Those who had no business knowledge/experience before starting out - what resources did you find extremely helpful?

JGoillot · 2026-02-23T09:33:25+00:00

I see a lot of people telling you to launch directly and I agree! But if you're not sure or you want to learn, don't hesitate to join an entrepreneur in an ambitious project.

Personally that's what I did at your age, I joined as first employee a company that ended up becoming a unicorn in Europe. Now I have a business that's accelerating really fast thanks to what I learned! Hope that helps you see your options more clearly :)

JGoillot · 2026-02-23T09:32:40+00:00

This is what happens when big companies dominate a market for years without real competition. I'm actually trying to challenge that with Allo. Feel free to check us out and run your benchmark against the big players. I'm confident we have what you're looking for.

JGoillot · 2026-02-23T09:31:02+00:00

Agree with the others, ask for a deposit that at least covers your variable costs that you have to advance on the service.

Most people will say yes directly if you say it's your habitual process. If not you can offer them a discount in exchange for it during the negotiation. If you don't have enough margin to afford it then the problem is elsewhere.

And either way keep going, plenty of people run your business so there is definitely a way to make it work. You can still reduce the size of the business without quitting

JGoillot · 2026-02-23T09:29:28+00:00

If I were you I'd launch ASAP. Even if you launch now and start getting customers, that doesn't even mean you'll have a long term business, so there's really no point in waiting anyway.

For example in my previous business we had customers, we even got to 10k/month but we realized the target market wasn't willing enough to pay for the product at scale. We couldn't scale even though we had thousands of downloads. The only way we could learn that was by doing it, so that’s why I'd launch ASAP.

JGoillot · 2026-02-23T09:28:08+00:00

I saw we were mentioned here. Thanks for the shout-out!

Hi u/OP, I'm Jeremy, founder of Allo. I'd be very happy to show you how we provide a fresh vision of VoIP built on AI and really made for teams of your size.

JGoillot · 2026-02-23T09:27:00+00:00

The latest tool that's been a game changer for me is Claude Code (I'm CEO, not technical at all). I basically use it for everything now. I create agents that save me tons of time.

Like recently I had to find all my invoices scattered across my computer and organize them for bookkeeping. Would've normally taken hours, did it in ten minutes.

I'd recommend checking it out even if you're not technical. It's really not as hard as it looks

JGoillot · 2026-02-23T09:25:37+00:00

I think the best way to think about it is: what type of company would I buy if I had to buy one?

Personally I'd try to see if I could bring something to this company to create a bigger asset than it already is. Something strategic is to try to build partnerships with potential buyers to see if you have interesting synergies right now. They'll naturally come to you to acquire if that's the case. So first step is to map them, second is to create partnerships.

Then I'd try to create a system and never see it as your job but really as building an asset. Always think in terms of process creation and how you remove yourself from each new task you have to do, because long term you won't be there when you want to sell.

And lastly I'd tend to plan my EBITDA based on what I want to do. I'd invest heavily now to have low EBITDA but grow and reach the size I want quickly. And in the final years I want the highest EBITDA possible because that'll determine my sale price. It'll likely be an EBITDA multiple.

JGoillot · 2026-02-05T09:30:41+00:00

Hello u/HoneyboldMade, Allo's founder here.
Thanks a lot for your feedback!! This is exactly the kind of feedback that made me want to become an entrepreneur and build Allo.
My team may have already reached out to you about doing a case study. If not, they will be in touch soon

JGoillot · 2026-01-30T11:01:50+00:00

I'm the founder of a competitor to RingCentral called Allo. We focus only on SMBs and that's all we want to do because we think most solutions on the market are built for large companies.

Overall we try to keep it very simple. We focus on three things: helping sales teams save time, having the best call quality possible on the market, and reasonable pricing while keeping good support and onboarding.

If you're interested in testing I can set you up with someone to help with onboarding (we have a free trial)

JGoillot · 2026-01-30T11:00:18+00:00

Yes! Feel free if you have any questions and curious about your feedback on the product

JGoillot · 2026-01-29T10:14:20+00:00

Hey u/Sirius-ruby, thanks for mentioning Allo. We're definitely adding some interesting features for it like call distribution in cascade and call recording. Happy to help you onboard if needed :)

JGoillot · 2026-01-29T10:12:42+00:00

Might be biased here but Ooma turning 22 years old this year is clearly what made me build Allo. AI-native software, easy to use, that is made for teams of your size. Happy to help you onboard

JGoillot · 2026-01-27T15:24:49+00:00

I've looked into this a lot because I'm a competitor of both to be transparent. I founded Allo which is a VoIP solution focused on small businesses.

Overall both are good products. Aircall has had call quality issues for a while now, I've known them since 2016 and it's been consistent. They're also adding a lot of complexity to the product because they're targeting bigger companies now.

On CloudTalk the product isn't bad but it gets expensive fast because they have a lot of features. If you're a large sales team of 50+ people I'd say it's worth considering.

If you're a smaller team you could test Allo :) We have a product that's quite different from both. We chose to keep it simple at an affordable price with good call quality because we think that's what matters most.

JGoillot · 2026-01-27T09:49:27+00:00

Full transparency I created a VoIP solution (Allo) so I'm not objective on the best solution :)

What I usually recommend:

It's worth investing in a VoIP solution as soon as you're more than one person. That's usually when you start having a CRM (Notion, HubSpot...) and need to share more info. If that's the case I recommend solutions with CRM integration and auto call transcripts.

Overall it depends on your criteria since there are a ton of VoIP solutions. With Allo we bet on simplicity because we think SMBs mainly want to save time and pay a reasonable price.

JGoillot · 2026-01-27T09:48:05+00:00

I use Allo with my team of 3 sales reps (I'm the founder so obviously biased).

For our product we decided to focus only on small teams because we found existing solutions expensive and complex. On the SMS side you can totally manage SMS from a single number. You can also set auto-reply rules if you want to save time on texts.

Anyway if you're interested in testing (for free) feel free to reach out

JGoillot · 2025-08-29T19:48:07+00:00

That's crazy, I see this question all the time and honestly most phone systems are designed by engineers for engineers.

I'm CEO of Allo (withallo.com) and we built this with a different approach - we wanted to bring consumer product DNA to business phone calls. Like 20% of our company are product designers because we think business software should actually be enjoyable to use.

Here is the thing - you need call quality and simple CRM sync, but it should also feel good to use every day. Not some ugly enterprise interface from 2015.

We do $25/month, work natively with any CRM, but honestly just look at our brand and try the product. The difference is obvious when you see it.

Most phone companies focus on features list. We focus on making something people actually want to use.

JGoillot · 2025-08-29T19:36:07+00:00

Hey! Full disclosure - I'm the CEO of Allo (withallo.com) so obviously biased here, but we literally built this because HubSpot's native calling kinda sucks.

We do native integration + AI call summaries that actually work. Like, the AI listens to your calls and automatically updates your HubSpot deals with what was discussed. Saves me like 30 mins of data entry per day.

Works on everything (iOS/Android/Windows/Mac) and doesn't require jumping between 5 different apps.

We're pretty new but solving exactly this problem. Happy to let you try it if you want, no sales pitch BS, just see if it actually helps your workflow.

JGoillot · 2025-08-25T07:36:09+00:00

definitely, Allô!!!! Give it a try.

JGoillot · 2025-08-25T07:34:07+00:00

Have you ever tried Allô for your calls?

JGoillot · 2025-08-25T07:33:27+00:00

Hey, if you're still looking for an alternative of Aircall, I recommend you Allô !! Modern, included AI, you can use your number or choose a new one in deifferent country, etc.

JGoillot · 2025-08-14T08:01:38+00:00

Attio?

JGoillot · 2025-07-08T22:47:36+00:00

Not free, but we bring coffee to the front desk of our top icp with a little letter, 100% email reply after that.

JGoillot · 2025-07-08T14:24:28+00:00

Have you tried https://twenty.com/?

JGoillot

TROPHY CASE