STARTUPS
A CRM that can survive your next three pivots
Small, clean, fast to change. We build the foundation you won’t have to demolish at Series B.
What’s different here
Startups don’t need enterprise architecture; they need architecture that doesn’t foreclose options. The two decisions that hurt later are the object model and the identity of the customer record — get those approximately right and almost everything else is cheap to change.
Speed also matters more than completeness. A founder-led sales team needs pipeline visibility this month, not a governance framework. We ship a working foundation in three to four weeks and add structure as headcount arrives.
The third factor is cost discipline. Startups routinely buy tiers they don’t use because a licence conversation happened before a requirements conversation. We map need to edition honestly, including saying when the cheaper tier is enough.
Where CRM usually breaks
- Everything is a Lead — no account model, so ARR reporting is impossible at 30 customers.
- Spreadsheet gravity — the real pipeline lives in a sheet the founder maintains.
- Product usage isolated — the CRM knows nothing about what customers actually do.
- No handoff definition — sales-to-onboarding is a Slack message, so churn causes are invisible.
- Over-bought licences — a tier chosen for one feature nobody enabled.
What we build
Lean object model with a real account/contact hierarchy · Founder-friendly pipeline with three to five stages · Product-usage sync from your app · Onboarding handoff process · Investor-ready reporting (ARR, pipeline coverage, cohort retention) · Lightweight automation that doesn’t need an admin
Common questions
How fast can we be live?
Three to four weeks for a core Sales Cloud foundation with clean data.
Can we do this without an admin?
For a while, yes, if the build is deliberately simple. We design for that and mentor whoever inherits it.
What do we do about the founder’s spreadsheet?
Migrate what’s real, then make the CRM faster to update than the sheet. That’s the only reliable way it dies.
Start here
Tell us what your CRM is getting wrong
Thirty minutes with a consultant, not a salesperson. You’ll leave the call with at least one thing you can fix yourself — whether or not you hire us.
Prefer email? hello@zeptglobal.com · Typical reply time: one business day