I’m Kevin, founder of Dex (https://getdex.com/). Dex is a personal CRM that reminds you to keep in touch with people you might otherwise forget.
I started working on Dex because I felt like I was falling out-of-touch with people I cared about. I wanted to be aware of “how long it had been” and more proactive about maintaining my relationships.
Looking to solve this problem, I tried data tools like Airtable, Notion, and Google Sheets. It was easy to setup a sheet to track relationships, but I eventually found these tools difficult to keep up with. I’d end up procrastinating on updating my records and would rarely find the time to revisit them.
Dex is a personal CRM that aims to be simple, intuitive, and accessible. To get started, users sign up for a web application that connects with their Google contacts and calendar (and optionally Facebook and LinkedIn data). With this information, Dex suggests people to contact every day. Over time, these suggestions become better as users customize how frequently they’d like to reach out.
Dex includes the functionality you might include from a CRM: logging notes, setting reminders, and organizing contacts. A feature which makes Dex unique is a Chrome extension, which allows you to view relationship history and add people without leaving social networking sites like LinkedIn, Messenger, Twitter, and Facebook.
Most people realize the value and fulfillment that come from maintaining relationships, but occasionally still fall out of touch due to forgetfulness. Dex helps these people with a system of regular reminders to keep in touch. I’ve noticed many people already have their own ‘system’ for managing relationships, and I’m always interested in hearing about different people think about dealing with staying on top of relationships.
I’d also welcome any other feedback about Dex! Feel free to also email me directly at kevin [at] getdex [dot] com. Thanks for your attention! :)
Every few seconds, a large payload goes to fullstory with all details:
47: {When: 397746, Kind: 2, Args: [8881, -1, [[4405, 2], "cell day blank"]]}
63: {When: 397746, Kind: 2, Args: [8881, -1, [[4405, 2], "cell day", [93, 2], "15", 96]]}
71: {When: 397746, Kind: 2, Args: [8881, -1, [[4405, 2], "cell day", [93, 2], "23", 96]]}
72: {When: 397746, Kind: 2, Args: [8881, -1, [[4405, 2], "cell day weekend sat", [93, 2], "24", 96]]}
73: {When: 397746, Kind: 2, Args: [8881, -1, [[4405, 2], "cell day weekend sun", [93, 2], "25", 96]]}
74: {When: 397746, Kind: 2, Args: [8881, -1, [[4405, 2], "cell day", [93, 2], 5593, 96]]}
90: {When: 397746, Kind: 2, Args: [9087, -1, [94, "Last note6m ago on 8/14/2019"]]}
91: {Kind: 4, When: 397746, Args: [8984, "class", "cell month selected"]}
92: {Kind: 4, When: 397746, Args: [8986, "class", "cell month"]}
94: {Kind: 6, When: 397746, Args: [8294, " in 14d"]}
95: {Kind: 6, When: 397746, Args: [8876, "Aug 2019"]}For example, began entering a manual contact and the name for that contact was sent to FullStory (that's as far as I looked.)
The privacy statement for FullStory appears much different than that of Dex.
https://www.fullstory.com/legal/privacy/
https://getdex.com/privacypolicy
That's enough for me. I understand I'm already sending my data, but there's no mention that my sensitive data is going to another service. And I would expect that my data is sent over a secure line and securely stored. And that it won't be "replayed" or otherwise viewed.
EDIT: How do I delete my account? Consider that a feature request.
Anyone know and marketing firms that are privacy aware/friendly?
https://help.fullstory.com/hc/en-us/articles/360020622934
https://twitter.com/vlio20/status/1148311522420170758?s=21
https://twitter.com/carleebb/status/999311978060500992?s=21
https://twitter.com/laurentmtl/status/949531455964803072?s=2...
https://twitter.com/ahgandhi/status/1117980573048483845?s=21
https://twitter.com/paulmwatson/status/672093603519418372?s=...
*note these are people sharing/bragging publicly.
I feel tracking tools are more for marketing and conversions. You're looking at what the user is doing when going through the process of getting the to signup.
I wouldn't think to use this tool in the inner portion of the app. On the outer part, there's not much to identify you. Anything session recording or heatmap is a step beyond what Google Analytics is doing, but it's not going to be sensitive data.
Everything inside the app is sensitive. If there's a possibility of my actions being recorded, I would rather get warned about that or given a chance to opt-in for a session in return for a credit.
This is the sort of thing I'm having less of a stomach for as the internet gets more nuts and my trail of dead sign-ups has grown over two decades plus some years. Your app better be damn good for me to get over that hesitance. And as I get older, I find that almost no apps are that good. I'll go to paper and pencil. IDGAF. Though I'm willing to give in a bit more to major names, even then we're seeing that Amazon and Microsoft is listening into voice from some of their products.
I also think this is lazy for getting info on the usage of the actual app. Go ahead and analyze how your conversion process is going as you change your design. But for the actual app, maybe sit people down in front of you. Have people take a video of their usage. Ask for surveys. Don't just record my session of entering all the times I'm getting laid (along with their vital stats) without me knowing about it.
* (2018) "Monica – Personal CRM, Remember everything about friends and family" -> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18318547
* (2017) "Show HN: Monica, an open-source CRM to manage friends and family" -> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14497295
Right now everything seems to be free. I'm asking because I hate to be surprised after investing time to curate a CRM.
Yes. Keep going ! It's a good idea.
1. Tiny bit confused over whether I was signing up or logging in.
2. I can't read their names on my phone (portrait mode). Landscape is ok. Maybe reduce the font size or something
3. What's the algorithm for displaying the recommend "get in touch"? Some people are friends I have a beer with some Inhomestly can not recognise
My idea was to only recommend people whom I had replied to on email - the presumption being I must have wanted something
So perhaps in the info field show me their last email or two so I can work out who they are
Keep up the good work !
The algorithm is primarily focused on your calendar data and when you've last had an event (if you don't use your calendar, these recommendations might not be great but will get better as you snooze/check off people)
I like your idea on emails that you've actually replied too - will consider that for a future release!
1. You recommend I get in touch with me ... and I am only third on the list :-)
2. I generally don't book events / calendar things. It's one of the reasons i think focusing on emails is so useful - I do those all the time and there is digital footprint that can be used to help me (as opposed to sell me ads)
3. Maybe I missed something but I tried to click on the arrow and then the mail icon, but no mail popped up - I would like to send a mail right there and then as a minimum "get in touch"
What exactly is a "personal" CRM that doesn't focus on selling? A curated address book?
>> Most people realize the value and fulfillment that come from maintaining relationships, but occasionally still fall out of touch due to forgetfulness
I think these is the fundamental premise that I don't personally agree with; the value of the relationship is what keeps you engaged. It's not simple forgetfulness that causes you to lose touch - you are prioritizing other activities over the relationship.
This doesn't seem right or make me feel good though; it makes me seem like a self-centered jerk, so can't be true - I must be lacking (yet more) networking applications that "promote keeping in touch".
I think there is opportunity for very specific purpose networking tools, like linkedin before they decided to be a general-purpose social network or centered around communities and activities. I don't think "relationships" is specific enough, unless you're focusing on physical relationships like dating or hookups.
Also, the amount of private information you're asking to expose right out the gate is a non-starter for me. If it's curated (and thus meaningful) make your on-boarding & setup reflect this. I realize it's largely due to eas-of-use, but to me the process is a giant data vacuum.
Dex as a 'personal CRM' does intend to provide professional utility as a tool that helps you keep in touch. People who depend on relationships for their work, but might not already have a CRM with their company, are part of Dex's core target audience.
Thanks for your point on private information: we know that our onboarding experience isn't perfect and it's something we're working on.
Over the past year I've met plenty of contacts/got cards etc. I have not felt the need to contact any of the people I've met, so I honestly don't know what it would be like if I did. I don't have any needs/problems that aren't already solved by the people who are in my life now, and if someone was really important I'd put them in my phone contacts, which also, is at about 5% utilization, compared to the total number of people in there, and all those people I at least had some good reason to contact at some point.
I think true meaningful networks cannot be built by exchanging a card on a one-off meeting.
Am I wrong?
>> It can:
>> Read and change all your data on the websites you visit
No thanks
Edit: Looked at the extension and maybe it could limit itself to social network domains though.
https://developer.chrome.com/apps/declare_permissions (see reference to "match pattern")
This then in turn populates the list of sites in the extension settings where you can choose to deny access to the aforementioned websites listed in the manifest
I appreciate you have two-way contact syncing with Google Contacts which is a big thing that's lacking in monica.
I also appreciate the Chrome Extension you mentioned. Is there deeper integration there, eg. do you allow me to back up / view data on my facebook friends through Dex?
What I looked for in Monica, and simply did not find, was a true single-source-of-truth for all my contact interactions, be those on Facebook, Twitter, Discord, SMS, Hangouts …. It's less a matter of wanting to keep in touch with people (I love being able to set reminders for specific things, but lacking a good UI I just end up making those in Google Calendar), and more a matter of being able to quickly find things I may have discussed with someone.
For example I talk to my girlfriend through all three of Messenger, Discord and SMS, and I'd like to be able to have a single history to sift through should I look for something she told me (groceries to get, an address / door code to remember, a photo she sent …).
Again, to me the selling point of these kinds of personal-service websites are to offload parts of my brain to software that is more efficient at the task. Notion does a great job being a generic note-keeping / database app. Calendar does a great job at helping me remember everything time-bound events. A personal CRM should do a great job at helping me remember everything there is to remember about another person / a relationship with that person.
The Chrome Extension unfortunately doesn't do a deeper integration -- we're looking into how to make this happen! You're absolutely right that a personal CRM needs to be a single source of truth -- the hard part is getting data in the actual product!
I get you that getting the data in is difficult though. A lot of API work. This is one thing where if you were open source and had a plugin / provider API people could contribute. I certainly would.
I've been wanting something like this for a while but the privacy policy is pretty vague and far too broad for me to trust a service like this:
I'd be much more excited about this product if it used zero-knowledge encryption for my data. Yes you can't data-mine it (and if I lose my password I'm hosed), but I'd prefer having the only copy of the decryption key.
When a product is targeted for Windows only, that means the product doesn't make sense to run in Linux. But, if the product is applicable to Linux, and the person or company who developed didn't consider porting it to other platforms, then it is left to the pain of users to find the possibilities to make it run on Linux. Or pray god one day it will be available in Linux.
In case of Extension for browsers, it doesn't make sense for users if the extension says it is targeted for Chrome browser only. Also, most of the extensions developed are not open source, so users don't have a chance to taken an effort to make it run on other browsers.
Hope you consider porting your Extension to support other browsers as well.
Tell me if does this:
- Connects with FB, WhatsApp, Messenger, LinkedIn, and Gmail
- Checks the message history for each person
- Optionally coalesce users based on simple heuristics (similar name)
- Give you a list of people according to last contact
- Tells you the my turn / your turn of each conversation
Some of the integrations you mention (FB/WhatsApp/Messenger/LI) are hard to do since these companies don't expose API access (and we'd have to ask for user credentials, which aren't always straightforward!). I'm very curious -- would you be open to sending your credentials to Dex to enable these integrations?
Would I send my creds, I guess if it did what I need I'd click one of those give access buttons. I hope you don't mean give user / pwd.
What I want is:
* The ability to do something like a spaced repetition with my contacts. If it proposes I connect with someone, and I'm like "great", they stay high priority. Or I can snooze that contact for a little while or a long while. (There might be an orthogonal feature to track who is important but I only need infrequent contact with.)
* The ability to accurately search my contacts. e.g. Friends who are into crypto and art.
So I went all in on Dex for ten minutes and granted read permissions for my calendar + contacts and added the extension access to read and change data on all websites.
The results were pretty underwhelming. It showed me a handful of contacts scraped from Google, many of which I didn't even recognize. I understand that this is perhaps I'm not much of an email guy, so I do know that a scrape of my Google contacts (or even my emails) will poorly reflect my social graph.
Here's what I want:
* Scrape and import my contacts across all platforms. If you need to use a Chrome extension to read my Facebook activity (not the messages, but just the people involved), fine. If you want me to spend 20 minutes downloading Facebook exports that don't include message text, or maybe screenshotting my message feed subjects for Facebook and Instagram and emailing them to you to OCR, to avoid you being liable for TOS breaking, fine.
* Auto-tag contacts, and allow me to update my tags.
* Auto-prioritize my contacts, and allow me to update the priorities.
Dex isn't really what I need, but thank you. I appreciate you trying to solve this problem.
[edit: Give me a Chrome extension to take screenshots of pages with key information about my social graph, whenever I browse onto them, that will then find sensitive info like message text and black them over and then allow me to easily email them to you?]
I think the end goal of a product we're looking to build might not be too far off from what you're looking for, and I appreciate your comments on what you want. (it's always nice when someone directly lists features they are looking for). I'll make a note to follow-up when Dex is a better solution for you!
Legal and safe ways to help users export their own data from other platforms could be the innovation of your entire company.
I might not give you username and password, but if you gave me an Electron app to run (with source code I could verify, executables for the newbies) that would read, using machine vision, certain websites, WhatsApp desktop app, etc. you could get a lot more data without breaking the TOS. Since it is I the user who is initiating the data transfer.
I actually was just thinking about this type of product just yesterday while walking around a part of the city I've never been to -- how cool would it be to proactively shoot folks a text whenever I'm in their part of town (determined by GPS)? I end up doing this manually and I always forget folks until it's too late.
I'll add you can add your iCloud contacts into Dex if you're an iPhone user!
Why are there no apps that will read my SMS / call history and remind me to follow up with people I haven't interacted with?
Monica only allows contact import, there's no direct syncing and no automatic updates when you call / text / email someone. That seems like a no brainer of a feature before anything else? Is there some huge technical barrier I'm missing here?
https://www.idownloadblog.com/2018/10/16/siri-shortcuts-sugg...
That's not really what I'm (and perhaps most people) looking for in a personal CRM. I think the potential value add is the ability to "follow up" with long neglected personal relationships. (Friends who you've fallen out of touch with, etc...)
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/sunny-organize-your-contacts/i...
We're definitely solving a similar problem, and in the past I was a user of Monica until I found it too much work to keep up with. Monica notably does have more fields and performs functions (like journaling) that Dex does not.
Looking forward to what you guys build, Dex!
I instead used an alt which doesn't get much use. No contacts. Seems to work fine, why couldn't I just go with no contacts in the first place?
I added a contact manually and...
No pic? I can't upload a face? I'm visual. And what if I wanted to use this as my black book? I want pics! ;)
Nice effort but I'll need to hang on the sidelines a bit. Congrats on the launch!
It's 2019, I would expect such info to be given when reaching to the HN audience. We know you need to make money, the website doesn't say how, the logical assumption is that we're giving data to pay you and personally I like to know how much I have to pay before trying a new service.
Dex is run as a subscription service ($7.99/mo), something we'll also make more clear on the site. Appreciate your feedback here -- this helps me understand what I need to change!
It's great that you support all the social sites - it was enough work for me just to integrate private notes and tags into Facebook. If only I had put in more time into Backstory to turn it from a side project into a full-fledged product like yours!
One thing I don't like is how intrusive the sidebar integrations are. They take up so much space that I can no longer see the other content in the sidebar at first glance. The Messenger integration also doesn't seem to be working for me.
Congrats on launch! I'm going to start using Dex, hope it helps me keep up with friends in the next few weeks! :)
I'm a bit frustrated by the lack of features in Monica.
What I want is this, reminders to stay in contact with someone. I want a notification to appear on my phone saying something like, "hey you told us to stay in touch with Bob every month, click to open WhatsApp and message them." Or slack, text, email, etc.
I also want a central location for all my contacts and info about this. Notes, when we last got in touch and how we communicate (messenger, slack, email, LinkedIn, etc.) I really want it to stay synced with iCloud, Google, Next loud, etc.
I want as much automation as possible.
Every CRM I've looked into seems to revolve around a lot of manual work.
I'll have to give getdex a try.
We've built the Chrome extension as a temporary substitute, but full automation is definitely the eventual vision. Unfortunately the more interesting channels (Messenger / Facebook) don't have accessible APIs so integrating with them has been an ongoing challenge. Would appreciate any automation suggestions as you try it out!
For other channels like Messenger and Whatsapp, a big constraint is no API for messages. Making an integration for these channels the 'right way' is a challenge we're still working on -- we could ask for user credentials but that doesn't seem like a great long-term solution.
I've been thinking about a way to solve the exact same problem on and off for a long time (I'm terrible at proactively keeping in touch with friends).
My original solution was the same as yours, but it quickly broke down for me because I just couldn't get all of the data (in particular when I last talked to someone) into the app. I imagine you'll face the same challenge.
Two approaches have worked well for me though...
1. a dumb version of Dex. Basically just a list of friends/acquaintances and a periodic reminder (weekly, monthly, quarterly) to make sure I'd been in touch
2. a weekly prompt to reach out to anyone who fits a certain set of criteria. For example, "send a message to the last person you met at a networking event" or "reach out to the contact you'd be most likely to recommend for a marketing role"
Weirdly, the latter version has been way better for me at maintaining and growing relationships outside of my closest circle of friends. Especially on the professional side of things.
If you want to chat more about my experience or the problem in general, my email is in my profile and I find this super interesting :)
Good luck!
* When did you start the company and how many founders are there?
* What was your traction (MAU or anything else) prior to being accepted into YC?
* How do you plan to grow the userbase? Content marketing, ads, partnering with other companies?
* How do you plan to make money?
* How big is the market size?
* Are there any adjacent markets that you could see yourself expanding into?
Good luck!
The plan to grow the userbase is content marketing + advertising as we figure out unit economics. The plan to make money is to charge $7.99/month for the product. Market size estimates this early are tough to get right, but we believe anyone who uses LI (645 million users) can manage relationships better with Dex.
How are you avoiding manual data entry given social media's reluctance to release this information? Semi-related, how are you respecting user's data?
With user data: our privacy policy is here (https://getdex.com/privacypolicy) and we chose a subscription model so your data stays yours -- and private.
The key for me -- other than privacy etc -- is that it be automated. It should take the info from my email, Facebook and maybe messenger/text and figure out who my friends are and who I have not been in touch with.
How does this decide whom to recommend to reach out to?
One of the biggest challenges is the interesting integrations (Facebook/SMS/etc) aren't super easy to do (unless we straight up ask for credentials!). It's an area we're still working on, as more automation is the most requested direction of features.
Like,
"You are spending too much time with C people. Is C person Andrew now a B? B people like Joe and Jane need more attention."
"You could use another A relationship. The following B people might be good candidates based on your contact frequency."
This is mostly tongue-in-cheek, but it is often true that people don't attend to relationships with apprppriate priority. And, knowing your situation with regard to various relationship levels provides insight for growth.
[0] https://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/social-med...
[1] https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/abs/10.1098/rspb.2004...
My own mind has proven itself incompetent at this task, so I'm good with a little assistance.
I was actually planning on re-reviewing Monica soon, so I'll add this to compare against. For me my goal is just about tracking what people enjoy or don't, what we last did, important developments in their lives, whether I've updated them on my own important developments, etc...
Just offloading all the things my brain has repeatedly failed at in favor of garbage like song lyrics or API documentation.
I am sorry, I can't do that. I don't know anything about your offer, how you will be using my data. Will it be resold later? In your privacy policy, there is an option of using my data (my contacts network) to run targeted advertising, etc.
While I need something like this, I'll now have to search for more privacy-conscious alternatives.
In my opinion, CRM data entry should always be incremental/progressive, very granular, allowing processes to flow without frustrating users. That is key to user adoption and to any project success. Just my 2cents on this.
BTW, Kevin, in your graphics you have a Russian name as an example. Are you Russian and just pretending to be westerner or you just like Russian names?
From the website it seems that your MVP is a Chrome extension. A lot of time I remember to keep in touch with my friends are when I'm outside, away from my keyboard. When using computer my mind is habituated for works and leisures. Do you have any plan to build apps for mobile?
We also may collect limited information from the people with whom you interact by email when you use the Site and Services. This information may include the recipient’s name and email address, the number of times that the recipient opens your email, the recipient’s IP address and the computer platform that the recipient is using.
Is there a way to turn this off?
Was using Contactually but was not happy.
Also, I used to use Contactually for this a few years ago, was great with email integration and FB before they killed the API. Good luck!
It’s called Contact - People Organizer by App Addiction
PS: I don’t track anything you do!!