Already got my support and deployments team using Streak and its been an amazing experience! Constantly adding new features and making our lives easier.
co-founder of streak here: streak works with both google apps and non apps accounts. We've noticed some of our early users using it for non business purposes as well (task management, event planning, etc).
I'm using it today for both and i like it.also, im blown away with snippets. the shortcuts to access them is genius too. i've now begun to remove clippings and other add-ons that i've used for this specific feature.
Great product. But I personally prefer to use my inbox for handling mail only and not get it in the mix of other processes like hiring, bug tracking etc...
I use Streak as a "Personal Salesforce". It has been incredibly useful because it helps me stay on top of 30 different conversations in 5 different contexts.
I've used google apps/gmail for years, in my large previous organization and currently in our 100+ organization. Obviously you know this, but this type of "glue" is great - I'm glad you guys took advantage of this. I am in the market place daily, there is NOTHING that compares to this so far. I am excited to see where you take this!
We've been using Streak to help with hiring, fundraising, and business development at MixRank. It works really well. I'd highly recommend it to anyone that needs to stay on top of their email.
We don't go into it much on the homepage but we think Streak really does well here. You can share a sales pipeline to specific people or to your entire domain and you can assign leads to different team members.
There's a small demo of how sharing works at the end of the bug tracking demo video.
Something I've been thinking I should do, but never got round to. Good idea, will give it a spin. BTW, I was thinking about working on this because a number of Mortgage Brokers I have interacted with in the past have all been using gmail and they all seem to be in desperate need of a CRM solution that integrates with gmail. So, there, a segment for you to target.
BTW, found a typo on the main page -- "messagest".
Looks nice! But I can't watch any of the videos because clicking on the play button (in the lightbox) closes the lightbox :-) I'm on Safari 5.1.3 on OS X.
I'm using FireFox 10.0.2 on Windows 7 and nothing loads in the lightbox when I click a video link...just white and empty. The video works fine in Chrome though.
You need chrome 15 or better for the extension to install. If you go go there and click on the install button without chrome 15, it generates a javascript exception with no visual or textual clues to the user that is going on. Person on chat was responsive.
nice product. Just out of curiosity, how exactly do you attach your app to Gmail? The way I imagine it: basically, this is just a big javascript application which inserts itself inside the gmail view using DOM manipulation?
Looks cool - although my cynical assumption is that this product a) would work great in demos with a simple number of folders,etc and b) will be bitch to maintain given when Google changes the UI or generated code / structure.
Having looked at the gmail generated source there isn't a human generated component so something trivial like $('#button_bar').appendChild(..) doesn't work requiring more clever approaches (and perhaps the streak guys are insanely clever). If I had the time I'd pick apart the extension source to see how streak works.
Trust me, it took a little while but we've been able to tame the beast known as Gmail's DOM. We have some pretty sophisticated infrastructure to handle the different versions and updates to Gmail.
This looks extremely cool, and I'm really tempted!
In light of recent things like Path etc. (and without insinuating anything!) - could you clarify what information is sent via Streak's servers, if any?
Security and Trade Secrets are my major concern as well. Meta data could mean "gmail message ID", but it could also mean "all header info, including message title & users emailed." Of course, that's in addition to the value of the additional data (box title, notes, "deal size") that streak is being used for.
Privacy policies are not very comforting on their own... Heck, "everyone" has one! I might suggest some more details, perhaps on your website, to satisfy wavering customers. So far there isn't much to make a businessperson feel comfortable.
We do play nice with Rapportive usually, but ya difficult to test all different configurations. Will have to troubleshoot that with your specific settings.
But please, please start charging for your product. I don't want this product to disappear in a year when you run out of funding and still don't have a sustainable business model.
The nice thing about the CRM market is people expect to pay for this kind of software, so charging is definitely on our path. Just want to get things solid first. We'll always have a free tier, but ya, going out of business and disappearing is not part of the plan.
It would be great to have this free for individuals - so that they can see if they love it or not. Either make it completely free for them, or free for 2-3 micro-funnels, or free for managing ~250 leads (like highrise).
After that it would be ideal to charge a little ($5/month) for the next 2-3 users, and more for larger teams. Ofcourse, give more features as the team sizes grow.
Minor copy edit on your splash page - there's a 't' on the end of 'messages' in this section:
Streak Plays Nice
Streak never alters any data in your Gmail. No extra labels, and no moving around your messagest. Streak adds a layer of organization on top of your email and stores this separately and securely in our own cloud.
They would have to play their hand at behind the scenes knowledge of your actual figures somewhat openly for this to work. That would be disastrous for them.
I was looking for a similar comment. Not just from an acquisition standpoint, but having all that information right where Google can look at it doesn't sound smart just from a common-sense standpoint.
100% of your sales, support, and bug tracking information will be reflected in the email inbox of your employees.
If you're not hosting your own email servers, all that information is available to some 3rd party.
These companies have contracts in place preventing them from abusing the potential information they can gain, and they usually have a lot more to loose from violating it than what they could gain from cheating like this.
> and they usually have a lot more to loose from violating it than what they could gain from cheating like this.
No they don't. That's the problem.
Apparently there are not a lot of folks here who have spent time on the other side of the acquisition table: They're confusing a gentlemenly game where people play by the rules with a streetfight.
This is great timing! We just hired a customer support person this week, and we started using HelpScout.net, but we aren't finding that it's very polished.
We're going to give Streak a shot, and hopefully give you some good feedback.
P.S. You are missing a question mark on your home page: "Want to know where the customer is in the sales pipeline."
OH please tell us how it turns out. It's one thing for me to take a stroll through myself and another thing for someone with a running business to actually try it out with real data and clients and use cases. This looks simple, and I LOVE simple. I'd rather work with something simple and a few features than something complex with a lot of features. Features are useless if I'm afraid of them or have to educate myself to learn them.
Nicely done. Two concerns: 1) exposure to breakage when Gmail changes, 2) potential introduction of protection against invasive integration.
Google has three options: 1) turn a blind eye, 2) block deep integration (same game AOL played with AIM), or 3) introduce client-side integration API. #1 is temporary. #2 is nightmare for Streak. #3 requires strategy change by Google.
[update] Rapport doesn't have this problem because they are using Outlook PIA to work directly with Outlook object model.
95 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 157 ms ] threadWould this be compatible with Fluent.io?
For example, if 3 guys in my company do sales, how do we prevent everyone contacting the same leads?
There's a small demo of how sharing works at the end of the bug tracking demo video.
I am on Firefox on the Windoze.
BTW, found a typo on the main page -- "messagest".
In the future we'll be in all the major browsers.
Having looked at the gmail generated source there isn't a human generated component so something trivial like $('#button_bar').appendChild(..) doesn't work requiring more clever approaches (and perhaps the streak guys are insanely clever). If I had the time I'd pick apart the extension source to see how streak works.
In light of recent things like Path etc. (and without insinuating anything!) - could you clarify what information is sent via Streak's servers, if any?
Specifically on Streak's servers we store message meta data but no email contents.
Privacy policies are not very comforting on their own... Heck, "everyone" has one! I might suggest some more details, perhaps on your website, to satisfy wavering customers. So far there isn't much to make a businessperson feel comfortable.
Unfortunately it doesn't play well with Rapportive profiles for me (HD Beach theme, comfortable sizing) - seems to be some jumping over each other.
I realise it must be very hard making bootstrap GMail addons play with each other but it would be great to use the two together
But please, please start charging for your product. I don't want this product to disappear in a year when you run out of funding and still don't have a sustainable business model.
Then scale a lot for larger groups/companies. Something like the atlassian pricing tiers?
There is a large government market to hit also.
After that it would be ideal to charge a little ($5/month) for the next 2-3 users, and more for larger teams. Ofcourse, give more features as the team sizes grow.
Note that your market is larger than a CRM.
Minor copy edit on your splash page - there's a 't' on the end of 'messages' in this section:
Streak Plays Nice Streak never alters any data in your Gmail. No extra labels, and no moving around your messagest. Streak adds a layer of organization on top of your email and stores this separately and securely in our own cloud.
Given the choice of
1. spending a few zillion dollars on a lemon of a startup and
2. violating terms-of-use behind your back
do people really believe 1. over 2. is the most likely outcome?
"What could possibly go wrong?"
If you're not hosting your own email servers, all that information is available to some 3rd party.
These companies have contracts in place preventing them from abusing the potential information they can gain, and they usually have a lot more to loose from violating it than what they could gain from cheating like this.
No they don't. That's the problem.
Apparently there are not a lot of folks here who have spent time on the other side of the acquisition table: They're confusing a gentlemenly game where people play by the rules with a streetfight.
We're going to give Streak a shot, and hopefully give you some good feedback.
P.S. You are missing a question mark on your home page: "Want to know where the customer is in the sales pipeline."
Google has three options: 1) turn a blind eye, 2) block deep integration (same game AOL played with AIM), or 3) introduce client-side integration API. #1 is temporary. #2 is nightmare for Streak. #3 requires strategy change by Google.
[update] Rapport doesn't have this problem because they are using Outlook PIA to work directly with Outlook object model.