This is the biggest and most exciting part of the open startups challenge for me. I have a great deal of experience with CRM administration and development, and specifically with certain niches around clienteling, marketing automation, and audit automation. These niches are currently exploding as multibillion dollar international markets while CRM companies are posting enormous gains. These markets are targeted primarily by large conglomerates who focus on large customers. As the old saying goes, 90% of businesses target less than 10% of a market.

I want to focus on small players. There is a virtually limitless supply of crm administration and development work already be sought after on platforms like Upwork by these small players. A quick job search shows countless open positions in this field in Northern California alone. Clearly there is a huge demand for this.

I have spent the last five years of my career working on launching a free crm product which leverages these niches to monetize itself by adding value for customers. This has proven extremely challenging. So I am pivoting to focusing on adding value for customers who are using paid platforms like Salesforce. Later, I can come back to my project of trying to offer a Free Gmail-type alternative to Salesforce’s paid Outlook-type CRM.

Pipeline

I have already set up a pipeline which pulls all salesforce and crm development or administration jobs posted on Upwork and puts them into a trello board. This will allow me to aggressively target the most valuable work and build initial relationships from the perspective of this new consulting business.