Building a startup is incredibly hard. From ideation to the first launch, a startup has so many phases.
So, how do you hack this massive initiative?
Look close. Your best solution is inside your ecosystem.
Instead of toiling for days, take help and invest your resources that can be a game-changer in your startup.
There are multiple tools and software that can give the first boost that your venture needs. Following are some of the best-performing ones.
Top 5 Tools to Invest in Your Startup
There are two significant factors that determine the success of a startup. How you utilize your 1) time and 2) money. Since both are scarce for a startup, it makes complete sense why you need to growth-hack your process.
Following are a few tools that can help you optimize both your resources alike.
- Ideation tools
This is the make or break point of every startup. No matter how disruptive your idea is, your idea isn’t going to manifest if there is no market to serve.
According to a CBInsights survey, 42% of a startup fails because there is no market need. This means to stay on track, you need to pivot from bad ideas to good ideas quickly.
Following are a few tools that can help you in this process.
This could be your best business advisor at help in real-time. No matter what stage you are in your entrepreneurial journey, decision-making will shape your career. It ensures ambitious entrepreneurs like you have access to valuable advice from industry experts. It connects you with industry leaders from across the globe. This Community of experts can help you overcome any challenge that you might be facing. Whether it is growth hacking or fundraising, market research, training, or product building, this is a must-tool in an entrepreneur’s handy box.
It helps you keep track of your idea and always stay linked to its bigger picture. From validating seed ideas to sharing your vision, you are in control of everything. Germ helps to reiterate your business idea with time with a blueprint to follow with real-time support. You can develop actionable strategies with your why’s, what’s and how’s at the heart of everything you do.
Javelin speeds up the complete ideation workflow for lean startups. This is a one-stop solution for customer and market discovery.
Javelin helps you turn your idea hypothesis into concrete facts through validation. It allows you to find your target customer, their pain points, and most importantly, your product-market fit. This means validating your products is an absolute breeze.
2. MVP tools
Jim Brikman of YCombinator couldn’t have been more correct when he said, “Your MVP is not a product; it’s a process.”
It is needless to reinforce the importance your MVP has on the long-term success of your startup. From idea validation to product-market fit, your MVP can give you a lot of rich insights.
Following are a few tools that can help you launch your MVP as fast as today.
Managing design projects have become really easy with Foyr. This tool helps to complete designs two times faster and what’s more, it helps to enhance productivity levels by helping maintain a steady workflow of projects. Do away with all other complex tools and move to Foyr and see your unique design ideas transform into realistic renders.
Pro Tip: If you’re in an architecture and design industry vertical, there is a colossal difference in your go-to prototyping tool. Sketchup is a good option. However, if you want to try a good Sketchup alternative, you can always try. The goal here is to team up with the tool with which you are most comfortable using every day.
Building user-friendly websites Balsamiq is a true genius of user interactivity. If you’re at the stage of building low-fidelity wireframes, Balsamiq can help you achieve all your customer experience goals.
3. Launch tools
Launching a startup is a big deal for any startup. After all, it is the first test that your product passes through to find product-market fit. A lot of preparation goes into this.
From ideation to customer mapping to execution, multiple factors altogether make a successful launch. However, to give you traction, the following are a few lists of tools that can keep you on the right track.
With ProductHunt, you can never go wrong with your product launch. It is one of the best platforms to get your product in front of your audience.
What’s more, you can get the very first reviews about your products from tech-savvy enthusiasts. Having an operating mechanism a lot like Reddit, the website allows you real-time insights to see user comments and votes towards your product. The best part is that its massive community of testers willing to try out your product. This means you can get the first set of reviews about your product within a few hours of launch.
If you plan to do a pre-launch promotion of your product, Beta List is your best choice. This unique platform is developed to give your startup the ultimate traction for a successful launch.
But that is not the best part. Putting your startup idea in front of a community of savvy business enthusiasts is its real USP. This not only renders you valuable feedback but lets you develop an unfair advantage in the long run.
Helping over 3,000 startup founders fill the market needs gap, this platform uses qualitative and quantitative research to develop a product that your audience loves.
An early-stage buzz about your startup often leads to a short-lived surge in the sales funnel. Although this cannot be a long-term strategy, it has a high-value impact on short-term sales, something a startup launch always covets. It is your DIY press kit developer. This user-friendly platform makes PR look so easy that you have no reason not to engage more eyeballs in the digital space.
4. Marketing tools
Building a great product is one thing, and marketing it successfully is entirely another. Infact, as your venture grows, your marketing endeavor can often look like developing another completely different product. Taking help here is the smartest decision you can make. Automating marketing tasks not only streamlines your process but makes room for efficient strategy development.
Following are a few tools that can help you in your marketing venture.
Almost all businesses today consider data as the most crucial element of their decisions. Attest is precisely built to help you with this point. It simplifies the process of collecting useful customer data and makes market research efforts easier for everyone. With Attest, you get access to a variety of templates that will help you do your job effectively. Some prominent examples are the brand tracker template, jobs to be done survey template, etc. These templates are carefully designed to perfection and makes you redefine your market proposition by providing important insights.
This tool is the hero of email marketing. With its on-point delivery, you can stay assured of your emails not reaching your audience’s spam folders.
But that’s not all. Mailchimp drag and drop email template builder and segmentation capabilities are what makes it every founder’s choice.
- Google Analytics
This is the master tracker of your website traffic. It not only allows you to test your strategies but also provides a superior user experience. But the true power of Google Analytics lies in campaign monitoring.Planning and executing campaigns is super easy and fast, which keeps your campaigns agile.
5. Finance management tools
Managing finances might not be the reason you started a startup. But keeping the monetary flow in control is one of the critical points of keeping your startup running smoothly. Without money, your startup can’t float. To make this unproductive yet high-importance task easier for you, we’ve a few suggestions of tools.
If your startup idea is facing procrastination because of lack of capital, Foundersuite is your troubleshoot. This platform ensures that startup fundraising does not stay a monster anymore. Bringing structure, speed, and efficiency improves founder-investor relationships.
What’s more, it’s an in-built CRM tool that helps manage your investor funnel, a searchable venture capitalist database, and an investor updater tool for efficient monthly progress reports.
Gust is another strong alternative to Foundersuite.
This is your one-stop startup invoicing and accounting solution. Automating financial tasks like organizing expenses, invoicing, payment tracking, and follow-ups, FreshBooks keeps your startup accounting process fast, secure and convenient. Its integration capabilities with Mailchimp, Paypal, Basecamp, and Zenpayroll make it even more coveted.
InDinero is a strong alternative to Freshbooks to consider. The cloud-based accounting software’s on-demand CFO feature is what distinguishes it from the rest.
Parting advice
While all of the tools and software mentioned above can boost your per capita productivity, they cannot guarantee success. The most critical job of your startup depends on you. Tools can only help you achieve your goals in record time.
Stay mindful of every stakeholder that your business comprises. Be it your end customers or investors or startup development team, how you manage your people.
At the end of the day, business is about people.
