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Show HN: Streak.com - Do sales, support and bug tracking all inside Gmail
- zabeth24 15y agoI've used the Beta for a multi-user sales pipeline. Worked wonders!
- latifnanji 15y agoAlready got my support and deployments team using Streak and its been an amazing experience! Constantly adding new features and making our lives easier.
- pastaking 15y agoThis is awesome! Thanks for the great work.
- zerop 15y agoGood work, but I think good for Google apps users (only?)....
- alooPotato 15y agoco-founder of streak here: streak works with both google apps and non apps accounts. We've noticed some of our early users using it for non business purposes as well (task management, event planning, etc).
- mike-cardwell 15y agoExactly how did you "notice" this?
- alooPotato 15y agoOur users told us. As we were building features, we'd email our users and ask them for feedback.
- fady 15y agoI'm using it today for both and i like it.also, im blown away with snippets. the shortcuts to access them is genius too. i've now begun to remove clippings and other add-ons that i've used for this specific feature.
- halayli 15y agoGreat product. But I personally prefer to use my inbox for handling mail only and not get it in the mix of other processes like hiring, bug tracking etc...
- ajju 15y agoI use Streak as a "Personal Salesforce". It has been incredibly useful because it helps me stay on top of 30 different conversations in 5 different contexts.
- bkruse 15y agoI've used google apps/gmail for years, in my large previous organization and currently in our 100+ organization. Obviously you know this, but this type of "glue" is great - I'm glad you guys took advantage of this. I am in the market place daily, there is NOTHING that compares to this so far. I am excited to see where you take this!
- smilliken 15y agoWe've been using Streak to help with hiring, fundraising, and business development at MixRank. It works really well. I'd highly recommend it to anyone that needs to stay on top of their email.
- firefoxman1 15y agoWhat a beautiful homepage. Professional and...just beautiful! Would this be compatible with Fluent.io?
- OmarIsmail 15y agoFluent.io appears to be a different client to Gmail. Right now we only work with Gmail's webclient.
- siavosh 15y agoSame impression here. Love the out of focus background image. Great effect.
- mynameisraj 15y agoThanks. :-)
- tomblomfield 15y agoThis looks awesome - I'd love more information about how it works in a multi-user environment. For example, if 3 guys in my company do sales, how do we prevent everyone contacting the same leads?
- alooPotato 15y agoWe don't go into it much on the homepage but we think Streak really does well here. You can share a sales pipeline to specific people or to your entire domain and you can assign leads to different team members. There's a small demo of how sharing works at the end of the bug tracking demo video.
- Ecio78 15y agoand what about multiusers helpdesk?
- alooPotato 15y agoWe use it internally as a multi-user support tool but have a ton of new support related features coming.
- baltcode 15y agoI can't see the bug tracking demo. Screen-shot : http://imgur.com/6cOhL http://imgur.com/6cOhL I am on Firefox on the Windoze.
- grok2 15y agoSomething I've been thinking I should do, but never got round to. Good idea, will give it a spin. BTW, I was thinking about working on this because a number of Mortgage Brokers I have interacted with in the past have all been using gmail and they all seem to be in desperate need of a CRM solution that integrates with gmail. So, there, a segment for you to target. BTW, found a typo on the main page -- "messagest".
- revorad 15y agoLooks nice! But I can't watch any of the videos because clicking on the play button (in the lightbox) closes the lightbox :-) I'm on Safari 5.1.3 on OS X.
- coob 15y agoI have the same issue on Safari 5.2 on OS X 10.7
- alooPotato 15y agoApparently the youtube embed object takes a while to load on Safari, we're looking into it....
- mynameisraj 15y agoOops. I'll fix this.
- Jun8 15y agoSame here, with FF 10.0.2 on Snow Leopard, when I click on a video I just see an empty box.
- Torrents 15y agoI'm using FireFox 10.0.2 on Windows 7 and nothing loads in the lightbox when I click a video link...just white and empty. The video works fine in Chrome though.
- alooPotato 15y agofixed!
- brettpaden 15y agoYou need chrome 15 or better for the extension to install. If you go go there and click on the install button without chrome 15, it generates a javascript exception with no visual or textual clues to the user that is going on. Person on chat was responsive.
- bretr 15y agoThis looks awesome, is it a Chrome plugin? Is there only Chrome support?
- OmarIsmail 15y agoRight now we only support Chrome. In the future we'll be in all the major browsers.
- asifjamil 15y agonice product. Just out of curiosity, how exactly do you attach your app to Gmail? The way I imagine it: basically, this is just a big javascript application which inserts itself inside the gmail view using DOM manipulation?
- harshaw 15y agoLooks cool - although my cynical assumption is that this product a) would work great in demos with a simple number of folders,etc and b) will be bitch to maintain given when Google changes the UI or generated code / structure. Having looked at the gmail generated source there isn't a human generated component so something trivial like $('#button_bar').appendChild(..) doesn't work requiring more clever approaches (and perhaps the streak guys are insanely clever). If I had the time I'd pick apart the extension source to see how streak works.
- OmarIsmail 15y agoTrust me, it took a little while but we've been able to tame the beast known as Gmail's DOM. We have some pretty sophisticated infrastructure to handle the different versions and updates to Gmail.
- rokhayakebe 15y agoFinally, it looks like someone nailed it, or at least has a great start. We want to work inside email, not launch a separate app.
- TomAnthony 15y agoThis looks extremely cool, and I'm really tempted! In light of recent things like Path etc. (and without insinuating anything!) - could you clarify what information is sent via Streak's servers, if any?
- OmarIsmail 15y agoIn order to use Streak you have to give oauth access to your inbox. We use that data in order to link you to your emails from within Streak. Specifically on Streak's servers we store message meta data but no email contents.
- Sonshii 15y agoSecurity and Trade Secrets are my major concern as well. Meta data could mean "gmail message ID", but it could also mean "all header info, including message title & users emailed." Of course, that's in addition to the value of the additional data (box title, notes, "deal size") that streak is being used for. Privacy policies are not very comforting on their own... Heck, "everyone" has one! I might suggest some more details, perhaps on your website, to satisfy wavering customers. So far there isn't much to make a businessperson feel comfortable.
- petenixey 15y agoI was literally thinking earlier today that I wish someone would write this app. Unfortunately it doesn't play well with Rapportive profiles for me (HD Beach theme, comfortable sizing) - seems to be some jumping over each other. I realise it must be very hard making bootstrap GMail addons play with each other but it would be great to use the two together
- bkruse 15y agoCrap - I definitely want Rapportive, but glad I can get rid of Boomerang.
- alooPotato 15y agoIt works fairly well with rapportive, sometimes when scrolling you may see overlap.
- OmarIsmail 15y agoWe do play nice with Rapportive usually, but ya difficult to test all different configurations. Will have to troubleshoot that with your specific settings.
- petenixey 15y agoI've also got boomerang in there too. You've got an heroic job on your hands ;)
- PaulYoder 15y agoExactly what I was looking for! But please, please start charging for your product. I don't want this product to disappear in a year when you run out of funding and still don't have a sustainable business model.
- OmarIsmail 15y agoThe nice thing about the CRM market is people expect to pay for this kind of software, so charging is definitely on our path. Just want to get things solid first. We'll always have a free tier, but ya, going out of business and disappearing is not part of the plan.
- alooPotato 15y agoTaking a quick poll here - how much would everyone be willing to pay for this?
- frankydp 15y agoSuper cheap, less than 15 monthly for micro teams less than 4 maybe. Then scale a lot for larger groups/companies. Something like the atlassian pricing tiers? There is a large government market to hit also.
- vineet 15y agoIt would be great to have this free for individuals - so that they can see if they love it or not. Either make it completely free for them, or free for 2-3 micro-funnels, or free for managing ~250 leads (like highrise). After that it would be ideal to charge a little ($5/month) for the next 2-3 users, and more for larger teams. Ofcourse, give more features as the team sizes grow. Note that your market is larger than a CRM.
- PaulYoder 15y agoI would pay between 9 and 19 per user
- ktr 15y agoI was just thinking this - I think < $8 / mo. would be a no-brainer, between $8 - $19 might be worth it and > $19 I probably wouldn't use it.
- Lambent_Cactus 15y agoReally really cool. Minor copy edit on your splash page - there's a 't' on the end of 'messages' in this section: Streak Plays Nice Streak never alters any data in your Gmail. No extra labels, and no moving around your messagest. Streak adds a layer of organization on top of your email and stores this separately and securely in our own cloud.
- jpdoctor 15y agoGiven that Google might acquire your company, why would you want to provide it with 100% of your sales, support and bug tracking information?
- andrewljohnson 15y agoGoogle's terms of use prevent them from having humans read your data.
- jpdoctor 15y ago> Google's terms of use prevent them from having humans read your data. Given the choice of 1. spending a few zillion dollars on a lemon of a startup and 2. violating terms-of-use behind your back do people really believe 1. over 2. is the most likely outcome?
- sanswork 15y agoThey would have to play their hand at behind the scenes knowledge of your actual figures somewhat openly for this to work. That would be disastrous for them.
- alttab 15y agoI was looking for a similar comment. Not just from an acquisition standpoint, but having all that information right where Google can look at it doesn't sound smart just from a common-sense standpoint. "What could possibly go wrong?"
- Nitramp 15y ago100% of your sales, support, and bug tracking information will be reflected in the email inbox of your employees. If you're not hosting your own email servers, all that information is available to some 3rd party. These companies have contracts in place preventing them from abusing the potential information they can gain, and they usually have a lot more to loose from violating it than what they could gain from cheating like this.
- tathagatadg 15y agoSome dreams come true. Even when you are not hacking on them.
- andrewljohnson 15y agoThis is great timing! We just hired a customer support person this week, and we started using HelpScout.net, but we aren't finding that it's very polished. We're going to give Streak a shot, and hopefully give you some good feedback. P.S. You are missing a question mark on your home page: "Want to know where the customer is in the sales pipeline."
- OmarIsmail 15y agoTypos are now fixed!
- ChrisNorstrom 15y agoOH please tell us how it turns out. It's one thing for me to take a stroll through myself and another thing for someone with a running business to actually try it out with real data and clients and use cases. This looks simple, and I LOVE simple. I'd rather work with something simple and a few features than something complex with a lot of features. Features are useless if I'm afraid of them or have to educate myself to learn them.
- donpark 15y agoNicely done. Two concerns: 1) exposure to breakage when Gmail changes, 2) potential introduction of protection against invasive integration. Google has three options: 1) turn a blind eye, 2) block deep integration (same game AOL played with AIM), or 3) introduce client-side integration API. #1 is temporary. #2 is nightmare for Streak. #3 requires strategy change by Google. [update] Rapport doesn't have this problem because they are using Outlook PIA to work directly with Outlook object model.
- yurisagalov 15y agoJust started using it for our hiring funnel at AeroFS and I already love it. Well done!
- Jun8 15y agoCan you provide some insight as to how this is implemented? Do you use contextual gadgets?
- OmarIsmail 15y agoContextual gadgets are pretty limited. If you want to get started in Gmail the best way I recommend is to use James Yu's excellent Gmailr (https://github.com/jamesyu/gmailr https://github.com/jamesyu/gmailr). We did some prototyping with that. Since then we've taken that core code and rewrote 90% of it to fit our needs and make our own platform.
- rufugee 15y ago+1. I would love to develop some customizations on top of GMail, but haven't seen a good explanation of how to do it (yet). Maybe I just haven't looked closely enough...but is this something Google actively encourages or something you have to mangle with a plugin like greasemonkey?
- joshuareeves 15y agoCongrats on the launch! I love the UI and set-up process, it's very smooth.
- jayzee 15y agoAmazing work guys. Played with it a bit and looks really intuitive and easy to use!
- toblender 15y agoI've been trying to manage customers with emails for a while. What a nightmare. This looks like a great product. But, I'm not sure I'm willing to share all my emails. I think a good work around would be to create a gmail account specifically for handling client stuff. Or you guys could offer email address which are already gmail integrated. Just some notes. Great product, props from Canada :D
- alooPotato 15y agoUsing streak in a shared gmail account is pretty popular and works great.
- code_pockets 15y agoCongratulations to the streak.com team. This is a great product. * This brings another point: There is a need for a better business email application that is as easy to use as Gmail, but is not owned by any of the big 4 (MS, G, APPL, Y!).
- OoTheNigerian 15y agoI am having login problems. I am stuck on step 2.
- alooPotato 15y agoIf you're having problem, please goto gmail and Streak will ask you to sign in there. The usual culprit is third party cookies being disabled - we wrote a help article here: http://support.streak.com/customer/portal/articles/386931 http://support.streak.com/customer/portal/articles/386931
- pbreit 15y agoI disabled 3rd party cookies when the whole Google/Safari flap arose recently and was wondering if I might be missing anything. In this case the app just doesn't work so that's pretty obvious. I'm wondering if I'm experiencing any other harder to discern problems? Are 3rd party cookies really required to deliver this sort of app or is it just easier? I suppose otherwise session IDs would need to go in the URL or POST variables.
- hartcw 15y agoLooks impressive so far, I've basically been doing this kind of thing manually in gmail using labels, for supporting Smart Shooter. So its free for now whilst in beta, I just might be hooked by the time they start to charge for it..
- temphn 15y agoAny plans for Salesforce integration? Can you use SF.com as a backend?
- aschobel 15y agoLogin screen is showing an odd domain name, apps.googleuserscontent.com, is requesting authorization to my account. The site XXXXX.apps.googleusercontent.com is requesting access to your Google Account for the product(s) listed below
- dangrossman 15y agoThat's a Google domain, and the numbers represent a specific Chrome extension... in this case, Streak.
- aschobel 15y agoI realize it's a Google domain, but not a trusted Google domain. If you look at do a search for "googleusercontent.com" it shows that it hosted malware and some other nasty stuff. http://www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=googleusercontent.com/ If I'm on streak.com and try to login I would like to be authorizing Streak.com
- dangrossman 15y agoI understand the sentiment, but it can't work that way. What you're authorizing for access is an anonymous unsigned Chrome extension, not the website streak.com. If they allowed the extension to define its own name so that you'd see "streak.com", then you'd see malware masquerading as safe-sounding names in the authorization dialog.
- dataisfun 15y agoThis is fantastic. Glad you guys came along. I was wondering why it took so freaking long for something like this to show up.
- xanadohnt 15y agoThis looks incredibly useful and well designed. I've shown my CEO; perhaps we'll be incorporating Streak soon. Two copy niggles: "Streak is great for sales, but did you know you can also use it for: hiring candidates, handling email support, organizing dealflow, fundraising and organizing your personal projects." This is a question - add a question mark to the end (bonus, invented by Dr. Evil) "We put indicators right in your inbox to show you which emails have to do with which deals you are working on." Awkward / run-on. Try - We added email indicators showing you the association to the deals on which you are working. (remove the wordy noun modifiers and prepositional phrases)
- auston 15y agoMy question is: Are you guys a YC company? Because you should be!
- ramoq 15y agoOmar, this is fantastic. You rock
- instakill 15y agoLooks great, but no FF 10 support?
- pencilcode 15y agosigned up, and been loving it! for now no slow downs of gmail. Is there any way to group boxes together? I created one box per client for some of my clients thinking i would put each issue in there and then figured out that i would have to create a box for each issue. so how do i group boxes, eg those belonging to the same project?
- chrisfarms 15y agoLooks like you could create a Pipeline for each project, and then add the boxes to the project pipeline. It would be nice if you could save a pipeline setup so you don't have to recreate the same stages every time you need a new project.
- FreshCode 15y agoWhat is the Streak.com stack?
- pagehub 15y agoLooks cool, is it just for a single user or does it sync with everyone in your organisation?
- chrisfarms 15y agoThis looks really useful, but some parts of a pipeline I might need external people (who are probably not using gmail) to action/move items along a pipeline. It might be cool if you could generate a URL for a pipeline for someone so they can collaborate (change statuses/comment) without needing to use gmail. Although I haven't really thought of all the consequences of this.
- troels 15y agoWow. This is really great. We are just at a point where we consider switching away from Lighthouse for bug tracking. Do you provide - or plan to provide - an api, so it's possible to integrate with other systems?
- gee_totes 15y agoThis looks very promising... I've been looking for a CRM solution for my company for awhile. Question: is there a way to set up a gmail filter to add existing client e-mails and contacts into a box?