50 tools that will help you launch your startup

Risen
18 min readJul 1, 2016

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Today we want to introduce you our vision of best tools that can help you to launch your startup.

This list will be useful for you if you’re looking for an easy way to incorporate your business, measure your traction, or growth hack your startup’s press coverage.

Listed below 50 tools to launch any kind of business in short time.

1. SketchApp

SketchUp Pro’s real forte is how simple it is to use. Large icons and customizable toolbars make it easy for even CAD beginners without taking away the powerful tools professionals need to create works of art. Despite its lack of a house wizard, a tool that walks you through the process of designing a house, this software makes it easy to create designs of all kinds. Though its overall feature package is quite impressive, we would have liked to have seen more architectural tools, which is not its strong point. While SketchUp Pro may not be the best tool for architectural design, it excels in designing and editing 2D and 3D concepts

2. Avocode

Avocode is an app for (web, mobile, game) developers made by developers. It can open and inspect various design formats (PSD, Sketch) without needing to own the original app. You can copy text, code (CSS, LESS, SASS,…), grab colors, gradients, font information, measure the distance between elements and save image assets. Avocode helps you spend more time designing. When you finish your work, you just sync the design via the Avocode extension or simply drag&drop the design to the Avocode Manager web interface. The developer can then quickly grab all the specification and assets they need without bothering you. Collaboration is much easier with Avocode.

3. Zeplin

Zeplin is an app for UI designers and frontend developers, enabling them to collaborate efficiently and save time. Designers can quickly turn their designs into powerful specs and guidelines while developers can access all the resources they need in a single location and generate code snippets that are tailored to the platform they’re working on.

4. Slack

Slack makes communication between yourself and your teammates not only easier, but better. The trick to loving this online platform is knowing when and how to use it, as it doesn’t fit all use cases. Slack is an online, social-messaging platform for groups. Collaborators can create a team in Slack and then log in to have group or private discussions, share materials and links with one another, or simply banter. All the communication on Slack gets grouped into different Channels, and everything is searchable. Slack works so well as a collaboration tool in business because of its notifications, which are plentiful and customizable.

5. Wrike

Businesses of all sizes typically have projects that they need to manage, and investing in a project management service is the way to do it. Wrike offers project management and it’s flexible enough to be a more general work-management and collaboration service, too. It gives small businesses and enterprises alike a central place for employees to work together and manage the resources they have. While it’s on the expensive side, Wrike’s key selling point is that it’s super quick to set up and requires little training to use.

6. ThemeForest

ThemeForest is part of Envato Market. At ThemeForest you can buy and sell HTML templates as well as themes for popular CMS products like WordPress, Joomla and Drupal. Items are priced on the complexity, quality and use of the file; the total price also includes a Buyer Fee. The site is home to a bustling community of web designers and developers and is the biggest marketplace of its kind.

7. ProductHunt

Product Hunt surfaces the best new products, every day. It’s a place for product-loving enthusiasts to share and geek out about the latest mobile apps, websites, hardware projects, and tech creations.

Product Hunt is now the place to discover the“next big things” in tech. Every day, it curates a list of the top products and startups that people haven’t heard of yet and lets a widening yet select group of members upvote, comment and discuss. Founders are using it as a launch pad, investors as a hunting ground, and many others just to stay in the know.

8. Wunderlist

Wunderlist is the easiest way to get stuff done. Wunderlist is here to help you tick off all your personal and professional to-dos. Organize and share your to-do, work, grocery, movies and household lists. Through the “Detail View,” users can add due dates (including repeating due dates), reminders, assignees, subtasks, comments, files and notes to tasks. Tasks can also be organized with #hashtags. The user adds lists to categorize tasks, and can place these lists in folders to organize their structure. Using a feature known as “Mail to Wunderlist”, users can send or forward emails to me@wunderlist.com to add tasks to their Wunderlist accounts. With the company’s browser and sharing extension known as “Add to Wunderlist”, content from the Web can be added to Wunderlist from Chrome, Firefox, Safari, iOS and Android.

9. Trello

Trello is an online, collaborative workspace you can use to manage projects of all kinds, whether they’re business-related or personal. It works fairly simply, with drag-and-drop capabilities and an intuitive interface, but it doesn’t include some more-traditional project management staples, such as Gantt charts, time-tracking components, or reporting tools. Trello is eye-catching and fun, but it’s not right for every project. It works best, in my opinion, for short and quick assignments, rather than tasks that take days or projects that take months.

10. JIRA Software

JIRA Software is an issue and project tracking tool designed for software development teams of all size, across all industries. Backed by over a decade of experience, the newly released JIRA Software combines JIRA’s historically popular workflow mapping and issue tracking with several agile development capabilities.

These new capabilities include Kanban and Scrum boards and reporting options such as burn down charts to help support teams at every stage in the development life cycle.

11. Google Apps for Business

Google Apps for Business combines all of the familiar productivity and collaboration tools by Google and combines them in an all-in-one suite for universal access across your team. The list of apps comprise: Gmail, Hangouts, Calendar, Google+, Drive, Sites, along with Google Docs, Sheets, Forms and Slides. Governance of these apps is provided by Google Admin Console and Google Vault. That final one is designed to archive corporate email in organisations that have to retain data for regulatory compliance

Google Apps is fast, lightweight, works on a wide range of devices, and is easy to use and administer. A very compelling product for SMEs.

12. Stripe Atlas

Atlas allow entrepreneurs around the world to easily incorporate a U.S. company, set up a U.S. bank, and start accepting payments from customers globally. This is a particularly useful product for entrepreneurs who have a global customer base, want to raise money from global investors, or are looking to build an operational presence in the U.S.

13. Basecammp

Basecamp keeps project management simple, but in some regards, too simple. The service remains simple to use and quick to set up, but it’s not nearly as robust as other online project management solutions. A Basecamp is a private, secure space online where people working together can organize and discuss everything they need to get a project done. See it, track it, discuss it, act on it. Tasks, discussions, deadlines, and files — everything’s predictably organized in Basecamp.

14. Pinterest

Pinterest gives Internet users another way to discover and explore visual content. The virtual pinboard concept has been tried before, and Pinterest executes the idea fairly well. With an invitation, you’ll be able to establish an account with the requisite username, email, and password. During this short setup, Pinterest will help you install a bookmark button that you can use to “pin” interesting things you see online.

15. Growth Tools

Growth Tools — it`s the resource list where you can find everything from smart analytics products to content marketing optimization tools, and the list goes on.

Within particular sections, you can filter down the options by subcategories. For instance, if you’re looking for a CRO software product with A/B testing functionality, you can slice the list down to see just the applicable tools. Even if you aren’t looking for more tools, browsing this site might give you some growth strategy ideas you hadn’t thought of before.

16. Submit.co

Getting press coverage for your startup or product launch can be a huge pain. Luckily, you’ll find a list of tech-related media sites — sortable by number of Twitter followers and Alexa rank — to help you find the media outlets that can best tell your story. This tool doesn’t do all the work for you (you still have to find specific journalist contacts, in most cases), but it sure makes it easier to come up with your initial outreach list. This is a great starting point that will save you a lot of time when it comes to formulating your PR strategy plan.

17. Maître

Maître is a copy/paste widget that can be embedded on any webpage. It’s basically a waiting list with a referral system built in. People are rewarded when signing up their friends by getting ahead in the queue.
It also integrates natively with MailChimp and supports webhooks & callbacks, so that you can really customise it any way you want.

18. Kissflow

If you are looking for simple task management, or ad-hoc ways of assigning work to small group of people then KiSSFLOW is probably not the right tool for you. However, if you are looking to fix the chaos of cumbersome business processes in your organization and turn them into streamlined workflows then you hit the right solution . KiSSFLOW is ideal for automating all the internal business processes and approval requests that are spread across Finance, Administration, Purchase and Human resources departments.

19. Good Email Copy

Email is still one of the most effective ways to build and engage your startup’s customer base. And, writing email copy remains one of the most tedious marketing tasks ever. If you don’t want to reinvent the wheel completely, check out Good Email Copy. Created by the Front app team, this is a collection of emails from great companies like Slack, Trello, Pinterest, Basecamp, Everlane, Eventbrite, Shopify, and more. You can sort by tag (e.g. welcome, thank you, new features, billing issue, invitation, upgrade, etc.), which makes it super easy to find sample copy related to the kind of email you want to write.

20. Signup!

If you want to know right away when someone signs up for your product but you don’t necessarily want to keep a metrics dashboard open all day, this is a great option. You’ll get a text whenever a registration happens so you know about it right away. Just sign up for an account, and then embed a javascript snippet to your webpage. This tool is especially useful if you’re working on a side project and not always keeping an eye on customer acquisition during most of your day.

21. DocuSing

Send, sign and approve documents from wherever life takes you. DocuSign moves the process of getting important documents signed completely online. Its tagging system shows the recipient what to do, and it offers a full court-accepted audit trail of the process. It’s a great choice for electronic signing of documents.

22. Salesmachine

Salesmachine helps alleviate that wasted time by telling you which customers you should focus on, creating tasks, and sending notifications to keep you up to date on customer activity and health.

Given your ability to track customers in realtime, you can proactively optimize trial conversion, upselling, and churn reduction. It’s like a CRM on speed, allowing you to spend less time on tracking and planning, and more time on understanding and delighting your customers.

23. Index

Getting your new business discovered can take a lot of time and research. Index is a smart tool that will help you keep track of the latest news in your industry such as acquisitions, investments, and information on specific companies. This intuitive software will pull data from several resources on the web and provide valuable insights and functions such as keeping a customer list handy. Your business will forge new relationships and close deals faster than finding all of this valuable information yourself.

24. LaunchSky

Do you have an app idea or have finished one, but don’t know who to pitch it to? LaunchSky provides an easy way to present your digital product to 10,000 professional subscribers. Get valuable feedback and help others formulate their ideas at the same time. Your app is prominently placed on the website with quick access to your communication and ratings.

25. Reddit

If you would like great feedback from like-minded individuals on your new business then this is place to be. Reddit‘s Entrepreneur community has over 100,000 subscribers who are either interested in what you have to offer or are starting a new business themselves. Use this platform to gather ideas, generate interest, and gain helpful advice that will steer you in the right direction.

26. BetaList

Get feedback for your business idea. Creating a product that consumers will love is what your business wants in order to be successful. BetaList is a great way to post your idea to 25,000 users all from one place. This resource is especially useful for helpful feedback that you can use to make improvements before your official launch. Listing is free with a paid option available.

27. Unbounce

The first interaction your audience will have with your idea is through a landing page, and that’s why it’s critical for a page to convert. Unbounce features nearly 300 responsive landing page templates that you can build yourself, cutting out the need for a technical support middleman.

28. Creately

This is where a diagramming tool like ours comes in handy. You can create a mind map of the product launch, flowchart of various processes in your business, SWOT analysis for market research, wire-frames and mock-ups to build your site, Gantt chart of timelines and a whole lot more.

Typically you need to use separate products for mind maps, Gantt charts etc but with Creately all this can be done using one web based tool. Importantly it has real-time collaboration so you can easily work with your co-founders, investors, employees and freelancers.

30. Hostt

Hostt.com is the best one from the a lot of available free WordPress hosting sites.

You can get a free hosting package from Hostt and it also offers unlimited bandwidth and data transfer. Of course, there will be limitations to the package and when your site starts getting more traffic, you will have to move your blog to a paid hosting service, but till then, you can use free WordPress hosting from Hostt.com website.

31. SearchMetrics

Searchmetrics delivers enterprise SEO and content marketing analysis, recommendations, forecasting and reporting for companies that want potential customers to find them faster. It means prospects and customers spend less time searching and more time buying.

Additionally you can do a back link analysis, domain analysis, social media analysis, keyword research and a whole lot more. And once you start making sales you can upgrade to the full suite as well.

32. QuickBooks

QuickBooks is probably the most popular small business accounting software. Its web based, easy to setup and works across various types of devices.

It provides plenty of features to track your expenses and sales and has in built tools to manage your taxes. You can even invite an accountant to collaborate on your finances. Additionally you can generate branded professional looking invoices, quickly focus on important things like overdue payments etc.

33. AYTM.

Stands for “Ask Your Target Market.” If you’re looking for pre-launch verification on your chosen target audience, this is an extremely helpful tool. You can pre-screen your audience along several demographics and create quick surveys with massive reach. It’s even useful post-launch to gauge target interest.

34. ZenDesk

Zendesk is suitable for any company that wants to improve its customer services no matter the size or industry sector. However, the software is extensively used in IT, Education, Retail/e-Commerce and Professional Services. It can basically be employed by any company that uses net technology to interact with their customers.

Zendesk is generally very popular as it is used by many thousands of small, medium and large corporations around the globe. Some of the most characteristic examples include 20th Century Fox, Vodafone, Elance, Groupon, L’Oreal, Xerox, Sears and Sony Music.

35. HootSuite

Hootsuite will help you to manage social profiles Update multiple networks in one step, including Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Wordpress, and Pingfm Manage multiple contributors and share data and access without sharing passwords Work efficiently with social streams, tabs, and columns — plus a choice of design themes Fine-tune your team by delegating messages and monitoring responses and progress Optimize delivery by choosing the best time and date to reach your audience Gather intelligence by tracking mentions of your brand, industry, or search terms .Feel comfortable with language localization in Japanese, French and Italian .

36. GetResponse

With this tool you can maximize the effectiveness of your campaigns even after they’re complete. GetResponse Email Intelligence designed to make tracking, gauging and analyzing a real pleasure. Make smart decisions within minutes: compare follow-ups, measure site conversions, segment subscribers with one click or view hourly fluctuations. You can quickly design opt-in forms, integrate with social media profiles, view subscriber profiles, set up sequences, create segments and a whole lot more with GetResponse.

37. ClickWebinar

As the name implies you can use ClickWebinar to conduct webinars. Webinars play a crucial role when you’re launching a product or service. You can use them to discuss with your beta users and improve the product. You can use them to pitch to investors /angels and convince them of your idea. You can even use them to educate users of the features of your product.

In the initial stages educating and convincing others about your idea is critical and webinars are a great tool to do that. Plus you can upload the recorded sessions to YouTube or any other video sharing site and get some exposure that way as well.

38. Upwork

Upworck (ODeask up to may 2015) is not exactly a tool but rather a site where you can outsource your work. When you’re starting out you will find yourself doing lots of tedious tasks and sometimes these can overwhelm you.

Need to get a quick design done, want a copywriter to go through your sales pitch, need to build a mobile app for your product? All these can be done easily by outsourcing to a freelancer. This helps you to focus on your core abilities and spend less time doing menial tasks.

39. Zapier

Save time by using Zapier to automate tasks between web apps. For example: it can automatically create Wrike tasks from received emails, and add events to your calendar without you lifting a finger.

40. GoToMeeting

A web conference tool that allows you to switch speakers, which is great for remote team meetings. We use it to host our monthly all-hands internal meetings, and all our employees can join the call by clicking their personal link.

41. SnapEngage

As Wrike is a company that prides itself on excellent customer success and real-time support, SnapEngage lets us chat with customers instantly. Our “Live Chat” button lives at the bottom of our Help pages so that people can ask us questions as soon as they come to mind.

42. Salesforce

One of the most popular CRM tools around for a reason, it organizes your entire prospective customer pipeline from the first sales contact to the close of a deal. You can see every contact and every conversation in one central hub.

43. Marketo

They have several products, but we use their tools for automating our emails. You don’t have to have ANY tech savvy to create great emails using Marketo, which means our Marketing team doesn’t have to bother the Development team in order to get things done.

44. Asana

Asana is used by our organization to keep track of tasks and to manage product features to be implemented in the software. It is also used to assign tasks to other people and maintain a monthly task calendar. It is used across the whole organization.

45. Bitly

Everyone knows it shortens URLs, but we love using it to track how many clicks we’re getting on the links we post. It helps us analyze our messaging and our social media placement.

46. Buffer

Truly an amazing tool for scheduling social media posts on multiple platforms. We’ve linked our Facebook page, Twitter account, LinkedIn account, and Google Plus account to Buffer… all for free! If we find 10 awesome posts we want to retweet, we can buffer them so we don’t bury our Twitter followers in 10 simultaneous updates or lose track of the cool content.

Below you can find not actually a tools , but very useful programs and websites that are dedicated to providing funding, advice and resources to startups.

When you join those programs you get access to plenty of tools at heavily discounted prices.

47. F6S

Deals for Unbounce, Creately, ZenDesk and plenty more awesome tools. This is a very active community that constantly come up with new deals. Plus they have some great resources for entrepreneurs.

48. Startacus

Another startup community with some great resources. They have some great deals for PR, business cards etc.

49. StartupBootcamp

This one’s hard to get in but if you managed to get selected you get access to awesome advisers and probably the best deals any startup can get.

50. CrunchBase

CrunchBase — is the free database of technology companies, people, and investors that anyone can edit. Great resource for quickly looking up information about ventures. Incredibly handy for angel investors, comparing competitors, and tracking executive movements. When combined with AngelList and LinkedIN you’re pretty much all set.

Or maybe you have an incredible idea for another, absolutely new tool, website or app?

Having a partner along the startup journey is essential.
Together with us, we can grow quicker

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We build and grow businesses. We can help with yours.

INFO@RISENDOT.COM

Hope that you found something for your business. If you found this useful don’t forget to share it with others.

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Risen

We’re a team of startup and technology enthusiasts! Check what we’ve done here www.risendot.com