Show HN: A “CRM” for personal relationships (elim.app)
iOS: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/the-new-elim/id6463781107
We know life can be busy. And we often struggle to make time for the people that matter most to us.
According to a Harvard study from 2021, "36% of all Americans [...] feel “serious loneliness.”" [1]
We created an app to help people focus on their most personal relationships and guide them through forming more meaningful connections with them, in the hopes to combat the "Loneliness Epidemic".
We just launched the first iteration - call it an MVP if you like - something to validate our ideas and get the conversation started.
We are looking for people to try out what we have built and share their thoughts. The functionality is very basic for now, but we are planning to expand based on our users' feedback.
Here is what you can do today:
* Tell us who the people are that matter most to you
* Get daily reminders to reach out to them
* Send them virtual postcards with over 50 handcrafted designs
[1] https://mcc.gse.harvard.edu/reports/loneliness-in-america
104 comments
[ 4.4 ms ] story [ 353 ms ] threadThe whole app is built in Flutter. It was a first time experience for us. Everything went pretty fast and smooth and the Flutter documentation is amazing! There are tons of resources out there that helped us solving our problems. We just needed to be a bit careful about the plugins. Some were pretty outdated or even unmaintained. But we made sure we encapsulated every plugin so we can easily replace if necessary.
Dart is a language we felt immediately comfortable with. It didn't feel too dissimilar from Java.
For now, our app is client-side only. There is no server. Which is nice. Cause it removes complexity and we can leave all the data on our users' phones. Nothing is sent to us, or any other 3rd part. This is something we are pretty proud of and hope we can keep up for a long time.
Thank you. Good design choice. The privacy policy was the first I scrolled to in the AppStore.
That's a relief, when I saw this in the OP I got pretty worried:
> Here is what you can do today: > > * Tell us who the people are that matter most to you
A company specifically wanting to know that sort of thing sets off some alarm bells!
What features are on your roadmap to make it more CRM than personalized greeting cards?
There's also https://www.monicahq.com/, an open source personal CRM that doesn't allow you to directly engage with people like elim allows.
* Individualised settings per contact
* Who is this person to you?
* How often do you want to engage with this contact?
* What kind of ambitions do you have with this contact?
* More refined suggestions based on the above
* Training module to improve your social skills
* Knowledge base
* Regular blogs/videos/podcasts about the loneliness topic
* Seasonal events and designs
> * What kind of ambitions do you have with this contact? pop a reminder/message: "did you manage to establish phase 5- "ask Mary out for a date"?"
> * Knowledge base a la IMDB on the bio: spouse, siblings, birthday, etc.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14497295
* Make it easy to keep track of what I've been discussing with a person, and the last time we communicated. Set reminders for following up.
* Allow me to enrich information -- people, events -- with metadata such as tags, and query them with a conversational interface.
* Integrate with all my communication tools. Maybe create a plug-in system so users can help out.
I've tried several different CRMs to help remind me to keep track of friends, family, and acquaintances. The problem I have is I have thousands of contacts from tons of different sources and from over the years.
From Google, old phones, LinkedIn, Apple, and people in emails who aren't contacts. I would love an app that could consolidate all my contacts into one place as seamlessly as possible.
Then help remind me to get in touch.
That was a long-winded way of saying "this is cool, but I wish I could key in contacts separately."
Hope that made sense.
That isn't really any better in terms of connotations, though.
I have to ask my cofounder about this, as she came up with the name. I remember it meaning something like "an oasis in the desert" which is quite fitting to the whole loneliness problem.
I understand this is very early, but right now this feature set feels like an anti-product. The idea that I would get "daily reminders" of every relationship I am tracking (At least twenty people, but perhaps as much as hundreds depending on how widely you cast your net) is less of a promise and more of a threat.
> * something to validate our ideas and get the conversation started.*
This potential user would like to hear your ideas for how to deal with this "at scale." The high points you describe here seem out of sync with even mildly busy adult lives.
* Show ads
* Sell data
In the end it will probably come down to a premium subscription, we have to hash out the details and do some research around it. Would also love to connect with someone in the industry who has experience in creating fair subscription options!
For contrast, 6 years ago I paid $80 for Things 3 across all my devices, and it’s still being developed and updated. I’d have a hell of a time paying twice that per year for a vastly simpler app.
If I see the reminder I try to call/text that person when I have some down time. I tick the box when done, or if I think I've seen talked to them organically recently enough.
I'd be cool if it could somehow tell from my call/whatsapp log/calendar how long it's actually been, but it being a fuzzy is a feature too.
And as you say, definitely worth it.
Beautiful looking app. I'll download it when I get a chance.
I'll be launching an MVP app in the mental health/anxiety space next week (currently in TestFlight), so I'd like to connect and find out a bit about how your experience with your launch, and distribution plans if you're up for it (my linkedin is in my profile).
I'll send you an invite!
a) Lack the social skills or
b) Lack the time management skills
This is where we want to help.
Life gets busy. I want to drop a note to my distant family regularly, but between work and family and friends and hobbies, sometimes out of sight becomes out of mind. I like having a periodic nudge to ping that far-off person. Today I’m using Things for that, with repeating tasks to text so-and-so periodically. Something that integrates that with a record of what we talked about last time (so I can follow up with them) or alert me on special days would be nice.
I do all this because I care about those people and want to make a special effort to keep up with them. If I didn’t care, I wouldn’t be interested.
Technology can't give a person more than the set amount of time, energy, and attention they have by virtue of being human. We're cramming more and more into our lives, but I doubt that in general we feel more satisfied and fulfilled. You can add and add until you can't. At some point you need to subtract. In this community there's likely to be at least some stigma around not optimizing every last second of your life, and personally I think that attitude should be stigmatized. It's insulting to personal dignity.
Consider a clock. Why do you need to know what time is it, with minute accuracy? Because you need to synchronize in time with other people. Why do you need that? Because everyone else does that and it's now a basic part of how society functions. You owning a clock is a default expectation.
How did it came to be this way? The first clocks invented weren't very useful for this (they were for navigation at sea, though), because approximately no one had them. But then someone put clocks on church towers and someone else miniaturized them, and at some point we crossed from it being a convenience to it being necessity.
Same story with calendars, todo lists, having a phone at home, having a phone in your pocket, having a bank account. Emerging additions to this list include having credit/debit cards, having smartphones, having social media accounts. Individually, we can do little about it; at some point, resisting costs more than giving in.
The premise that one of the myriad of other tools that already exist to get a reminder to connect with someone you care about are somehow so insufficient, and that if only I had this new CRM app for personal relationships that I'd finally be able to cultivate those relationships like I've always wanted, is just so preposterous sounding to me that I felt I had to comment.
Could you elaborate the particular reasons as to why you'd prefer a web app? (Would a desktop app be relevant as well?)
No, I don't want a desktop app. For one, I use all three os platforms regularly and it's just annoying to think about getting it on each.
[1] https://www.monicahq.com/
Edit: Oh, I got it. This submission links to the English version, but the "the next elim." link at the top links to a not specifically English URL, and going from there to any other page gets me to the German version. Huh.
(The other half is websites suddenly displaying in Norwegian; it started after I was in Oslo for a few days and, while there, had to re-activate Skype from the website. Even a decade and two jobs later, on completely unrelated computers, some websites will suddenly display in Norwegian, for reasons completely unknown.)
This isnt an issue worth fixing, just wanted to mention it in case its directly apparent what isnt correctly initialized. I (and i think most others) prefer this over the site not working without javascript. Requiring to unblock a random site is a lot higher hurdle for accessibility then just scrolling up. In all honesty a non issue.
Again, this is much preferable over the site not loading. I am not that familiar with web development but it looks like something that isnt initialized correctly (likely set afterwards in js?). Its really not worth putting in the effort to try to debug it if its not obvious.
Its pretty clear that its a side effect of the blockers so you shouldnt be worried about bad impressions. I took it as a very good sign that the page just loaded as is anyway, especially given that you are working with quite sensitive information. Anyone with a similar setup will likely take it the same way as they are used to sites not working.
This way i was able to look at it, which i wouldnt have if the site required any additional scripts. That should count as a win and a job well done.
Also this would be very valuable for folks joining large organizations who need to keep track of who is good / bad and capture how happy they are with whom they work with.
That said, I find Fabriq to be more inline with what I (no affiliation) think about an app to help cultivate relationships: https://ourfabriq.com/fabriq
Also: can’t find it if I search for “Elim” in AppStore.
Very interested is seeing where this app will go.
- https://MonicaHQ.com
- https://Clay.earth
- https://GetDex.com
- https://Humans.io - A little side project of mine since 2015. PWA, works offline, will likely open source soon and add E2E encryption.
For what it's worth when I prototyped I called it "PRM" - Personal Relationship Management.
Thank you so much for sharing these links!
The two critical things Monica / Chandler are missing are: zero-knowledge E2EE (I want to put very personal things in there and not worry about breaches), and no integration with phone contacts / CardDav (I want to be able to use CRM to manage contacts, ofc!)
Etesync may be useful for hosted zero-knowledge E2EE; it should be pretty plug-and-play.
So what’s the plan to ensure this service does not degrade over the next few decades?
Let me take a note though and look into a manual export solution!
I know that sounds counterintuitive, and that data lock in is usually valuable, but I think it's generally a liability and history seems to show that building great services around mostly open components is the best way to build software for longevity and happiness.
If you can improve on or coopt an open contact format, that is third party accessible, and then you build the best interface and services around that, then you might have something important and lasting here!
Thanks
Feedback on the app - I really like the design. Very intuitive. Had no problem getting through my core flow and i’m all set. I do wish you ask for permissions for contact a little later in the flow when i’m actually trying to add people to my list. It will make more sense and it will be more intuitive. I was a little taken back by the permissions dialog right after opening the app even before I got a chance to check out the app. That’s the only thing I would probably change if I was you.