
Intelligent chat that makes your team communication twice as fast - blosa
https://chatgrape.com
======
dsr_
What's the exit strategy for customers?

The biggest problem for a potential customer of a new service like this is
that there is a high probability that the service won't be around in two
years. The cost of the service itself is almost irrelevant: the cost of
switching to something else can be very high, especially if the customer has
more than a dozen users.

That's why XMPP is so attractive, even though there aren't many features built
on it: you can run your own server, on metal or a VM platform, you can buy
service with a guarantee that someone can take it over smoothly if one
business model fails.

~~~
Silhouette
_What 's the exit strategy for customers?_

I might not choose those exact words, but IMHO the fundamental issue this
raises is something any SaaS company ought to be addressing in a transparent
and up-front way these days if they want any credibility. Unfortunately, there
aren't many who do yet.

~~~
walterbell
Can you point to any SaaS best practices in this area? One example I read was
that Everpix sold IP to finance the development of tools for data
archive/export, before winding down. It would be instructive to survey wind-
down scenarios.

~~~
Silhouette
_Can you point to any SaaS best practices in this area?_

That's surprisingly difficult. IMNSHO, most SaaS fails completely on this
count, and my businesses use very few of the trendy services for exactly this
reason. Of those we do use, every single one is either (a) convenient but
expendable without compromising the business, or (b) _both_ well established
_and_ having some form of legally binding statements along the lines below.

What I would ideally like to see in most cases would be a guarantee that if a
service were to be taken down then its source code would be released with some
form of open licence so that any service you relied on could reasonably easily
be converted to self-hosting. Obviously this isn't worth much for services
that are essentially proxies, such as most payment services, but it's
sufficient for continuity in many cases.

Otherwise, as a minimum I'd like to see automated tools for exporting data in
some open format so it can be transferred to an alternative platform where
this is a reasonable possibility. Where there are non-trivial issues relating
to data export, such as with PCI DSS for the various card payment services, I
think the most plausible approximation would be a legally binding promise to
help transfer the data to an alternative provider.

Obviously if a start-up fails suddenly then even legally actionable promises
aren't going to be worth much if anything, which is why we won't rely on any
SaaS from a new start-up for anything essential no matter what their terms
say. However, properly worded guarantees would at least stop exit strategies
like acqui-hire or sell-to-competitor-who-shuts-you-down from screwing the
customer base.

One good example IMHO is MailChimp, which provides a straightforward mechanism
for customers to back up all their important data, not just mailing lists but
also things like e-mail templates and stats that normally live on the remote
system.

Another one that seems reasonable is Stripe, which has explicit wording in its
(UK) legal terms guaranteeing meaningful notice under fair conditions if
they're going to terminate an account, and guaranteeing that they will
facilitate transfer of card data to another payment service also under
reasonable conditions if a merchant using their service decides to terminate.

~~~
walterbell
Thanks for the detailed response.

------
Ixiaus
Slack and Flowdock have been around for a while and I don't see anything novel
here. Also, "high-level security"? Security _could_ be a novel selling point
but your copy around it feels dubious.

Maybe "Slack" for enterprise? For Law Firms? Where security is extremely
important and they are willing to pay? Not just OTR and encrypted chat but
stuff not even YOU can read, maybe self-hosted licensing or in-browser locked
keys for encryption? /me is not an expert here but those seem like valuable
features that I don't see in Slack or Flowdock.

[EDIT] When you have pre-existing competitors in a space, particularly a space
focusing on developers, if you can't provide a feature that would compel (me)
to switch (which I won't, I love Slack, unless you've got something amazing
Slack doesn't) then you need to focus on a different target.

I've seen a lot of powerful tools for _developers_ and _software teams_ pop up
but I almost NEVER see those similar tools being pushed hard for other types
of teams. Like Law Firms. Or politics. Or R&D labs. Scientists. So many out
there!!!!

~~~
felixhaeusler
Hi Ixiaus, amenod, lepht and jvagner,

MARKET

Good point. We have a strong competition in this area and are facing a
marketing challenge in the US with the hugely successful launch of Slack (I
think that Hipchat and Campfire are still bigger atm).

We are currently reworking the landing page, but this concept video might
explain a little bit better what we are after:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFJBadyrTmI&list=UUaBvfEGLT1...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFJBadyrTmI&list=UUaBvfEGLT1fIsEXc6OpQuPQ)

We make all company data available right as you type. The time you are
switching back and forth between browser tabs to search for issues or
appointments is a huge waste of time and - more relevant the bigger your team
gets - of money.

SECURITY

> Not just OTR and encrypted chat but stuff not even YOU can read

We are currently working on an encrypted solution for OTR-Conversations that -
thanks to WebRTC - uses p2p-connections and uses your wifi, if you are in the
same office. This allows you to communicate internally with us only providing
the client. This isn't as secure as an on-premise solution (we are working on
it, but this will def. take a little more time), but it's a good way of giving
customers the advantages of cloud software with an optional switch for an on-
premise-like behavior.

MARKETING STATEMENT

> makes your communication twice as fast

Yeah, a blunt marketing statement like this needs to be backed up, or the bs-
markers are over 9000. During the planning phase we tested with a couple of
businesses what happens, when we integrate their most commonly used data into
a facebook-like autocomplete. The results were, that the initial time they
spend using the prototype was reduced to 52% (notable: They were still sharing
the same amount of information). I think the reasons for this was a reduction
of back-and-forths, misunderstandings and that they generally kept their
conversations shorter.

Maybe we should make a short clip, explaining the research that led to the
assertion.

By the way, thank you guys for racing your concerns. This sounds cliché but I
rather have somebody tell me what he doesn't get/like about ChatGrape than
having somebody dismiss our product without us knowing, how to improve.

~~~
walterbell
s/racing/raising/

(posts can be edited for a short time after posting)

~~~
felixhaeusler
Apparently I was too late. Thx for the heads up :)

------
Menlo_Park
Hey guys,

Leo from ChatGrape here. We're focusing on two areas of innovation, to add a
certain level of intelligence to chat based team communication:

1\. Deep Service Integrations: Our integrations of tools and services like
Gmail, GitHub etc function on a much more integrated level than what has
previously been achieved. For instance, on ChatGrape, all your issues (GitHub)
and files (Google Drive / DropBox) are available within the chat, thanks to a
smart auto complete that attaches or references all your documents - right as
you type.

2\. Speech Act Detection (Natural Language Processing): This is all about the
triggering of workflows based on normal, "day to day" communications. For
example, if I were to write, "Hey Tobi, let's meet up tomorrow at 2pm to
discuss the front end issue!" three things will happen: First, you'll be
notified, second a calendar event will be added to your Google Calendar and
third, the topic or issue will be automatically referenced or attached.

Natural language processing within ChatGrape goes much further, anyhow, and is
a topic where our engineering team has gained many years of experience with
previous projects.

We're using to make communication simpler and more efficient, whilst not
disrupting your normal flow of conversation. (Another example of this is to
automatically detect and mark whether / or questions, and mark them as such.)

ChatGrape went live in an Early Access Phase (Pre-Beta) phase about six weeks
ago and not nearly everything of what'll ultimately make ChatGrape the first
smart communication solution for teams is fully operational or even deployed
yet.

However, what I wrote above will give you guys a better idea of it is that
sets ChatGrape apart from all existing solutions like Slack or Hipchat.

I'm looking forward to your feedback and questions and I'm always available
via lf@ubergrape.com! And we'd of course be happy about you guys joining our
Early Access Phase to provide further feedback.

~~~
natch
JIRA integration seems like a no-brainer since that's such a common tool in
startups and other development shops. Why isn't it mentioned on the signup
page where you list several tools? All you're doing there is asking which
tools the users use, so it seems there would be no harm in letting people give
you the input that they're using it, even if you don't integrate with it yet.

~~~
Menlo_Park
Hi natch, thanks for pointing this out! We set out initially with compiling a
small survey of the tools that are most widely used among startups, since we
figured they're the ones who're most likely to become Early Adopters. Doing
this, we saw that most (some 90 something per cent) where using GitHub,
DropBox and Google Drive, so we set out to add these first. However, we're of
course always trying to figure out what our potential users might be most
interested in so we're asking everyone what their favorite integrations would
be - hence the feedback box during the sign up process. We've already
identified a dozen tools and services we need to integrate with (Trello, for
instance, will go live early next week) and we're working full time on adding
as many as possibly as soon as possible. If you'd like to, I'd be happy to
personally notify you once JIRA is live?

------
seba_dos1
A homepage with a loader that obstructs the content (which doesn't need JS to
be usable) and won't hide unless JavaScript is enabled... Nice start.

------
lifeisstillgood
I struggle to see why you would sell this as a SaaS app.

I like the idea of using various forms of markdown to call out to other data
sources, and run in what seems to be sentiment analysis and other work across
a chat client - it's a really good idea for enterprises over a certain size -
but any enterprise over a certain size will laugh at the idea of having it's
informal but utterly core competancies stuck on a server in SV next to its
competitors chat records.

This sounds like it's crying out to be an internally managed service with a
bot in every room. That way the benefits accrue and the data stays in house.

But love the feature concepts - chat is part of what I am calling the "Open
Methodology" and a big win for most companies that embrace it

------
LukeB_UK
Did you really have to hijack the scroll on your website and make it faster?

~~~
scrollaway
This needs to stop, and it needs to stop immediately. Native scrolling has a
lot more considerations than any of your designer will ever put into your
website.

This scrolling feels god-awful on a high speed trackpad AND a free-scroll
mousewheel. Awful. Congratulations on giving a stupidly bad first impression,
guys.

------
lucb1e
Interesting that they are working on OTR. I generally applaud any OTR
implementations (or any form of encryption), but why would a company need
plausible deniability?

~~~
sk7
OTR is something a lot of people use and trust. It also makes it easier for
users to use our service with third-party clients later that already support
OTR. Plausible deniability might not be very important for companies, I agree.
We are also looking into other protocols, for the same reasons TextSecure
decided to modify OTR: both parties need to be online to exchange keys.

Stefan (ChatGrape)

------
wyck
I think you can tone down the hype a bit for example "communicate twice as
fast" comes across as a number off the top of your head and not an actual
metric.

"Deep services integration", where is the API? Hipchat is able to integrate
with 50+ services because they have an API which let's other people do the
actual work, how can you compete with that level of integration without one?

~~~
felixhaeusler2
Hi Wyck,

Thanks for the feedback.

I tried to answer the first one in the longer paragraph ->
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8312972](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8312972)

Regarding the API:

We actually have an activity API (similar to Hipchat), through which any
service can connect and push activities into our client.

The "index API" will take longer to release, as it is a lot more complex and
less explored.

You see, Hipchat/Slack/etc. only allow you to see the latest activities of
your service. As "Deep Service Integration" means that you can access the
Service's data as you type, integrating a service into ChatGrape is a lot more
challenging.

With Google Drive, for example, we have to index the files, and update said
index on actions like file renames, deletions, movements, and many more -
additionally to displaying activities.

The good thing is, we are getting a lot better at it and the more we grow, the
more services will hopefully try to exploit our richer interface.

I see it like this: The 50+ integrations of Hipchat don't matter to 90% of the
people, if we integrate the 10 most commonly used services 10 times better.

Best, F

~~~
wyck
Thanks for the reply ,this type of integration sounds like it would in fact
speed up the work flow, it sounds very interesting.

------
gphilip
"Don't waste time where it matters!"

This sounds odd to me (not a native speaker). Waste time where it doesn't
matter, instead?

------
kajarya
It's bothersome when pricing pages strike out a higher price and display a
lower price - like a fabulous discount offer - when there are as-good-as-free
services like [https://www.svyft.com/](https://www.svyft.com/) and
[https://slack.com/](https://slack.com/). Even
[https://www.hipchat.com/](https://www.hipchat.com/) is free.

~~~
Menlo_Park
Hi kajarya! Well, for once, we're only displaying a discount for committing
yourself for 12 months, that's fair, wouldn't you agree? Furthermore, neither
Slack nor Hipchat are available for fee if you want to use it at its full
potential.

Most importantly, with ChatGrape we're going beyond of simply providing a chat
based communication solution. On ChatGpape, we're offering a smart engine that
automatically triggers workflows based on your communication, such as, let's
meet at 2pm tomorrow - automatically adds a calendar event.

There's more than that, of course, but the essence is that we're running a
quite extensive engine in the background to make your team's communication
easier and more efficient, and that takes up actual processing power.

Finally, considering that our aim to to save you time that you can use better
on building your own baby, instead of wasting time searching for documents you
ant to share and issues you want to reference - the average startup using
ChatGrape has access to all the features for around 35 bugs per month, which
is really a reasonable price, don't you think?

~~~
gphilip
_let 's meet at 2pm tomorrow - automatically adds a calendar event._

How does that pan out when 2pm is not good for the other person?

"Hey Greg, let's meet at 2pm tomorrow."

"Sure, great. Wait, I have that code review starting 1:45, so 2pm is not a
good time. Shall we meet at, say, 11am instead?"

"No, 11am is not good for me. Let's meet around noon tomorrow?"

"Got to pick up the kid at noon but I'll be back at work around 12:30pm. Can
we meet over lunch at 12:30pm? I am free till the code review starts."

"OK, let's meet at 12:45 then."

"Cool!"

Does this add five calendar events to the calendars of both the people in the
conversation?

~~~
Menlo_Park
Glad that you ask! Let me explain. In fact, "automatically" is actually a bit
misleading. The correct term must be "half-automatically", because everything
triggered within ChatGrape still requires your confirmation. (If not, we'd be
flooded with false-positives.) Think about tagging on Facebook, specifically,
writing a status update and tagging a page of a friend. If you start typing
his / her name, Facebook will add a drop down menu and suggest the name(s) -
you can select it or choose to ignore it - and the drop down will disappear
again. This said, if you were to type, "No, 11am is not good for me. [first
drop down with calendar event suggestion, which you simply ignore and go on
typing] let's meet around noon tomorrow?" [second drop down with calendar
event suggestion, which you confirm, and thus send me a calendar event
invite]. Does this make sense?

------
constantinum
We use Slack extensively at our work place. We moved from Campfire.Slack has
more features than Chatgrape(come on they've just begun), but i don't see the
USP for any one who searches for a "slack alternative" or "campfire
alternative". Slack have deeper integration, for ex updating tasks on Asana
right from the Slack.

------
omouse
I'm curious to know what exactly this makes this suited for agencies moreso
than something like Slack, Lync/SharePoint, Basecamp, etc. etc.

I'm trying to figure out if I can get Slack into the workplace but if
ChatGrape has something that's very agency-specific, I'll be more likely to
recommend it instead.

~~~
chermanowicz
I've only heard of one agency-specific product out there... but the name
escapes me. Will try to search for it.

As far as differentiation, there are some services with unique features and
some that are offering good products for free, no string attached
(restrictions on message history for example). I would check out Kato
(kato.im) and if you are more interested in a "Twilio for chat" try Layer.

------
borntyping
Looks very similar to [https://slack.com/](https://slack.com/)

------
BillFranklin
I was looking at using Slack but wanted an OSS version - can anyone recommend
one? I like that OTR is going to be an option with chatgrape, my team uses
Adium with Jabber, but it could be a lot better.

------
shocks
Our team has been using Slack and we love it.

What is difference here? Why would we switch?

------
weakwire
Video is not working. "-50% for a half-year commitment - only if you sign up
before the 1st of September!" Is no longer valid yet it's on the pricing page

~~~
Menlo_Park
Thanks for pointing that out, that should say before the 1st of October! I'll
make sure to change it asap.

Cheers,

Leo (ChatGrape)

~~~
weakwire
That sounds great Leo

------
zobzu
Id like if all these services were compat with IRC or XMPP.

------
Pxl_Buzzard
This looks incredibly similar to Gitter[1]. What about this justifies the much
higher price point?

1\. [https://gitter.im](https://gitter.im)

~~~
sk7
We started with the GitHub integration but there's a lot more to come. Also
see Leo's comment:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8312356](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8312356)

------
miahi
From the website (before signing up) I have no idea if it's a desktop
application, a web application, a phone application, and on what OSes does it
run.

------
xvilka
Do you have something like presentation with comparison with such widely used
(sadly) tools like Skype and Lync?

------
nusbit
What's the technology stack?

~~~
sk7
Backend: Django 1.7, Postgres, ElasticSearch, Redis. Running on hetzner root
servers in germany.

Frontend: component
([https://github.com/componentjs/component](https://github.com/componentjs/component))
with a lot of custom components, no frameworks.

Using [https://codeship.io/](https://codeship.io/) for continuos
integration/delivery

Stefan (ChatGrape)

------
dewey
It's nice to see an austrian company posted here!

------
mplewis
Costs more than Slack with less service integrations.

------
dharma1
Does it make people type twice as fast?

------
icanhasjonas
A valid Flowdock competitor

