I would prefer to not use Salesforce until I have to - I know it's expensive, slow, and hard to customize. At the same SF users who I know tell me that nothing else works for orgs of above 100 people.
The demo looks great and I like that you are focusing on UX and performance - I would expect Linear-like experience for a tool I use every day. I would prefer a hosted version (my experience with self-hosted analytics/business tools was a nightmare).
I 2nd this, minus Salesforce being hard to customize. It's probably too customizable.
At a certain stage of a company, sales reps expect Salesforce. So much so, that even when we finally caved and got it, I had reps specifically turn off Lightning and stick with Classic mode. It's like Bloomberg - it's what they know and can move fast in.
As much as it pains me to say this, it may make sense to have an option that can mirror the Salesforce UI vs reinventing the wheel. Or maybe even an integration / escape hatch to migrate everything off of Salesforce to this. Basically, if you want reps to adopt it, make it close as possible to what they know.
In terms of UI, Notion has been our main source of inspiration.
Targeting the bucket of Salespeople who enjoy the Notion UI is definitely a smaller one than those who know how to use Salesforce, but I feel like it might be a faster-growing one. It's a good point that it will become harder as we move to larger companies with a higher share of experienced sales reps that don't want to change.
Good points thank you. Right now we are starting to work with companies in our YC batch which have relatively simple needs, probably like yours (founders doing sales, less than 1000 contacts, etc.). Our goal is to deliver fast enough so that these companies never outgrow us and have to switch. Not saying it will be easy to keep that pace given the breadth of features/integrations that becomes required as you grow, but we'll do our best!
I would prefer to not use Salesforce until I have to - I know it's expensive, slow, and hard to customize. At the same SF users who I know tell me that nothing else works for orgs of above 100 people.
The demo looks great and I like that you are focusing on UX and performance - I would expect Linear-like experience for a tool I use every day. I would prefer a hosted version (my experience with self-hosted analytics/business tools was a nightmare).