

Show HN: Rewrote Basecamp, Gmail, Dropbox in 3 years with a team of 3 - vibrant
http://www.dynado.com

======
PeterWhittaker
Vibrant, if this is going to be " _the_ single app" for business users, then
it _must_ , absolutely must have CRM capabilities, must have timesheets, and
should have invoicing and something ERPish - at least later.

Integration with accounting packages would be nice, but not vital - there are
few enough people involved in that side of the business that having the
ability to extract, prepare reports, etc., will be sufficient.

I'm a partner in a small consulting firm. We're just over a dozen, and we are
already struggling with "keeping everything in one place". We need shared
calendars and shared contacts, we need a way of easily keeping track of all
interactions with clients (the CRM bits), we need a way of getting useful
reports on employee/contractor activity (I really like the idea of iDoneThis,
but unless timesheets can be derived from the digests, then it is duplication
of effort, since we need those - the timesheets - first and foremost).

We live and die by our billing, and our billing depends on time tracking. And
we work through a mix of direct contracts, middlemen, etc., like pretty much
everybody in this business. And in many, many other businesses.

I've rejected business apps because they use a "timesheet per client" model,
instead of the more intuitive and useful (for my staff) timesheet per worker
model: I want one place for my worker to enter everything they did, and I want
the system, the computer that is supposed to be good at drudge work, to
extract which bits go to which clients. If an admin needs to tweak that (based
on rates, discounts, and the thousand other things at play), so be it. But my
employees DO NOT decide how much of their time gets billed, I do; they tell me
what they worked, I make sense of it.

If time reporting is still a thing on the side, this isn't everything in one
place.

If CRM is still a thing on the side, this isn't everything in one place.

Other things that would be useful: Document collaboration with built-in
version control, like Quip. Kanban boards like Trello.

Maybe also Zapier integration: Write a few zaps to allow your users to
integrate with their existing tools.

Integration with existing is more useful and powerful than you may credit:
Most of your potential users are _already_ in business, suffering their tools,
but making do. You will convert them if you make it easy for them to adopt
your tools step-by-step.

Businesses that spring up "post-Dynado" and move immediately to Dynado will be
rare, so don't assume an "all in" mentality or assume "clear fields".

You will need Android and iOS apps, you may want to have a BB app. The web
interface may be cool, but what about when I am on a long flight without
Internet access? How will I get anything done?

Quip has an offline mode for its mobile apps, but if I am working offline for
a long time, I want a real keyboard and screen, which means my Air, which
means a native OSX application.

And if you have integrated document collaboration, you will need import and
export. My customers want Office formats, so I need them. Can't live without
'em.

Fundamentally, business is about managing revenue and cost and keeping the
customers coming back. All of the other stuff - single inbox, simpler project
management, etc., etc. - are all just polish and veneer, shuffling deck chairs
on the Titanic, if they do not contribute to increasing revenue and lowering
cost.

So customer contact management (from shared contacts to CRM) and time
management (from project management to time tracking to timesheet management)
are fundamental.

(Edited to add a few missing words, correct a few typos.)

~~~
vibrant
Peter,

thanks for the extensive writeup. We do have time tracking exactly in the
sense which you mentioned - while someone works on a task, or when he
completes it - he gets a bubble asking 'how long did it take you and what were
you doing?' \- then he just inputs the time taken and optionally a comment -
and BAM! you can see the history of work in his profile. Plus you can see the
total time/cost of each project, plus estimated time of completion for each
task and project.

We do have a kanban-like board where you can specify in what exact order an
employee should work on tasks.

The reporting part is not fully fleshed out yet but we will work on it as soon
as we launch.

Regarding CRM - it's the first big item on our TODO list once we launch, and
stabilise the system. And it will base on our internal task/discussion engine
so we won't have that much work to do.

We share your opinion about the need to fully onboard users and collaborate
with their existing tools. Right now we are finishing up desktop file synchro,
and mobile contacts/calendars synchro. The stuff you mentioned will come next.
We have a really small but very talented team and it's about time to launch at
last after so many years - so we can't have everything in version 1. But we
already have enough to interest people and it's comprehensive enough to
satisfy all their basic needs (except CRM :).

Please sign up on our beta site and please contact me directly via contact at
dynado.com if you have any additional questions. I will be very grateful for
your ideas now and feedback once we launch. If you are not worried about bugs
and would like to look the product sooner than we launch - please let me know.

~~~
PeterWhittaker
_Please sign up on our beta site and please contact me directly via contact at
dynado.com_

Will do! I'm intrigued....

 _If you are not worried about bugs_

I am torn. If I was on my own, I would in an instant. What can we look at and
learn from without having to move major parts of the business over, i.e., we
want to leave email and calendar where they are, can we do that and still
using e.g., the time tracking and project reporting?

~~~
PeterWhittaker
_Will do! I 'm intrigued...._

Vibrant, I just tried a few times, but clicking on "get notified" didn't seem
to do anything. My email address is in my profile, perhaps you could check
your logs to see if you see it there.

~~~
vibrant
What browser are you using?

I don't see your email in your profile :/ Please just email me at contact at
dynado.com.

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viraptor
Just looking at what's available now, this looks to me like "zoho apps meet
bootstrap-like graphics". Apart from the nice look, what is your advantage
over zoho's offering?

Also since you compare the service to gmail, could you tell us something about
your anti spam solution? Gmail is pretty much a benchmark for results here,
given the volume they process.

Considering it was created with such small team - really good work :)

PS. does that mean there's no operations team at the moment?

~~~
vibrant
The advantage over zoho is: 1\. looks 2\. simplicity of setup/use 3\.
integration between the subsystems 4\. integration between companies - if you
run multiple companies you can manage them from one account and one inbox
without logging into each one separately

------
dmarble
Looking forward to giving this a spin!

I'm curious how deeply you went for an integrated approach for projects /
email / tasks / files. I find the more integration you do, the more learning
users must do vs. individual applications with loose integration that are more
familiar to users (that behave like those in the title).

I've spent a fair amount of time trying out both personal and business team
workflow in Trello, Jira/Agile, Asana, Google Apps, Evernote, etc.

Currently giving a couple weeks of my productivity to IQTELL
([http://iqtell.com](http://iqtell.com)), which goes for a heavily integrated
full-on GTD approach that I'm finding rather refreshing (everything in one
tool!). Was waiting for the past few years for them to figure things out and
open to the public. It has its own issues and learning curve, and lacks that
final 20% polish that makes Trello and Asana such a pleasure to use. But with
such deep integration between email, projects, tasks, contexts, contacts,
calendars, and Evernote (would love direct Dropbox file access), along with a
fair amount of customizability, I'm finding the learning curve to be worth it.

~~~
vibrant
Simplicity was one of our main goals when building Dynado. It has to be usable
from day 1 not only by tech-savvy people but also by everyone else in the
company.

So all the advanced features are hidden behind a simple interface.

And an example of integration between the calendar and tasks: if one of your
support consultants goes on vacations, the workflow managing support tasks
automatically stops assigning tasks to him so that they don't pile up while he
is away.

~~~
dmarble
Simple is good. Best of luck getting it ready for public consumption in the
coming weeks! I'll be sure to post feedback when I get a chance to test drive.

------
fraXis
Looks good and something my company may use.

A blog post about what went into the development over the course of the 3
years would be an interesting read.

~~~
vibrant
I'm glad to hear it fraXis. It's been a long and bumpy ride but we are finally
here, I'll be happy to blog about it as soon as we push out the public beta.

~~~
fraXis
What is the ETA for the public beta?

~~~
vibrant
Around 3 weeks.

------
johnnymonster
why would you work on something for 3 years and not have any sort of beta out
there. How do you know what you have is going to work or if anyone is even
going to use it? It just seems crazy to work on something for this long and
hide it away for 3 years. With all of the things on the internet that have
changed in 3 years, how do you know your approach has not become out of
date...

~~~
vibrant
There was an internal beta for over a year now. And our approach changed twice
over those 3 years.

A product which is so complex and aimed at businesses can't be 'bootstrapped'
in 3 months and launched. The result would be that nobody would care about it
because it would be incomplete and wouldn't cater to their needs. There are a
lot of such products and nobody remembers about them. I hope our effort will
pay off, and that's what our current testers are telling me :)

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oneeyedpigeon
Shouldn't the "Show me some screenshots" key on the keyboard at the top ... do
just that? If not, why's it there?

~~~
vibrant
Yes it should, we didn't hook it up yet - I couldn't sleep and just had to
share it. Sorry about that, will put up some soon and mention it on our
Twitter/FB.

~~~
kurtle
I would suggest making that call to action bigger. I did not notice the
enlarged key on the keyboard until it was pointed out here on HN. I just
thought it was the usual keyboard stock art.

But otherwise this site looks great. Captured my email.

~~~
ktsmith
I did the exact same thing. Pretty sure I mentally checked out at that point.
I didn't even pay attention to the screenshot on the screen though that's also
standard at this point.

------
hartator
Just signed up, looks good.

Where you guys are from? (The fb button is in Lithuanian I guess on my
computer)

------
austinstorm
Looks good, but it's hard to give feedback on just a splash screen. I look
forward to checking it out!

------
ultimatedelman
how much does/will it cost?

~~~
vibrant
We still haven't decided on the pricing, but the main idea we have is
$19/user/month, with some volume discounts. We want to offer top notch
support, and we replace a number of apps plus add a lot of value on top of
them through the integration and polish. So I think that our customers will
see that the value is far higher than the $19/month.

~~~
gverri
Very interesting. Will we have a limited user/time free trial?!

~~~
vibrant
Our idea is to give a time limited trial, with unlimited users but with some
storage limits.

Plus everyone will be able to cooperate with external contractors for free -
you can add as many of them as you want and their accounts will be fully
functional but with a few limitations.

For example instaed of sending an email to someone - you can send a task (the
form is nearly the same), automatically creating a free account for that
target user. This way you can keep track of the request and ping him if he
forgets, store it in your project hierarchy, etc. And the recipient gets it
through email and can reply only via email without even registering.

