5 tools for Scrappy Startups
Cover your SaaS without spending the cash.
Hi Internets. I’m Paul. Co-founder of a startup based in Denver that recently graduated from Techstars Boulder.
Time to get down to business.
1. Kato
We landed on Kato after fighting with a number of other chat-based SaaS products. This is the main collaboration tool we use and have it pinned open in our browsers throughout the day. It allows us to have conversations across the organization no matter where we are — sitting across the table or working remotely across the country. It does an incredible job at keeping everyone in the loop by also offering a number of integrations that will alert you of new commits on GitHub, support tickets from UserVoice, email errors through SendGrid, etc.
Disclaimer: These guys were in our Techstars class, but I assure you that has little bearing on why we use them today.
UPDATE: Kato shutdown since “Slack took over the world”. Slack is a great free alternative.
2. Zoom
Simple video conferencing. Free for teams of 25 with a limit of 40 minutes per call (which is actually a nice feature to keep from getting sidetracked). The free version is pretty powerful. You can schedule recurring events — which allows us to have a daily 15 min stand-up with the Zoom details in each of our calendars. You can also dial-in if you’re having issues with bandwidth, and they, of course, have mobile apps that let you call in as well.
PROTIP: When placing call details in calendar invites you can format the numbers as “+1(555)555-5555,,12345678"(including the commas) so mobile phones can click-to-dial. The phone will translate the commas as pauses and automatically connect you.
3. Buffer
Making sure your social profiles are active and pushing relevant content usually isn’t something startup founders spend a lot of their time on. Buffer does one thing and does it damn well: publish content to your LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Google Plus. You simply fill it with links & content and it pushes it out on your behalf at scheduled intervals throughout the day. I’m usually catching up on my reading either super late or super early in the morning so Buffer makes it possible to push out tweets at a time when they’re more likely to be seen. One of the draws for us was that we could tap into our Bit.ly account so Buffer is now churning out URLs with our own brand at http://share.bf.vu.
They have a somewhat limiting free option, but definitely worth using. You’ll need to look at the $10/mo option if you want to mix company & personal profiles in one convenient account (which we’re now doing).
Bonus: The Buffer blog has some great content around being a tech entrepreneur.
4. Mention
This helps track the conversations happening around Brandfolder, as well as our competitors. It does a great job at pulling in any “mention” of certain keywords we set. We have it setup to track keywords like “Brandfolder”, “Brand folder”, and our competitors. Just these few keywords are plenty noisy for us to keep up with. It pulls in content not only from Twitter & Facebook, but also the greater web — which is something I haven’t seen other keyword tracking tools pick up.
Mention got bonus points from me because they caught this article & retweeted it :)
5. Google Apps
You might be wondering why this is in a list of other free tools for your business, because as of Dec 6, 2012 you can no longer create a free account on Google Apps. I’ve always thought this was pretty anti-entrepreneur despite their big push this year of Google for Entrepreneurs.
Even with the now $5/mo/user charge I still have to keep it in the list. It’s so crucial to our startup for email & documents that we’d be forced to pay if weren’t grandfathered into the free plan.
PROTIP: Smaller teams could utilize a free Gmail account with a forwarding/send-as setup.
…and of course I shouldn’t leave out one final recommendation: Brandfolder! Yes, it’s a shameless plug for my company but we’re hoping you find it useful…and if you found any of the recommendations useful, I’d certainly appreciate a share!
