Top 10 Software Tools For Your Startup

Reid Hoffman, the co-founder and chairman of LinkedIn, said once that running a startup is like jumping off a cliff and building a plane on the way down. The good thing is that no one has to do it with his bare hands! There are plenty of tools out there, which can make this backbreaking project easier. Here are some of my favorite ones — I’ve listed them earlier in my answer to Quora question about my top 10 software tools for startup. Note: very subjective! 1. Slack I guess I don’t need to introduce this tool to anyone. It’s the best way to communicate with your team. Integrations with other tools make it even more awesome. You can create many rooms for the people working on different tasks, which makes it clear and easy to follow. 2. SaaS Manager A platform that helps startups to build cloud applications 3+ months faster. It provides common features in from of APIs & simple web application, that are required to build cloud applications, but are not the core of the business. I don’t use it myself as it’s a tool for the developers, but I can’t stop myself from putting it on the list. With SaaS Manager, it took us only 11 weeks to build the MVP of our latest SaaS startup SkillHunt(the recruitment platform for the IT based on the referral programs — worth to check if you need to hire developers, by the way). 3. Appoint.ly A tool for streamline appointment scheduling. Integrating with all my calendars makes scheduling appointments super easy. You can set various types of meetings, put your welcome message, it integrates with all the major calendars and — the best thing — it sends the reminders about the upcoming appointments for you and your prospects. No more back-and-forth e-mails! 4. Trello Nice tool to keep your work progress clear. You can arrange larger projects into “boards”, assign other people to your project, share tasks, files, and comments. It lets you visualize your to-do list in a way that’s easy to follow which really helps you manage your time. 5. Grammarly Have you ever got embarrassed by seeing a spelling mistake in the e-mail you’ve sent to your client or partner? Then you will love this tool! It’s a grammar checker for the grammatical, spelling, and punctuation mistakes. You can use it as an app, download it to your computer or install it as a plugin to your browser. Irreplaceable if you create ANY content. 6. HemmingwayApp It’s like a spellchecker, but for style. You put efforts to make your texts sound very smart and beautiful? Don’t. Really. Your visitors don’t come to your website to enjoy the sophisticated prose but to get the information. It’s a great app to check if your posts, emails, or articles aren’t too long or complex. 7. Brand24 We’ve started using it very recently and so far it’s the best tool for social media monitoring I know. It searches the Internet for the set keywords, allowing you to track mentions, brand, name, competitors, news from the niche and whatever you need. It helps you track your online presence and reputation (don’t hope that all the opinions about your product will have @ or # to be easily tracked!) but also reach the ambassadors, influencers, and potential customers. A few days ago they introduced a new feature: Brand24 Interactions for Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram mentions, showing how popular a given post is. Which makes it even cooler! 8. Woodpecker Nice tool for the personalized cold-emails automation. It sends email and follow-ups one by one as if they were sent manually, letting you send cold emails that are surprisingly… warm. It saves a lot of work for the SDRs. Also, there are statistics of opens and clicks, so you can check your efficiency and improve it if necessary. 9. RightHello A live-updated database with millions of companies supplemented with easy-to-use segmentation tools and handy filters. It automates sales by connecting you with the right business people at scale. 10. Tweetdeck Absolutely irreplaceable tool when you have to manage multiple Twitter accounts. You’re able to view at once all the lists you are following, your notifications, and your direct messages. It is also possible to tweet from there, send messages and even schedule a tweet. A free command center for Twitter. ____ We’ve just hit ten, so you can finish reading there as it was promised to be the list of top 10 software tools for your startup. But if the time is not chasing you yet, keep reading as there are 4 bonus tools to come: 11. Buffer A smart and easy way to schedule content across social media. The free plan that lets you connect a profiles from each network (one from Facebook, one from Twitter, etc.) and to schedule ahead 10 posts for each network. 12. Google Analytics I don’t know any better (free) tool for the analytics. As it’s very complex, you need some time to get to know it. But once you do, you can learn a lot about your audience and their interaction with your website. 13. Canva A simple tool to make really nice graphics for the blog and social media. I like the set templates for various channels (eg. Twitter, Facebook) and free layouts (hack#1: if they are paid, it’s usually because of the photo so the only thing you need to do is to replace the background image with some free stock photo). You will not make a great art with it but for the simple designs, it’s all you need. 14. Google Docs That’s the most obvious one but it would be a shame not to mention it at all. I put all my reports and important notes there — it’s easy to share, it allows many people to work simultaneously on one file. And the best thing: I can access my files from any device. _____ What are your top software tools? Share your list in a comment! Originally published by Claudia Słowik at neoteric.eu/blog on July 14th, 2016.