Underdog Founders - Simo's CRM wins Product of the Day, Week and Month on Product Hunt
Can a CRM by a first-time founder be so good that it smashes PH charts?
Simo (below, right) grew up in Morocco, studied in France and quickly made it to McKinsey and Morgan Stanley.
Eager to learn and explore, he did projects across Africa, until it was time to build something that would stand the test of time.
He enrolled into Le Wagon’s coding bootcamp, and devoured all he could about Product.
He started freelancing, maximizing exposure to different projects and putting newfound skills to work.
As he starts managing different projects, Simo uses Notion to keep track of it all, and starts looking at the best CRMs on the market to pick his.
He’s shocked at how massively successful some tools are, yet he struggles to find anyone saying “I love my CRM”.
It made him think about Taxis in pre-Uber days: everyone used them, most hated the experience.
He then crossed paths with Thibaud, founder of eFounders, and tech lead Jean-Yves. Together, they decide it was time to go after the king of SaaS - and start building a competitor to Salesforce.
“When people neglect to keep their CRMs updated or fail to get value out of them, we see it as a product flaw, not a busy human flaw”.
They invest weeks talking to users. They only started building once the fog lifted.
When they launched their v1 on Product Hunt, it was a triple jackpot - Product of the day, week and month.
But how do you get there?
“First, part of it is simply because tools like Salesforce are super complex - they literally led to the birth of an entire industry of consultants who get paid to set it up for you.”
It’s expensive, and if you need to change something else later, you’re gonna hire them again.
“Second - traditional platforms often need manual work, copy-paste.”
“We built a Chrome extension that works with what you use (LinkedIn, Sales Navigator, Email) and pulls data directly. We wanted a single solution without tons of integrations.”
Finally, people use CRMs for sales, fundraising, hiring…it always comes down to relationships.
So, they built templates for what you need. It just saves you a ton of time.
Ducks have since lined up in a row - but when they first started marketing, reality hit them in the face, fast.
One of their favorite prospect quotes to date:
“Guys, can we even call this a CRM?”
The CRM market is mature, competition is high - clients have big expectations. If you’re trying to be the hot new thing and don’t deliver, you’re an instant flop.
The team waited 2 years after raising a round with Accel before launching on Product Hunt. All that user research and client focus paid off.
Simo’s folk is doubling users every 4 months and reached 1,000 paying accounts this summer, including household names like Techstars and Station F.
Because Simo set out to build the CRM he wanted to use, and wasn’t afraid to challenge top dogs in his first startup.
Underdog Founders 17 - Simo Lemhandez from folk.
If you enjoy reading UF startup journeys, support this project by going premium for only 2$/week.
If you know Underdog Founders that could use free exposure, I’d love to feature them - just ping me on LinkedIn.