Have been working in the CRM field for the past 8 years. The market is huge and there are definitely niches for vertical solutions. At the same time, the competition is fierce and I think there are some 500 active CRM companies in the market now. A lot of leaders give you some free tiers and Hubspot CRM gives you a completely free CRM, forever. It is decent enough for simple use cases.
That being said, the key to success is to find your niche and make sure you dominate it. And to find your niche, I would suggest you start with a couple of landings, talk to a lot of customers and find a good unique value proposition that will help you differentiate yourself and be a niche leader. IH has a lot of freelancers, so start speaking with them to understand if they even consider a CRM, what benefits they associate with this kind of software and what problem will it solve for them. CRM has a lot of features and knowing the exact problem you solving will help you navigate those features and position your product correctly.
Second advice, if you go down the road, try to piggyback on integrations and co-marketing from bigger guys. Freelancers most likely will need a quoting software — check PandaDoc or DocuSign (the smaller the company, the higher chances of co-marketing and cross-promotion). People will need to move their contacts around — PieSync or Zapier are your friends, etc.
I've had a very similar idea and need for an app like this! (also have a React native app I started building (30% done) called Pocketlancer which incorporates some of these ideas), perhaps we should meet and talk?
Have been working in the CRM field for the past 8 years. The market is huge and there are definitely niches for vertical solutions. At the same time, the competition is fierce and I think there are some 500 active CRM companies in the market now. A lot of leaders give you some free tiers and Hubspot CRM gives you a completely free CRM, forever. It is decent enough for simple use cases.
That being said, the key to success is to find your niche and make sure you dominate it. And to find your niche, I would suggest you start with a couple of landings, talk to a lot of customers and find a good unique value proposition that will help you differentiate yourself and be a niche leader. IH has a lot of freelancers, so start speaking with them to understand if they even consider a CRM, what benefits they associate with this kind of software and what problem will it solve for them. CRM has a lot of features and knowing the exact problem you solving will help you navigate those features and position your product correctly.
Second advice, if you go down the road, try to piggyback on integrations and co-marketing from bigger guys. Freelancers most likely will need a quoting software — check PandaDoc or DocuSign (the smaller the company, the higher chances of co-marketing and cross-promotion). People will need to move their contacts around — PieSync or Zapier are your friends, etc.
Best of luck,
Sergey
Hey Simon!
I've had a very similar idea and need for an app like this! (also have a React native app I started building (30% done) called Pocketlancer which incorporates some of these ideas), perhaps we should meet and talk?
I am also based in Aarhus :)
This comment was deleted 5 years ago.