Being a founder is not as easy as you think it might be. And even though it is a thrilling experience, it is also very exhausting. With all this, you need to be prepared for anything and everything that will and might come your way. You should be armed not just with the passion for your product, but also with all the latest startup tools that will help you in making your overall journey.
It’s important to be armed with a passion for your product and the latest tools to make your journey successful. Moreover, the number of startup tools available online are endless. Choosing the right ones from them can seem like a hard job to do. In fact, the best tools are those that help the new market products, reduce costs, save time, and guard you against legal and cybersecurity trouble. That is why we have created a top must-have list keeping these criteria in mind.
Here are the top 10 most useful tools that will help your startup in 2020:
It is normal for the software engineering teams in startups to rely completely on open source as the base for building their products. But as they use the open-source code for their work, it is important they the company doesn’t risk compliance issues or compromise on its security. Taking care of this is a task in itself and that is where the WhiteSource tool comes into handy.
This is one of the best startup tools that will take care of the security and compliance issues. It suggests the open-source components that would suit your needs as you search online. Moreover, it would also send you alerts in case it finds any software bugs, security risks, and policy problems. In fact, it is a highly versatile tool that works with any programming language.
Other than the startup tools mentioned above, being a founder, you will need to keep track of all the shares in your company. This is especially if you are about to take in investments and grow your company. For this, Eqvista is a great cap table management application that allows companies to track, manage and make intelligent decisions related to the equity and ownership of the company. In fact, you can issue shares electronically, stay complaint with the equity laws, and manage all the shares in your company with Eqvista.
The first impression is everything. So, when an investor comes to evaluate your startup before they invest in it, you need to be prepared for the due diligence process. This means that you should have all your documentation in place. These documents usually include tax documents, financial statements go-to-market strategy decks, intellectual-property documents, and development plans.
And if you feel that keeping such documents in paper form is easy, then you are wrong. The best way to store all these documents is by setting up a cloud-based virtual data room (VDR). ContractZen is one of the best startup tools for this. Setting this up is very easy where it can be done with just a few clicks. The user interface is interactive and simple to use.
With this, you will be able to eliminate the trouble of opening folders or bringing out papers. You just need to search for the document and you will get the one you are looking for immediately. In fact, ContractZen also incorporates additional features like the calendar app, email feature, and e-signature services.
This is another one of the startup tools that you should have. It is a webinar platform that can help you in building important partnerships without the need of leaving your office. You will need to begin by creating branded invitations for your sales presentation or online demo. And then get all the leads from your email list into this application to send the invites directly.
As soon as one of the lead accepts the invite, you can have a virtual face-to-face meeting with them to offer them a live demo of your product. ClickMeeting additional features that would help you include the use of whiteboard technology to share information, and screen sharing to display anything from your system. It is a great app that will help you get a lot done sitting in your office.
How tiring is it to schedule a meeting with a client? Doesn’t it take you a ton of emails before you both have decided on the time for the meeting? With Calendly, the hassle of spending hours on deciding a meeting time is taken away. It takes care of all the process.
And once you have scheduled a meeting, all you need to do is share the link with the person allowing them to select the time that they are comfortable with for the meeting. In fact, it is a great time saving application that you can use.
Being a startup is not easy. You need to give time and understand all about your industry and company so that you can successfully handle your brand and connect with your target audience. In today’s digital business landscape. And since there are many different platforms and digital landscapes in the world today, it will take a lot of your time for monitoring all these things.
That is where SentiOne comes into handy. Known as one of the best startup tools, it is a social listening platform. It allows you to tap in directly to what the world is saying about you and your industry on any of the social media platforms or important websites.
Basically, this tool will also scan all the forums, blogs and news websites online. It would also help you in tracking your brand reach and the sentiment by buzz and word-of-mouth marketing. In short, you will be able to reach the hearts of your audiences easily by understanding what they want with this application.
Do your visitors find your website intuitive and easy to use? Complexity of a website can make you lose a lot of business. Basically, when a visitor isn’t able to navigate through your website, you will begin to lose all your potential customers. But, how do you find this out and take care of this? Well, that is where WalkMe comes in the picture.
WalkMe makes everything easy for all the first time users of the website. It helps users navigate through the website without any trouble by offering them with intuitive visual elements for the navigation. This would in turn reduce the bounce rate and increase the conversion rates.
When you open a startup, there will be a time when you will need to hire employees for your company. There are many startup tools for this online, but one of the best ones that can help you is Freshteam. It would take the complete hiring process and condense it into a single dashboard. With this, a single manager can gain control and see all the candidates in one place. This tool would also help you source and filter the top talents to find the best candidate that is close to you easily.
Each day, there might be many things that distract people from their goal. To overcome this, it is important to organize all the tasks and work towards a goal. Trello is one of the best startup tools for this. You can easily create tasks and share it with your team to keep their goals in mind. In fact, you can create notes for each and every tiny little thing like the code components, marketing plans, or anything that your team needs to build for your business to roll freely.
In fact, Trello helps in managing a project very easily. You will be able to assign tasks to the right people and get updates about it. Trello also allows you to create a CRM that is easy to use and that manages your contact information of all your leads. You can keep all the detailed notes of every interaction with yoru leads store in Trello to access and analyze in the future when needed.
How do you grow a brand and how do you spread the name of your product? With marketing, right? Well, Falcon is a great social media marketing application that helps your team grow the brand name easily and fast in the market. In fact, you can easily create posts, schedule them, edit them, and publish them on any social media platform easily.
Other than this, with Falcon, you can easily store all your content and manage it as well. Additional features include a single sign in to all the social media platforms, get notifications directly here and handle them, track the analytics and understand the audience better with this application.
Obviously, none of the million available startup tools would “make” your company successful. However, if you have a great business idea and you have the passion to achieve your goals, then these startup tools can do their bit to help you in accomplishing your goals. So, try them out when your startup is ready to move forward!