Launch HN: Okapi (YC W24) – A new, flexible CRM with good UX

Hacker News Discussion ↗

Product positioning & differentiation

  • Okapi is pitched as a flexible, modern UX alternative to Salesforce-style CRMs, with fully custom objects/fields and minimal mandatory structure.
  • Founders emphasize simplicity over “busy” feature sets: no forced automations, enrichments, or complex onboarding; they set up customer instances manually.
  • They see early fit with small businesses switching CRMs and wanting Salesforce-like flexibility without its complexity or cost.

Market skepticism & competition

  • Multiple commenters argue the product looks like a generic CRUD/admin UI and is highly undifferentiated in a crowded, “red ocean” CRM market.
  • Comparisons are made to Salesforce, HubSpot, Monday, Pipedrive, Attio, Zoho, vertical/industry CRMs, and open-source options.
  • Some question why investors funded yet another generic CRM and whether the team has clearly identified its target niche or problem.

Features, gaps & roadmap

  • Missing or immature today: reports/dashboards, custom views, robust workflows/automations, deep integrations, task/journey management, marketing automation (campaigns, landing pages), and public API.
  • Roadmap items include reporting (possibly via third-party libraries), better list/views, built-in automations, open API, dashboards, task/journey management, and omnichannel/communication features.
  • Some users want marketing automation and campaign tooling more than pure CRM.

UX, performance & onboarding

  • Interface is praised as clean and modern; Tailwind UI is used.
  • Feedback notes clunky object/field management, small UX issues (buttons, links, search scope, hotkeys), and the importance of very low latency and small bundle sizes.
  • Okapi currently avoids self-serve; onboarding is done by the team, with possible future templates.

Architecture, integrations & extensibility

  • Backend uses Postgres as the authoritative store plus additional stores optimized for search and reads; all record revisions are tracked by default.
  • Plans for a robust API and possibly transactional scripting akin to Apex, but with a mainstream language (e.g., TypeScript), not a proprietary one.
  • Commenters stress access control (FLS/RLS), change data capture streams, bi-directional sync, and good developer experience as critical.

Email & communication

  • Current email sync is intentionally simple, relying on Gmail/Outlook and not BCC-based flows.
  • Some users strongly prefer BCC-only approaches for compliance and want per-deal email association and historical person–company relationships.
  • Suggestions include Outlook/Excel add-ins and deeper omnichannel messaging/call integrations.

Security, reliability & bugs

  • Several users hit login/account-lock issues and UX dead-ends; founders acknowledge a rough demo setup.
  • One commenter worries that talk of “fancy” replication without clear credentials undermines trust.