Running a start-up is not an easy job. Brainstorming ideas, marketing the business, managing the finances, and that too with a small team can be a tedious job. That being said, I believe a start-up’s success ratio increases when it has the right set of tools that complement its work. In this article, I am going to share a few tools that can help start-ups become more efficient, for sure.
Before I start, note that you may need to buy a monthly or annual subscription to these tools. Plus, reliable internet connectivity enables seamless communication, efficient operations, and uninterrupted innovation. Make a wise internet choice, like Mediacom Internet as the fast and safe internet can help your business.
Clarity – Best for Advice/Suggestions from Seasoned Entrepreneurs:
Features:
Clarity offers a unique platform for aspiring start-ups to connect with industry leaders and seek their help.
Start-ups can find seasoned entrepreneurs and business coaches who specialize in marketing, sales, finance, and more.
On Clarity, connecting to any expert is simple as you just need to select three dates and times that suit you best and send your request.
To save start-ups time, Clarity offers a three-day window for experts to reply. Once three days pass, the request is canceled automatically.
When Should You Use Clarity?
Often, start-ups find themselves between a hard place and a rock. A major reason that may contribute to their inability to solve a specific issue relates to their lack of experience. Also, major market players and adept entrepreneurs are not easily accessible to all.
That being said, Clarity hosts hundreds of exceptional start-up founders, business experts, and coaches who can help start-ups with invaluable insights. Well, not just for solving problems, start-ups can also brainstorm new ideas with experts on Clarity.
Pricing:
On Clarity, the communication medium is via a call and every expert charges you by minutes. The price varies from one coach to another. Generally, seasoned people may charge more per minute than others.
Asana – Best for Project Management:
Features:
Asana lets start-ups break huge projects into bite-sized tasks that can be divided into different teams.
You can create numerous labels for tasks and projects to keep tabs on their completion ratio.
On Asana, you can set tasks’ deadlines, monitor the progress, or ask for a progress report from different teams.
Asana provides insights into the team's workload where you can see and manage the workload of every individual in your team.
Asana can be integrated with numerous other tools, for instance, Salesforce, Microsoft Teams, and more.
When Should You Use Asana?
Especially for small teams, managing the workload is vital as any person may get exhausted or feel overburdened by work. On that front, Asana lets you divide work in your team equally and ease up communication, so you don’t have to head out to any other platform for the purpose. Also, besides setting up deadlines for tasks, you can also communicate with your team to get frequent progress reports about different tasks.
Pricing:
Although Asana is free for individuals and small, growing teams, for instance, start-ups may go for their Asana Start Plan which costs around $10.99 a month. Besides this, the Advanced Plan costs $24.99, and it’s ideal for organizations that manage a large portfolio of projects.
Hootsuite – Best for Marketing:
Features:
Hootsuite offers more than 100+ integrations, where you can integrate famous CRMs, project management tools, and more.
Start-ups can create and schedule content on Hootsuite and publish it automatically at any time they want, that too on different social media platforms simultaneously.
Hootsuite AI can write content or generate ideas and captions for different social media posts.
Start-ups can design a chatbot with Hootsuite and deploy it on different social media platforms to respond to customers on time.
With Hootsuite analytics, start-ups can analyze the performance of their posts on most major social media platforms.
When Should You Use Hootsuite?
Start-ups often lack the manpower to handle multiple social media accounts on different platforms simultaneously. Also, they may neglect some important platforms simply because they cannot manage them at the same time. Here, Hootsuite can ease their workload as start-ups can manage different social accounts via a single dashboard. Not just this, start-ups can also automate posting, create content, and analyze their progress via analytics.
Pricing:
Besides a 30-day free trial, Hootsuite’s Professional Plan offers 10 manageable social media accounts for a single user and costs $99 a month. To manage more accounts, Hootsuite offers a Team Plan with 20 accounts for 3 users which costs $249 a month.
FreshBooks – Best for Accounting and Finance:
Features:
With FreshBooks, start-ups can create and customize professional invoices that reflect their brand image and send them to vendors, suppliers, and more.
Start-ups can use FreshBooks to send automated reminders to vendors or suppliers about pending payments.
FreshBooks can generate a detailed expense report for start-ups once they link their credit card or bank account with the tool.
Start-ups can save business receipts in FreshBooks’ cloud for as long as they want.
FreshBooks can generate balance sheets, reconciliation statements, ledgers, and more for start-ups in a quick time.
When Should Start-Ups Use FreshBooks?
Instead of hiring an accountant, I would suggest start-ups get help from FreshBooks. Be it generating an invoice, keeping track of expenses, or generating financial statements, FreshBooks can do it all for start-ups.
Pricing:
FreshBooks offers a 30-day money-back guarantee on its plans. FreshBooks Lite Plan costs $9.50 a month and the Plus Plan costs $16.50 per month. Besides these plans, you can discover further plans by clicking here.
Salesflare – Best CRM Tool for Start-Ups:
Features:
Salesflare offers integration with more than 5000 different apps and software.
Salesflare can be integrated with different email accounts and calendars and fetch vital meeting dates or details.
With Salesflare, start-ups can convert their emails or calendars to an automated address book for their customers.
Salesflare offers quality templates that start-ups can use to send emails to customers, vendors, suppliers, and more.
Start-ups can fetch publicly available data about customers from their email signatures with Salesflare.
When Should Start-Ups Use Salesflare?
As start-ups grow, it becomes increasingly difficult to manage customer data. Here, Salesflare can hold this front for start-ups as it can extract and save customer details from publicly available data and their email signatures.
Pricing:
Besides a free trial, the Growth Plan of Salesflare costs $29 per user (if billed annually), and the Pro Plan with more advanced features costs $49 per user (if billed annually). The enterprise plan costs $99 and offers extreme functionality to users.
Bonus Section: Factors to Consider Before Choosing a Tool:
Before I conclude, here’s a list of essential items to consider before choosing any tool for your start-up:
Identify Your Needs:
It’s not essential to go for every tool out there. Start-ups can even succeed with minimal tools, considering they opt for the right ones. Before choosing any tool for your start-up, consider why would you want it.
Hootsuite can be the best tool if you want to build a strong presence on social media. Just like that, if you don’t have the budget to hire an accountant or cannot manage finances yourself, FreshBooks can take that responsibility for you. In short, it’s best to consider your needs before choosing any tool for your start-up.
Conduct Research and Compare Tools:
I’ve only shared a handful of tools for different purposes. However, your start-up needs may differ and require a different tool. So, it’s best to explore tools thoroughly and compare them before settling down to one.
Always Avail the Free Trial:
I would always advise start-ups to take advantage of the free trial period that most start-up tools offer. The free trial period would allow you to explore the tool, discover its functionality, and importantly, you’ll know if it fits your needs or not. Even if the tool does not live up to your expectations, the free trial won’t waste your money.
