Starting a business is hard, especially when you don't have the right tools. But how do you knows which tools are the best to use?

Ask someone smart, efficient, and experienced--like Rob Fitzpatrick, a serial entrepreneur, author of a great book on how to talk to customers, and a partner at Founder Centric, designers and teachers of top-tier startup education.

Rob put together a brain dump of tools he frequently turns to for his projects. Some are more obvious, others fairly unusual, but each can be extremely useful for startups:

Talking to Customers

• Intercom--tasteful chat and help widgets for your site, plus good automated email triggers
• Drip--email courses and signup widgets for your site
• Mailchimp--newsletters and decent signup widgets
• Buffer--easier way to run your twitter and facebook accounts

Team collaboration

• Slack--chat and messaging to reduce internal email load, with one room per major project
• Github--repository for your source code plus task lists and collaboration with your developers
• Dropbox--all company files should be here, not on email attachments or personal folders
• Streak--simple CRM plugin for Gmail to manage and share your sales leads
• Trello--digital kanban board for project management
• Basecamp--I use it for project management with external teams who don't know our Trello workflow
• Stormboard--digital sticky notes for remote brainstorming and workshops
• Meldium--team password sharing and management

Domains

• Lean Domain Search--suggests all available .coms with a given keyword somewhere in the name
• Instant Domain Search--quickly check specific domain availability
• Namecheap--register your domains without getting screwed

Payments

• Square (US) or iZettle (elsewhere)--accept credit card payments with your phone, e.g. for market stalls and contractors
• Stripe--best payment processing online
• GoCardless (UK)--accept direct debit payments
• Gumroad--easily sell digital files like PDFs, videos, and links

Analytics

• Google Analytics--free and good enough for all your analytics needs
• Google Keyword Planner--see how many people are searching relevant terms
• Facebook Ads--use the targeting options to compare the approximate size and location of various interests and demographics

Physical Products and Print-on-Demand

• Createspace--upload a PDF, sell a printed book via Amazon
• Newspaper Club--ever wanted your own newspaper?
• The Game Crafter--prototype and sell your board and card games
• Shapeways--high quality 3d printing in a wide range of materials including gold and silver (for jewelry) and ceramics (for household goods); great for prototyping and market-testing physical products
• Alibaba--cut out the middle man and buy anything you want directly from the manufacturer; if you've ever wanted a 40' shipping container full of go karts, this is the place for you

Building Websites

• Squarespace--visual site builder with good themes and integrations with stores, payments, newsletters, etc
• Strikingly--easy site builder for nice single-page sites like manifestos, personal/company pages, or landing pages
• Shopify--for ecommerce and online stores
• Themeforest--if you need something custom, start by buying a $30 theme and editing it

Art

• Glyphicons--icon set
• 500px--non-cheesy stock photography
• Flickr Creative commons--search for photos with the appropriate usage rights
• Subtle Patterns--pretty much what it says on the tin; for backgrounds and textures

People

• Fiverr--pay $5 (or a bit more) for tasks ranging from logo design to copywriting
• 99designs--crowdsource design tasks (especially logos) for a few hundred dollars
• elance--various freelancers (assume you'll hire several for trial projects before finding good ones)
• Clarity.fm--pay-by-the-minute advice from various startup specialists
• Dribbble--browse designer portfolios, many of whom also freelance

Phones

• TextIt--create SMS applications without programming (e.g. for the developing world)
• Twilio--makes phone calls and SMS as easy to program as websites

Legals

• Docracy--open source legal documents
• Companies Made Simple (UK)--set up and manage a UK corporation for 19
• Duedil (UK)--nice interface over companies house interface to research industry and competitors

Learning

• Paul Graham's Essays--read the whole archive
• Tropical MBA--250 podcast episodes comprising the best source of knowledge on location independence and manufacturing businesses
• Seth Godin's Startup School--15 audio episodes covering a Seth's take on getting entrepreneurial
• Moz Learn--solid knowledge base on inbound marketing

News

• Hacker News--daily news for startup folks and hackers
• Product Hunt--daily new products

Investors

• f6s--listing of all accelerator programs (and lots of other info) and a social network for startups and angels
• AngelList--social network and funding platform for startups and angels
• Capitallist--like Angellist, but focused on London and the UK
• The Funded--reviews and testimonials of investors from the founders' perspective; do your investor due diligence here

Crowdfunding

• Crowdcube (UK)--equity crowd funding
• Seedrs (UK)--equity crowd funding
• Kickstarter--crowd-fund via pre-selling your products
• Indiegogo--crowd-fund via donations with a focus on arts and creative projects, including some which aren't allowed on KickStarter