Being a founder is difficult. You wear all the hats, and have to be accountable for everything from sales and marketing to producing your Instagram posts. All too often however, startups don’t have the time to effectively manage all the tasks on their to-do lists, and if they do – then they probably don’t have the expertise to deliver perfectly on all of them. At Starting Dimensions we love supporting our founders, and we’ve come up with a printable guide of the best tools startups can use for the management of their entire venture.
We’ve listed some of our highlights in the article below with a full list available as a PDF at the end of the article. Or, you can try this link to access it directly.
What kinds of tools does a startup need?
We’ve divided our guide into multiple sections – the ones that startups and founders will be using the most. The categories we’ve divided it into include communication, scheduling, storage, data management, project management, brainstorming, websites, content creation and social media.
Communicating effectively as a startup
At Starting Dimensions, we hate emails and full inboxes. We think that most founders would agree. Our favorite tool for internal communications is Slack, a free secure chat-like software used to replace emails and keep communication quick and effective. You can send files, integrate with hundreds of plugins, and maintain separate channels for projects and one-on-one conversations.
For when we can’t get around meetings and emails however, our preferred provider is Google Workspace. It is effective, scalable and easy to manage as a startup.
Project managing your startup
Maintain a good handle on outstanding and completed tasks for your venture is crucial to success, especially as you start to grow and innovate. Our recommended tool for new startups is Trello. The fact that it is used by some of the biggest brand names in the world, only lends it more credibility. You can run a Kanban board, assign due dates and team members to tasks and subtasks. Its customizable, yet limited enough to make the process fun and easy.
Creating amazing brand content
It’s a digital world, and most startups these days must tackle the hard task of content creation. Visuals are the word of the day, and many also require videos and animations to get their message across. Our absolute favorite tool for content creation is Canva – a photoshop-like software available for free online. You can drag and drop, so the learning curve is very shallow, and you can have multiple teams and projects within your space. And our favorite thing about Canva – the templates. At Starting Dimensions we use Canva for many of our projects when the likes of Photoshop, Illustrator or InDesign are not required.
Managing your time effectively
Running a startup is hard. However, with the right tools it doesn’t have to be time-consuming. Check out our full list of tools below and make sure you start your venture off on the right foot.