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The Best Tools Every Entrepreneur Should Know

Smarter, Not Harder

Sarah Vo
20 min readAug 2, 2018
Entrepreneurship In A Nutshell (Source: everyvowel.com)

Starting a company is like jumping off a cuff and assembling the plane on the way down. The life of a founder is a demanding one that never seems to offer in enough hours in the day. But thankfully there’s lots of useful websites and tools to help ease the load.

I’ve put together a cheat sheet of the best websites, tools and resources for entrepreneurs. Some are free, some are paid, but all of them are great.

— Productivity —

Utilities

  • Google Search: The most popular web search engine.
  • Zapier: Creates automated actions between disparate business and productivity apps.
  • Wirecutter: Reviews and recommends products.
  • Startup Stash: Curated directory of resource & tools to help you build your startup.
  • Startup Deals: Deal bundle for the best resources and tools to help founders launch and build startups.
  • Google Apps Script library: Finds free, ready-to-use open source code that requires very little programming knowledge.
  • Boingo: A Wi-fi hotspot provider ($4.98/month in the US and $59/month for worldwide).

Zen

  • Clean My Mac: Removes unnecessary files and frees up space on your Mac.
  • Momentum: Chrome extension that replaces tabs with gorgeous hi-res images and inspirational quotes.
  • Self Control: Blocks access to distracting websites on your Mac.
  • Kills New Feed: Disables your Facebook newsfeed so you can focus better.
  • Focus@will: 4X your productivity with music.
  • Flux: Warms up your computer screen at night so you can sleep better.
  • Calm: Reduces stress so you can sleep better.

Documents

  • Google Translate: Helps you interact in just about every language even without phone service or roaming charges.
  • Microsoft Office: Includes Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook, OneNote, Sway for home or business users. (Read more here)
  • Microsoft Outlook for iOS: Brings all your email accounts, calendars, apps, data, etc in one convenient spot.
  • Microsoft Excel Business Templates: If you’re not ready to commit to an annual subscription, these Excel templates will get the job done.
  • Office 365: Online version of Microsoft Office.
  • Gsuite: Includes Gmail, Hangouts, Calendar, Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Forms, Sites, and more.
  • Mixmax: Best Gmail extension to enhance your emails with polls, gifs, etc.
  • StuffIt Expander: Opens compressed RAR and ZIP files.
  • PDF24 / Smallpdf / PDF Pro: A free PDF editing software.
  • Docspal: Converts doc to png.
  • Genius Scan: Quickly scans and exports your documents.
  • i2OCR: Extracts text from images.
  • Online OCR: Extracts text from images. Converts PDF’s to Doc’s & other file formats.
  • Letter Count: Removes formatting from text and counts your characters.
  • Boomerang: Schedules your emails and sends gmail reminders.
  • WhenSend / FutureMe: Sends emails to the future.
  • Clearbit Connect: Finds emails and smart contact info.
  • Voila Norbert: Finds emails.

Digital Asset Management

Task Management

Project Management

Communication

  • Intercom / Customer.io / Olark: Provides direct access to users, opening a channel to communicate.
  • Zoom / GoToMeeting / Skype: Online meeting and video conferencing tool that enables you to collaborate online with colleagues and customers in real time.
  • Slack: The best messaging software that brings all your communication together in one place for modern teams.
  • WhatsApp / Google Hangouts / Facebook Messenger: Gives you access to voice-based or video chat.
  • Twitter: The most impactful tool that has removed barriers to engage with people and broadcast information personally.
  • Otter AI: Live speakers are captioned, meetings are recorded, notes are taken in real-time, written transcriptions of the talks and an automated outline are produced so that everyone can share and remember everything.

Outsourcing

Navigation

  • Google My Maps: Creates custom maps for personal use or sharing.
  • Waze: Gets driving directions and alerts about accidents, police, road hazards or traffic jams.
  • Uber / Grab: A peer-to-peer ridesharing and food delivery.

— Finance —

  • FreshBooks / You Need A Budget / Mint / Expenses Ok / Expense Keep: Tracks expenses, income while giving you access to simple reporting features.
  • PearBudget Spreadsheet: A popular personal/home budget template (that was the foundation of a resulting app).
    Microsoft Excel (“Simple budget and “Family budget”) / Apple’s Numbers (“Simple budget” and “Personal budget”): Has useful charts, tips, and projections baked into them.
    Budgeting Forms / Monthly Cash Flow Plans (both by Dave Ramsey): Offers just enough zero-sum guidance without being overwhelming.
  • Paypal / Square / Zelle / Venmo: Receives and sends payments from all over the world. (Honey: PayPal’s web browser tool — finds promo codes while you shop online and automatically applies the best discount to your cart)
  • Stripe: Billing / online payments and subscriptions management for any subscription service, on-demand marketplace, e-commerce store, or crowdfunding platform.
  • Coinbase: Secures online platform for trading cryptocurrencies.
  • Robinhood: Free stock trading app with no brokerage fees.
  • Betterment / Wealthfront / Ellevest: The best online money managers.
  • Openfolio: App that tracks your finances and investment decisions.
  • Barchart: Compares stocks and quickly turns your findings into charts.
  • Koyfin: Markets information.
  • Wave Accounting: Tracks invoices and expenses.
  • Gusto: Provides a cloud-based payroll, benefits, and HR management solution for businesses.
  • Sofi: Manages your investments with human advisors. Provides personal loans at higher balance and lower rates.
  • Fundera: Offers small micro loans.
  • Kickstarter / Gofundme / Indiegogo / Patreon: The world’s largest crowdfunding platforms for creative projects. Enables businesses to raise money directly from their audience.
  • Fundable: A crowdfunding platform that offers both rewards-based and equity-based campaigns for $179/month.
  • Gust: Connects with accredited angels and startup investors from 1000 investment organizations in 190 countries.
  • AngelList: Finds investors, incubators or talent for Seed and Early Stage Venture Investments.
  • Product Hunt: Discovers deals.
  • Startup Decks: Views 100s of new and establish startup pitch decks or submit your own, completely free. A must-read for anyone looking to build strong pitch.

— Marketing —

Nira: 300+ free pre-built marketing docs and templates from experts so you can be lazy (AirTables, Google Sheets, Trello Boards etc)

Content Marketing

  • WordPress / HubSpot: The most well-known CMS.
  • Kapost / QuuuPromote: Manages and promotes your content.
  • Social Crawlytics / Builtvisible: Identifies popular posts and topics.
  • AnswerThePublic / BuzzSumo / Blog Idea Generator / StoryBase: Knows what people search for regarding a specific keyword about a topic.
  • Keyword Planner: Helps you understand search volume for queries that are relevant to your business.
  • Ahrefs: Knows which piece of content have been driving the most traffic and generating backlinks for your competitors.
  • Portent’s Content Idea Generator: Generates entertaining headlines.
  • Writesonic: Gets you a different type of high-converting copy everytime you hit. Creates long-form blogs and articles in 15 seconds. Creates sales letters, essays, reports, and even ebooks.
  • Tribescaler: Gets you tons of tweet ideas in minutes. Produces better hooks quickly, saving you hundreds of hours.
  • Runway: Everything you need to make content fast. Magical AI tools, real-time collaboration, precision editing, and more.
  • DrumUp: Great content discovery and content curation tool.
  • Scoop.it: Curates content from other sources. Shares your posts across social media platforms.
  • WordAgents: Outsources the content-creation process.
  • ScribeHow: Turns any process into a step-by-step guide.
  • Quillbot: Rephrases sentences in seconds.
  • Writesonic: Creates long-form blogs and articles in 15 secs. Write sales emails, essays, reports, and even ebooks.
  • Hemingway: Makes your writing bold and clear. It’s like a spellchecker, but for style.
  • Copy AI: Rubbish copywriter? Copy AI lets you outsource your copywriting to a machine.
  • Power Thesaurus: Finds the perfect words for your copy.
  • Jasper: Create fresh content for social media content, blog posts, and influencer marketing campaigns.
  • Wordtune: Distills exactly what you’re trying to say. Take the rough language you’ve written and rework it into a more concise phrase.
  • Headline Studio: Writes a powerful headline with a score, a thesaurus, and comparative analysis.
  • CoSchedule: Writes better headlines.
  • Grammarly: Checks for spelling and grammar mistakes.
  • Yoast: The #1 WordPress SEO plugin.
  • Moz / SEMrush: SEO resources. Fantastic for competitive intelligence, keyword research, social media monitoring, content creation and more.
  • ReferralRock: Refers new customers to your business online.
  • Openr / Sniply: Adds custom call-to-action buttons on every link you share.
  • Uberflip: Creates targeted call to action inside your content to convert visitors into customers.
  • Descript: All-in-one audio & video editing as easy as a doc. Record, transcribe, edit, mix, collaborate, and master your audio and video.

Creative

  • Behance: Online galleries to give and get design inspiration.
  • Canva: Simple graphic design interface.
  • Venngage: Makes beautiful infographics.
  • Emblem / Gospace: Fast and easy way to make a logo / brand book / style guide and social media assets!
  • Piktochart / DataHero / Word Dream: Creates infographics, presentations, reports, charts, graphs, etc.
  • Emailancer: Fast and friendly experts in email template design and development. Delivers a custom design or converts yours into code that works across all devices.
  • Wordswag: Adds awesome text to your photos.
  • Cleanup.pictures: Removes any unwanted object, background, watermarks, defect, person or text from your pictures in seconds.
  • Watermarkremover: Automatic detection, support for removing mutiple watermarks from photos in many colors.
  • Imonomy: Monetizes your images by finding others that may work for you.
  • Lumen5: Turns your blogposts into explainer / slideshow videos with AI.
  • CutoutPro: Makes your own professional passport photo online in one second with a single click. Changes the background from the video. Platform for Creative Visual Design Powered by AI.
  • Magisto: Makes music videos with AI.
  • Simplified.com: Creates unique AI art and images by providing simple text.
  • Supermeme.ai: Generates original memes powered by AI.
  • Supercreator.ai: Creates short-form videos 10x faster.
  • Bigspeak.ai: Generates audio from text.
  • Arcade: Creates interactive product demos.
  • Final Cut Pro: The most powerful video editing software program.
  • Adobe Spark (Spark Video): Creates compelling animated videos in minutes.
  • VidLab: Creates professional videos. Adds & animates text, music to your videos.
  • Animoto: Turns your photos and videos into professional videos quickly.
  • Cameo By Vimeo: Creates full HD videos with editing software.
  • Magisto: Creates beautiful videos automatically from your photos and videos.
  • Ripl: Creates eye-catching marketing videos.
  • Moovly: Creates animated videos and presentations.
  • Hyperlapse from Instagram: Creates tracking shots and fast, timelapse videos.
  • ‎Boomerang from Instagram: Takes a series of photos and creates a GIF-like.
  • MakeAGif: Creates GIFs from your own images, Youtube videos, webcam etc.
  • Gfycat: Creates and shares awesome GIFs and funny reactions.
  • Ezgif: Converts video to GIF.
  • Online GIF Tool: Changes GIF background color.
  • Strip Creator: Makes your own online comic strips.
  • Creative Market: Enjoy 6 free downloads every Monday (fonts, graphics, templates). Great for Instagram and presentation / brochure templates.
  • What The Font: Figures out what font something is when you upload a picture.
  • Noun Project: Iconic icons, totally free.
  • EmojiOne: Offers beautiful emoji artwork to use in your projects.
  • ‎SpecialChars: Input special characters.
  • Paperless Post: Gorgeous online invitations.
  • Typeform: Beautifully designed questionnaires.
  • Moo: Designs luxury business cards.

Channel / Content Distribution

Search Engine:

  • Google Ads: Displays brief advertisements, service offerings, product listings, and video content within the Google ad network to web users.
  • Google Adsense: Places ads on your website and YouTube channel.

Social Media:

Twitter:

  • Twitter: Keeps track of breaking news and makes professional connections.
  • TweetDeck: Publishes on multiple accounts.
  • Twchat Calendar: Keeps up with upcoming chats.
  • Twilert: Sends you email alerts of tweets containing your brand, product, service.
  • Audiense: Audience management / list building.
  • TwemexApp: Best performing tweets.
  • Typeshare_co: Editor & content prompts.
  • Hypefury: Advanced scheduling & reposting.
  • Tweetpikapp: Turns tweets into photos.

Instagram:

Facebook:

LinkedIn:

Website/Blog:

Email & SMS:

  • GetResponse / MailChimp / Infusionsoft / Klaviyo / HubSpot / Marketo: Fun automated emails and newsletters etc.
  • Really Good Emails: Struggling with email ideas? Library of thousands of quality emails to get inspo from.
  • Beehiiv: All-in-one solution for newsletters. (Superior Analytics • Paid Subscriptions • Subscribe Forms • Referral Program • Flexible Text Editor • Optimized Deliverability)
  • Autosend / SendGrid / Mailgun: Automatically sends personalized, targeted email and text messages to every customer.
  • Zendesk: Enables your customers to get in touch with your team quickly.
  • Sendoso: Direct mail automation.
  • Fantastic Texts: Struggling with SMS ideas too? Library of SMS campaigns for constant inspo.

Press Coverage:

E-commerce

Analytics

Tracking:

Quantitative (The What):

  • Google Analytics: Has the latest in full-credit measurement, so you see all the stops people take on the road to action.
  • Google Analytics Custom Reports: A report that you create and customize yourself based on your own needs.
  • KISSmetrics: Generates precise customer behavior data metrics that is bound to give Google Analytics a run for their money. Google Analytics tells you what’s happening. KISSmetrics tell you who’s doing it.
  • Clearbit: Data enrichment.
  • Segment: Customer data infrastructure.
  • Adobe Analytics: Turns customer interactions, including offline data, into actionable insights.
  • Followerwonk: Explores and grows your social graph on Twitter.
  • Mixpanel / Amplitude: Measures what customers do in your app by reporting actions, not page views. (Segment and Amplitude seem to be the most common stack)
  • Person: Inputs customers’ gender, likes, behaviors and goals in a simple-to-read layout.

Qualitative (The Why):

  • Qualaroo: Google Analytics tell you what people are doing on your website. Qualaroo tells you why. Qualaroo insights lead to smarter tests and faster improvements in your website’s performance.
  • SurveyMonkey: Crafts a survey. Turns survey data into insights. Creates professional reports.
  • CrazyEgg: The original heatmapping technology.
  • FullStory / Hotjar: Heatmapping.

Testing (The How & When):

  • Optimizely: Increases engagement, interactions, and conversions.
  • Unbounce: Builds, publishes & A/B tests your landing pages without I.T.
  • Adobe Target: Most marketers want to test and target but don’t think they have the time, expertise, or tools. Adobe has simplified it to a click.

Workflow (The Learning):

  • See the “Emails / Documents" section above.

Other:

— Education —

  • Nuzzel: Offers personalized news discovery for busy professionals.
  • Coursera: Learns online and earns valuable credentials from top universities.
  • edX: Online courses from the world’s best universities.
  • Stanford Online: Offers learning opportunities via free online courses, online degrees, grad and professional certificates, e-learning, and open courses.
  • FutureLearn: Offers a diverse selection of courses from leading universities and cultural institutions from around the world.
  • Academic Earth: Offers top quality university-level courses since 2009.
  • Lynda: An online education company offering video courses taught by industry experts in software, creative and business skills.
  • The Great Courses: Lectures from top college professors.
  • MIT OpenCourseWare: A web-based publication of virtually all MIT course content.
  • Khan Academy: Free videos including specialized content from NASA, The Museum of Modern Art and MIT.
  • OpenCulture: Brings together free online courses, audio books, ebooks, lessons etc for everyone.
  • Alison: Provides learners worldwide with free online learning for basic education and workplace skills training.
  • ITunes U: Yale, Harvard, and other top universities share lecture podcasts.
  • MindTools: A place to learn leadership skills.
  • LearnVest: Offers courses to help you manage your finances.
  • HubSpot Academy: A worldwide leader in inbound marketing, sales, and customer service/support training.
  • MarketingProfs: Gives you practical marketing training and education.
  • Swiped.co: A library of reverse-engineered marketing & copywriting inspiration: learn the secret psychology of top marketing promotions.
  • Reforge: Offers selective growth-focused programs for experienced professionals in marketing, product, data, and engineering.
  • Udacity: Free online classes in Deep Learning, Machine Learning, Web Development.
  • Code.org: Provides resources and courses to help coders of all abilities improve.
  • Codecademy: Learns Java, PHP, Python, and more.
  • Platzi: Gets smarter in marketing, coding, app development, and design.
  • Big History Project: A free online social studies course.
  • TED / TED-Ed: Free knowledge from the world’s most inspired thinkers.
  • CreativeLive: Free online classes in photography, graphic design, craft & DIY, marketing, business & entrepreneurship.
  • Wikipedia: A free online encyclopedia.
  • Library of Congress: The US’s oldest federal cultural institution and the largest library in the world. Also serves as the research arm of Congress.
  • Boundless: A free online library containing educational content originally curated by Boundless.
  • Brain Pickings: A resource spanning art, design, science, technology, etc.
  • Harvard Business Review: New ideas and classic advice on strategy, innovation and leadership, for leaders and experts.
  • Big Think: Explores the big ideas and core skills defining the 21st century.
  • Google World Wonders: A valuable resource about arts and culture for students, scholars and teachers.
  • Internet Sacred Text Archive: A freely available archive of electronic texts about religion, mythology, legends and folklore, and occult and esoteric topics.
  • British Museum: A resource about human history and culture.
  • Trivium Education: A lower division of the seven liberal arts and comprises grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric.
  • Thesaurus.com: A widely-used English-language thesaurus.
  • Project Gutenberg: Offers 57,000 free eBooks about literature.
  • Goodreads: Finds and shares books you love. You can also build virtual bookshelf here.
  • Ladder: Growth Playbook with 600+ ROI-driven tactics.
  • Lumosity: Brain games and brain training.
  • Bigger Better Brains: Learns more about music learning and brain development through cutting-edge research.
  • Quora: A knowledge sharing network where questions are answered by people with unique insights.
  • Livemocha: Connects with other learners in over 190 countries to practice a new language.
  • Udemy / Skillshare: An online learning and teaching marketplace.
  • Startups Anonymous: Open community for founders, investors and team members to anonymously ask questions and share experiences.
  • Founders Network: Peer mentorship platform of founders helping founders. Must be a full time tech founder and annual dues start at $499.50.
  • GLG Share / Guidepoint: Connects businesspeople trying to solve problems to experts that can solve problems.
  • Meetup: A service used to organize online groups that hose in-person events for people with similar interests.

— Music. Movie. Video —

  • Shazam: Identifies the music playing around you.
  • Spotify: Digital music streaming service. No ads for $5/month.
  • SoundCloud: Music and streaming platform. Great for up-and-coming artists and DJs.
  • Pandora: A free, personalized radio that plays music.
  • Youtube to MP3: Turns lectures and music videos into free downloadable audio files.
  • Audacity: Digital audio editing and recording software.
  • VLC: Plays most multimedia files as well as discs, devices, etc.
  • Netflix: Watches TV episodes and movies on your phone.
  • YouTube / Vimeo / Vine: Shares and views videos.

— Photography —

  • Spark Camera: Captures photos and video in full 1080p HD.
  • Pinterest: A platform for sharing images.
  • Unsplash / StockSnap / Pexels / Pixabay / Unrestricted Stock: Breath-taking free stock photos.
  • Getty Images / iStock: High-resolution images and editorial stock photos.
  • Shutterstock: An online marketplace for commercial digital images and videos.
  • Adobe Photoshop CC: The world’s best imaging and photo editing software and app.
  • Adobe Photoshop Lightroom CC: Digital photography tools similar to Photoshop.
  • PicMonkey: Online picture-editing software similar to Photoshop.
  • Polarr: Photo editing tools & free photo editors similar to Lightroom.
  • Priime: Known for its smart style filter recommendations.
  • ‎Snapseed: A professional photo-editing app owned by Google.
  • MuseCam: Features a bunch of professional feeling camera presets.
  • BeFunky: Easy-to-use photo-editing software.
  • A Color Story: Focuses on fresh photos, bright whites, and colors that pop.
  • Afterlight: Photo-editing app that adds amazing light leaks to photographs.
  • VSCO: Photo-editing app with arresting color filters.
  • Analog Camera: Improves your photos with a selection of filters and borders.
  • RNI Films: For those who appreciate the beauty of analogue photography.
  • B612: A photography app designed for selfies with dozens of filters.
  • Facetune: Photo-editing app that’s great for retouching portraits. Worth the $4.
  • MakeupPlus: Your own personal makeup artist.
  • Layout from Instagram / Diptic: Combines multiple photos into a single image.
  • JPEGmini: Condenses your photos into high-quality, smaller versions.

— Travel —

  • Superfuture: The most comprehensive urban travel guide and resource for fashion and design related shopping experts.
  • The CIA World Factbook: Provides information on the history, people, government, transportation etc. for 267 world entities.
  • Expedia: Searches hotels, cheap flights, car rentals & vacations.
  • Google “Traveling This Holiday Season”: A landing page showing you when to best book your flights ahead of holidays and some hotel deals.
  • Google Assistant: Searches and books flights, hotels, shares your ETA with friends and family, replies to text messages, plays music and podcasts, searches for places along your route, translates 27 different languages in real time, etc.
  • Google Trips: Trip planning mobile app that organizes your travel plans including flight, bus, train tickets, hotels, things to do (descriptions, location info, hours, links to websites, menus, directions, reviews, reservations, etc), itineraries and more.
  • Google Destinations: Trip planning feature in Google Search focused on connecting web searchers looking for travel information on destinations (things to do), flights and hotel prices.
  • Lola: Uses a combination of AI based on your travel profile and a helpful, real-life person to book your travel seamlessly every time.
  • TripIt: Organizes all your itineraries and confirmations in one beautiful dashboard. You’ll also get notifications about where your gate is and directions to things like the rental car area.
  • Hipmunk: Offers easy recommendations before finding you the best possible deals for your selection (flights, hotels, transportation). It even throws a link to book everything at the best prices.
  • Skyscanner: Searches flights by date, price, and budget — even if you don’t know where you want to go.
  • Google Flights: Browses multiple airlines, dates, and routes, and saves certain itineraries to keep an eye on prices.
  • SeatGuru: Color coded guide to getting the best (and worst) seat in any cabin.
  • GateGuru: Security wait estimator. Gate change and flight delay notifier. General airport guide.
  • LoungeBuddy: Instant access to airport VIP Lounges for everyone.
  • Agoda / Booking.com / TripAdvisor: Books hotels, resorts, hostels, homes for cheap.
  • Airbnb / Couchsurfing: A marketplace where you can rent short-term lodging.
  • Zillow: Searches millions of for-sale and rental listings.
  • Rome2rio: Point to point guide to get anywhere and compare prices — (train, plane, bus, bike, it’s all there).
  • Google Touring Bird: Surfaces search-worthy activities in one, easy place.
  • Airbnb Experiences: Acti vities designed and led by inspiring locals.
  • Google Street View: Looks at every national park in South Africa.
  • Groupon: Finds deals and coupons for restaurants, fitness, travel, etc.
  • Yelp: User reviews and recommendations of best restaurants, shopping, nightlife, etc.
  • Doordash / Postmates / Grubhub: Gets meals from your favorite restaurants right to your doorstep.
  • Instacart: Delivers groceries from local stores in 2 hours.
  • Eatwith: The world’s largest community for authentic food experiences with locals.
Entrepreneurship
Startup
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Sarah Vo
Sarah Vo

Written by Sarah Vo

24 Followers
18 Following

Unlearner • Marketer • Social Impact Enthusiast • Twitter: @sarahvo91 • Website: https://www.sarahvo.com

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