99 Designs 68 Startup Tools That Entrepreneurs Shouldn't Live Without

60 Great Tools and Resources for Entrepreneurs and Startups

From taking payments to building websites to talking to customers to team collaboration and finding investors... and much more.

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

Oct 27, 2014