
Show HN: I made a CRM system to make sales fun - drikerf
https://wobaka.com
======
rrggrr
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
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!

~~~
rrggrr
Streak or Copper would be my go-to for this, but they sit atop Gmail and
Google Calendar which doesn't give you the open open source solution you want.
I'm sorry to say that I don't have a FOSS recommendation.

~~~
aantix
Personally, I'd actually like a CRM that sits atop LinkedIn. That's where the
leads and data truly exist.

Any recommendations?

~~~
onetype
LinkedIn already has that -- it's sales navigator.

------
eden_h
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?

~~~
eitland
> 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

------
jve
> 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
I found the same. It says it makes it fun, but what specifically does the
software do differently to justify this statement.

------
chasd00
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.

~~~
mprev
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.

~~~
cik
Exactly this. We actually ended up rolling our own internally, as a quick
project. It's just as bad as everything we hated, and has some of the features
we loved. At the same time, it costs nothing now - so we've committed to using
it.

~~~
nudpiedo
if your time is worth nothing then it's OK I guess. In the other hand if it is
feature frozen and the trend is for infinite months it would be a wonderful
investment.

------
puranjay
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

------
njsubedi
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.

------
tryitnow
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
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
Not everyone is an early adopter

------
jkaufmann_
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
Thanks! That makes sense, will work on it :)!

------
nickjj
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
The background colour also looks like this site, Hacker News.

~~~
sergiomattei
It's a color, they're not exclusive.

------
jayyeh
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
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
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)!

------
JaggerFoo
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
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
I'll be making some basic analytics features this autumn. Pipeline overview
over time, per-user metrics, maybe extrapolated deals etc, nothing super fancy
:).

------
luka-birsa
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
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 :).

~~~
everythingswan
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 :)

~~~
wolco
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
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
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.

------
chrisperkins
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
Thank you!

It's Clojure + ClojureScript, using a view library called Rum :).

~~~
chrisperkins
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
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.

------
knadh
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.

------
homero
Misspelled [https://wobaka.com/img/feature-
tasks.png](https://wobaka.com/img/feature-tasks.png)

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

------
westoque
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"

------
watbywbarif
Same price for 5 ppl as for 500? WTF?

~~~
dpcan
This is going to be a tough lesson to learn.

------
hackathonguy
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.

------
aschismatic
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!

------
chpmrc
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
No framework, just CSS :).

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

~~~
drikerf
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.

------
sswaner
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
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
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
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.

------
Bouncingsoul1
In your sample, Bruce Wayne should be in company Wayne Enterprise, nobody
knowshe is also in the justice league

------
jstsch
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
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 :)!

------
j2bax
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.

------
jaequery
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
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 :).

------
davedx
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
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
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.

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

~~~
drikerf
Backend is Clojure, frontend is ClojureScript :).

~~~
throw03172019
Nice to see a full Clojure stack! React based? If so, which library did you go
with? Nice work!

~~~
drikerf
Yes! I use Rum :).

Also Garden for CSS so it's 100% Clojure :D.

------
bochoh
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
I agree, this sentence is strange.

And when a company of 100 signs up...... oops.

------
taphangum
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
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
Thanks a lot for sharing. I have it, but have never gotten around to reading.
Will do now.

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

~~~
drikerf
Thanks! I hope you'll like it :)!

------
jaequery
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
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.

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

~~~
malydok
I know a bit of Japanese and it didn't strike me at all. Is it just the
"baka"? :-)

~~~
dpcan
Wo = The

Baka = Fool

Src: Typed "wo in Japanese" and "baka in Japanese" into Google.

~~~
grzm
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_.

------
trumbitta2
Nice UI, very much in the style of Basecamp / 37Signals.

~~~
drikerf
Thanks! I like their work :)

------
algodaily
The look and feel reminds me a lot of basecamp!

------
ryanmccullagh
May I ask how you did the product screenshots?

~~~
drikerf
Sure! Just screenshot and some editing in Figma

------
ge96
Any chance the domain is Japanese? haha

------
iliaznk
Seems inspired by Notion.

------
awillen
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.

------
skrebbel
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.

~~~
aidos
The few bits of automation hubspot do have, you end up fighting to behave
well. It’s so hard to organise data in hubspot that you’ll end up negating any
benefits from the automation. In my experience, it all becomes messy quickly.

I’d probably rank it as the worst bit of software I’ve ever used. The apis are
inconsistent and incomplete. You can have multiple email addresses for a
contact, but you can never extract them over the api and the only the primary
is treated as a first class citizen. The interface somehow manages to portray
the least amount of useful information in the largest amount of space I’ve
ever seen. Updating anything is so painful that it’s hard to motivate yourself
to do it.

/rant

~~~
dshah
Disclosure: I am one of the HubSpot founders.

Sorry for the poor experience you've had with the HubSpot CRM. We are working
hard to make things better -- especially the APIs and how we present
information in the Contact view.

Thanks for the candid feedback.

~~~
aidos
Thanks for commenting, in spite of my rude assessment.

Things have gotten marginally better over the last couple of years since we
started using it, but it’s still not a great experience. Every part feels a
bit kludged together. Take email integration. Really you should be doing
something like closeio which just reads and syncs emails. Instead you rely on
a plugin to bcc on send (miss the boat and the whole email chain is gone
forever). But I don’t want to use the plugin (for reasons I don’t recall, oh
maybe because I had to remember to keep turning it off all the time when
emailing domains outside what we wanted in the crm). But then there are the
obtuse track vs log flags, and depending on what you do, you may or may not
receive the responses later in hubspot so someone else maybe can’t deal with
it while you’re off.

There’s a lot more candid feedback I could give, but the response from the
support team so far is basically, “put it in the forum”. Which seems to be the
place ideas go to die.

