
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
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
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