choose not to keep up with friends. It's almost as if people only "want to want" to keep up with friends, rather than actually want it.

nlh 4y ago
Yes yes absolutely 100x. That's another problem with the existing tools - they're a lot of work! You can say "we'll solve the duplicate contacts problem by ignoring it and letting using de-dupe themselves" welllll that's a lot of work! And then there's the empty-database problem. I installed Monica a while back and the first thing it prompted me to do was.....input all my contacts. No Facebook import, no LinkedIn import, etc. Are you kidding me? I'm not rebuilding my friend graph from scratch. So I ditched the tool immediately (note: I haven't looked at it in years so it might have fixed some of those issues in the meantime). And absolutely yes - there's the actual work of being in touch with people that you can't (or shouldn't, in a non-dystopian world) automate away. I'm sure someone will figure out how to rig up GPT-3 to do that but ughhhh...shiver please don't.

random3 4y ago

I believe a plugin (e.g. in Obsidian, Notion, Superhuman) could work better than Monica. In fact I think Superhuman has the bets oppportunity to create this product.