Tooling up for the start

Every three weeks or so it seems that somebody I know is quitting their job to start a new company. Some of them ask me what tools we are using at Zonoma; tools that can be deployed quickly and are suitable for a small budget. It has never been easier or cheaper to tool up for a new start-up. You can use many of these services before your company officially incorporates, or even if you are starting another kind of initiative.

1. Think of a good name for your business and reserve the corresponding domain name. I use pairnic to reserve and manage my domain names.
2. For the indispensable basics such as email (with your own domain name), shared calendar, instant messaging and a hosted website I use Google Apps which is free but you have to apply first. Personally, I love the Gmail interface, but if you don't you can use the service with Outlook and most other email interfaces.
3. (Microsoft Office Live is an alternative way to get a domain name and a home page for free but I haven't tried it)
4. Use Skype for presence indication, free or low-cost calls and video conferences
5. Sign up for shared cost voice conferencing (I use conferenceUK, I am sure similar services exist in other countries)
6. Reduce or defer your investment in an office suite by using one of the excellent alternatives available (ThinkFree, Zoho, Google Docs, OpenOffice). When the time comes time to wrangle large client data sets, the investment in Excel ($185) may be justified in order to use the wonderful pivot table interface.
7. I use Freshbooks for time recording and billing. The service starts out free but reasonable fees are  charged as you grow your use of the service. (Only thing I could wish for in Freshbooks would be for my clients to be able view the unbilled hours, WIP, on their projects.)
8. Free but excellent: I use Vyew for conferencing where screen sharing is essential. Vyew works even when you have a combination of Mac and Windows users meeting online.
9. Backup is boring but important to address up front. Some tools reduce the pain (check out Carbonite, but it only works on Windows)
10. Think you need MS Project for project management? Think again; when was the last time you resource leveled a project plan? For most of my projects I use a collaboration platform instead of project management software. It is more important to share task lists with the project members than be a bottleneck when it comes to updating Gantt-charts (more about collaboration platform below)
11. Don't buy servers unless you already have the people to manage them. Cut down on complexity by looking for applications offered as a service (SaaS). If some of your applications require servers, consider the many options for hosting (such as Amazon's on-demand hosting).
12. For interacting in the real world, get the best business cards you can find. You can have business cards printed that look better than many top-5,000 companies'. I use StreetCards for the more traditional format and Moo cards to really be different. I haven't yet come across a reason to invest in company letterhead.

Advanced tools:

• If you like Mac computers you can still use yours while working with a client who uses Windows. Parallels software ($80) allows you to mimic your client's setup (and play with Linux if that is your thing).
• For brainstorming, note taking and exchanging ideas, I use Mind Manager ($230 and up). Freemind is an open source free alternative.
• Use a collaboration platform to co-ordinate activities internally and with clients, co-write proposals etc. Basecamp and Backpack are simple and cheap options, Trac is good for managing software projects. For a full and flexible solution, use a wiki.
• You can manage your sales and CRM processes in a mind map if you want, or using your collaboration platform, but if you prefer forms check out Zoho CRM or SugarCRM as alternatives to Salesforce.com.

Advanced behaviours:

• Keep informed of your field and who mentions you or topics you are interested in. The web is easy to monitor. Set up a profile on Google Alerts or Google Blogsearch and stay updated via email or RSS.

• Related to the point above: Don't just listen but take part in the discussion that is already happening in your field.

• Your home page is not going to excite potential customers unless you use it for sharing your most recent insights and encourage discussion. Make your home page a blog; publish your contact details in the upper right hand corner and link to more mundane pages such as "about us".

I hope the list makes sense; feel free to comment on how you use these tools in your business or point out other tools that have helped you. Simple and cheap tools that happen to be excellent for running a business are available in the market today. Using them gives you more time and cash to invest in your business.

Tags: startup tools freeware Google Zoho MindJet Skype freemind OpenOffice Apple Mac Parallels ThinkFree Freshbooks wiki Vyew

Comments

[Mayur]

You have some excellent links here. However, for business cards, I think you may be paying too much. If you are in Canada, check out www.printprint.ca. I think the prices are more competitive and you can do color, full bleed, double sided

[Mike McDerment]

Lars: good news regarding your FreshBooks request - it's only a few days away.

We will be sending out an email soon to our clients and posting to our blog soon with the exact date and time. There are a number of other goodies in there for timesheet users - hope you like it.

- Mike

[Tim]

Nice post.

[Paul]

Very useful post!

Another suggestion I can make for free web conferencing and desktop sharing is Yugma FREE (see https://www.yugma.com). It's free forever. Allows you to invite up to 10 people anytime! Works great on Windows and Mac (I hear Linux is coming soon). Nice annotation and whiteboarding features.

Nice thing is that it is all super easy and all in real time. No files to upload. I also like their Yugma Widget Button. Very useful and cool. see https://www.yugma.com/yugma_buttons/index.php

-Paul

[Søren Tvermoes]

So fairly simple, yet so important to know for new starters. Well done, Zonoma, this is great inspiration.

Søren

[Joe]

I see that you mention Mind Manager and Free Mind - I have tried out all the Mind Mapping applications I could find (including both of those) and think that NovaMind is by far the best Mind Mapping application out there - much less expensive than Mind Manager, and produces much nicer Mind Maps. Suggest you download it and try it out. I love this app - it has improved my productivity so much.

[Simon Carswell]

A very useful post - thanks

[Brain Donor]

The Brain Donor Naming System is a great way to create lots of unique name options for your new company or product. Check it out at www.brain-donor.com

[Nadir PATIR]

Teamwork CRM ile satış kadronuzun verimliliğini ve satışlarını artırın.