
How to Start Your Startup's CRM - coopr
http://wishery.com/blog/startup-crm
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mappu
I helped write an in-house CRM for my current employer as a transition away
from Dynamics. It does leads, ownership, billing, conversion, all that stuff
and it's built as a part of our existing backend systems, which is great for
providing extra customer detail and insight you wouldn't get otherwise.

It might become a maintenance hassle five or ten years down the track, or
after most of the original developers move on, but for now it was simple to
write, the best solution to our problems, perfectly customisable to our
precise needs and everyone enjoys using it.

I used plain excel to maintain a "CRM" of about 200 entries for a university
society. Works incredibly well, fast and easy - exactly what you would want in
a startup - i suppose until you have multiple people needing to work on it,
and come upon data permission and file locking issues. I know several large
businesses rely disproportionately on excel in this way.

~~~
regularfry
I forget who said it first, but there's a saying that if you want to look for
business ideas, look for where people are complaining about sharing Excel
files. That's where they've accidentally built an application that they need
(giving you a spec) but which isn't good enough for the job (giving you a way
in).

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the_bear
In the post it says that Wishery helps focus on relationships rather that just
sales, but it seems like all it does is send Gmail contacts over to MailChimp.
Isn't an automated email blast the opposite of a real relationship? Are people
really sending drip email campaigns to investors? I've never raised money but
I was under the impression that you're expected to have personal relationships
with investors.

Disclaimer: I make my own CRM product, so I'm certainly biased.

~~~
coopr
Does your CRM have an API? Perhaps Wishery could integrate with Less Annoying
CRM!

~~~
the_bear
We do have an API, but it's very basic right now
(<https://www.lessannoyingcrm.com/help/topic/API>). We're more focused on
serving traditional small businesses rather than startups, and most small
businesses don't even know what an API is. We'll need to build it out soon,
but it hasn't been enough of a priority yet.

Good luck with Wishery!

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jasonkolb
Slightly off-topic, but can anyone recommend a reasonably-priced (full-
fledged) CRM system run under a SaaS model that has a nice API that I can use
for Web site integration and data analytics? Salesforce seems really
overpriced for what you get.

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lifeisstillgood
What I want most is to tie this into my phone (iPhone but willing to swap if
there really is not an app for that)

I assume this should be easy but I don't knwo how

 _have all my contacts sync'd to gmail (doable)_ have all my mails to a
contact tracked (standard email functionality, plus seems to be what this post
is about) _have all my calls to from a contact not only kept on my phone but
also exported and synched Ba k to this crm_ bonus points for an app that let's
me add notes after a call and syncs those too

amazingly enough I had this on an old nokia n95 back in the day.

~~~
suhastech
Well, I guess you need a Galaxy Note..

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hopeless
I'm truly puzzled by the notion that a CRM-for-prospective-investors should be
more important to a business^ than a CRM-for-customers

^ yeah, I'm old-school and still think startups should be businesses first and
foremost

~~~
coopr
In their earliest days, startups tend to depend much more on their
relationships with investors than with customers. In fact, for some startups,
there may be a period of many months where they have, essentially, not
relationship with customers because they have nothing for the customers to use
(because they are still building it - with the money the investors invested).

That is exactly why this post is about a CRM for a startup that can be easily
grown out of as the relationship management needs change.

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jaequery
i'm sorry but this just seems a bit too complicated

~~~
coopr
Which part?

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jaequery
for me, it's really just the whole terminology of the CRM. think it just over
complicates what it really is. i guess my question comes down to, does
Twitter/FB also fit in to the realm of CRMs? i see a lot of startups now use
Twitter/FB as the main communication line w/ their userbase.

~~~
coopr
If your users uses Twitter and Facebook as a primary communications channel,
then "going to where they are" is a good strategy.

However, if they aren't already there, then focusing on Twitter/Facebook will
cause you to miss many users.

Also, as a startup you have multiple audiences - your users might be on
FB/Twitter, but I doubt your investors are (to the same extent) - you must
match the communications channel with the audience's existing preferences and
behavior - they won't switch channels just to hear from you ; )

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coopr
I'd love to hear your thoughts - is Gmail + MailChimp + Wishery an effective
and efficient startup CRM?

