
Streak.com (YC S11) Takes On Salesforce With A Simple CRM For Gmail - alooPotato
http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/21/gmail-streak/
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smilliken
I've been one of Streak's biggest advocates for a while now-- I use it for
everything. In particular, it's been extremely helpful for hiring,
fundraising, and business development at MixRank. I highly recommend it.

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teamlaft
I like how it can apply to all the use cases you mention above, and also how
they have a variety of demo videos on their website demonstrating them. About
to try it out now for my startup.

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jonbischke
We've been using Streak at Entelo and we're very happy. The "social
integration" provided by most CRM systems is lacking and when you combine
Streak and Rapportive inside of GMail/Google Apps, it's really quite powerful.

The CRM landscape feels like it's undergoing a change somewhat similar to what
happened a decade ago when cloud-based providers like Salesforce disrupted
incumbents like Siebel. Salesforce, while a very powerful product/company in
many ways, is not immune to disruption and it's great to see folks like
Streak, Nimble, 37Sigs/Highrise attempting to compete with them.

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ultrasaurus
I've been using Rapportive forever -- I am actually surprised there aren't
more startups trying to eat Salesforce's $65-200 per seat per month lunch.

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rubyrescue
ming.ly is another

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muhammadatt
Its a fantastic app - I've been using it for about two weeks and its
completely replaced a clunky process of trying to link lead spreadsheets, with
Highrise contacts and Gmail emails. We store contacts in Highrise but it is
pretty lousy for pipeline management. Because Streak lives inside gmail, it
makes it really easy to see all the email associated with each lead. It also
replaces Boomerang (email scheduler applet) and Tout (email template app) so I
can get more done without leaving my inbox. Streak and Rapportive handle
almost all my CRM needs at this point.

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twakefield
I highly recommend this for those using google apps and looking for a light-
weight CRM to handle inbound email leads. I looked at Salesforce and shuddered
at the complexity when I just wanted a way to make sure I followed up with
inbound email inquiries in a methodical fashion.

It's a big upgrade from my previous homemade gmail tagging system / boomerang
hack. Also, the reusable text snippets are a huge time saver.

There are a few improvements that could be made, but overall I think the
product was executed beautifully.

Nice job guys.

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squadron
I voted this story up because I want somebody to kick Salesforce's ass.

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spyderman4g63
This is interesting but it also means I would have to use gmail.

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grinich
What's wrong with that?

What do you use?

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devmach
You're relying two different services to run your business, which can be gone
away in a moment.

\- If you're not in US, your goverment can shut down Gmail ( for ex. because
google is trying to evade tax. )

\- Streak can be sold to anycompany which just want to push their services.

Streak should actually be something like Thunderbird extension with RDBMS
running in background

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dj_axl
> Streak should actually be something like Thunderbird extension with RDBMS
> running in background

The most popular email client is Outlook with iOS devices in second place (as
of June 2011). Although if you combine Hotmail + Yahoo Mail + GMail the total
marketshare beats Outlook.

<http://www.campaignmonitor.com/stats/email-clients/>

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goronbjorn
There is definitely a lot of room for a lightweight, "bottom-up" CRM app out
there that's focused on usability. I think Dropbox has handily proven that
this sort of thing can get peppered across companies without a top-down,
sales-driven deployment which is what Salesforce is.

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ThomPete
I have tried a bunch of these tools now.

I agree completely that there is a problem to be solved. I don't believe any
of the tools I have tried have found a proper way to solve it yet.

The best helper I have is still rapportive.

There is something about the input output flow of information in these tools
that is off.

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andrewljohnson
We have been using this for support for our app, and we are very happy with
it. Started out using a different service, but the GMail integration was key
for us.

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porter
We're using this combined with yesware and it's been great.

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rdl
I wonder how hard it would be to also support self-hosted mail users (with a
webmail client talking imap, or ideally something which works with mutt).

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instakill
Well done. I've got this running on my Chrome.

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xbryanx
Pricing?

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alooPotato
Streak is currently free while in Beta and there will always be a free plan.
In the future, Streak will offer paid premium features, stay tuned.

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thomasdavis
Seems like it's gonna be pretty popular

