Ask HN: Do you consider a Personal CRM to be a tarpit idea?

5 points by eye_dle 1 year ago | 4 comments

Hi! I participated in the r/yc discussion on tarpit ideas.

Could a personal CRM be considered a tarpit idea? From the first look, the problem of relationship building sounds common and relatable, that's an attractive component. But a very small share of people are actually willing to regularly keep notes about their connections. That makes the real audience much smaller.

I am curious to know your opinion of personal CRM viability. Is it tricky to make a good product and business from?

entuno 1 year ago |

I think the bigger problem is that most people already have a basic level of this type of functionality built in to whatever devices they're using, in the form of the contacts/address book. And obviously that's not nearly as powerful as a proper CRM - but it provides a way to store details about the individuals, notes, when you last communicated, etc.

So you're not just looking for people who want to keep regular notes/etc, but also ones who need something more powerful than the built in functionality already available to them. And they need to trust you with all that (potentially very sensitive) personal data, and hope that you'll be around for the long term (because it would be very annoying to lose that).

Could be an interesting project (especially integration with all the different platforms they may use); but hard to see how it would make much money.

eye_dle 1 year ago | |

Indeed. In addition to the sufficient functionality built-in apps are very "close" UI-wise: a person can use them right away after the talk. To match that, one has to implement calling app, or messenger, or something as accessible to make notes at.

Also, resorting to default note-taking functionality is probably a matter of a value understanding: people don't see how managing these relationships with a specific solution can benefit them.

beardyw 1 year ago |

I can imagine something like "you haven't contacted xxx for a while, maybe you should see how they are doing." Or "why don't you invite xxx to yyy."

eye_dle 1 year ago | |

Would be good. It somehow should take into account relations the person has with other people. LinkedIn tries to do something similar but they have no idea of my relations, hence sending notifications like "Wish HB to the <person I've never talked before>"