RESOURCES FOR ENTREPRENUERS

When you're starting a business, where do you go to get the help, advice and tools you need? There are plenty of resources out there -- so many, in fact, that you might have trouble sorting through them all. We cut through the clutter, selecting 25 essential resources for startup small-business owners.

Talking to Customers

  • Intercom
    Tasteful chat and help widgets for your site, plus good automated email triggers
  • Drip
    Email courses and signup widgets for your site
  • Mailchimp
    Newsletters and decent signup widgets
  • Buffer
    Easier way to run your twitter and facebook accounts


Domains

  • Lean Domain Search
    Suggests all available .coms with a given keyword somewhere in the name
  • Instant Domain Search
    Quickly check specific domain availability
  • Namecheap
    Register your domains without getting screwed


Payments

  • Square (US) or iZettle (elsewhere)
    Accept credit card payments with your phone, e.g. for market stalls and contractors
  • Stripe
    Best payment processing online
  • GoCardless (UK)
    Accept direct debit payments
  • Gumroad
    Easily sell digital files like PDFs, videos, and links


Analytics

  • Google Analytics
    Free and good enough for all your analytics needs
  • Google Keyword Planner
    See how many people are searching relevant terms
  • Facebook Ads
    Use the targeting options to compare the approximate size and location of various interests and demographics


Physical Products and Print-on-Demand

  • Createspace
    Upload a PDF, sell a printed book via Amazon
  • Newspaper Club
    Ever wanted your own newspaper?
  • The Game Crafter
    Prototype and sell your board and card games

Team Collaboration

  • Slack
    Chat and messaging to reduce internal email load, with one room per major project
  • Github
    Repository for your source code plus task lists and collaboration with your developers
  • Dropbox
    All company files should be here, not on email attachments or personal folders
  • Streak
    Simple CRM plugin for Gmail to manage and share your sales leads
  • Trello
    Digital kanban board for project management
  • Basecamp
    I use it for project management with external teams who don't know our Trello workflow
  • Stormboard
    Digital sticky notes for remote brainstorming and workshops
  • Meldium
    Team password sharing and management


Building Websites

  • Squarespace
    Visual site builder with good themes and integrations with stores, payments, newsletters, etc
  • Strikingly
    Easy site builder for nice single-page sites like manifestos, personal/company pages, or landing pages
  • Shopify
    For ecommerce and online stores


Art

  • Glyphicons
    Awesome Set of Free Icons
  • 500px
    Non-cheesy stock photography
  • Flickr Creative commons
    Search for photos with the appropriate usage rights
  • Subtle Patterns
    Pretty much what it says on the tin; for backgrounds and textures


Legals

  • Docracy
    Open source legal documents
  • Companies Made Simple (UK)
    Set up and manage a UK corporation for 19
  • Duedil (UK)
    Nice interface over companies house interface to research competitors

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