Get help when needed…Or when easily available
Here are some of the most useful tools that should be in your bookmarks or installed.
Canva
Well, you have to start somewhere while thinking of your business Idea. And what best than starting with your logo? Of course, you also need banners for your website, Presentations, Facebook posts, and Instagram promotions. What about Instagram reels, Youtube Thumbnails or TikTok clips? Well, all these are covered in one place. Canva. It is one of the most user-friendly and resourceful websites for any such requirement. It has such a huge library of existing templates for free (And paid as well) that you will hardly have any need to create anything from scratch. You can drag and drop any template and make your edits. Thus saving you a lot of time and money outsourcing such tasks. The page is very intuitive so it is very easy to do it yourself. And guess what? No ads though you are using the free version. As you want to keep your costs low especially when starting off, and “Quality control” yourself, this seems to be a no-brainer to have Canva in your browser bookmarks.
Highlights:
Free
Pre-Existing Templates for Professional use and most social media platforms.
User-Friendly
Collaborate on projects with Multiple Users
Grammarly
This is something that can save you from a lot of embarrassing emails and posts. Grammarly is like your grammar teacher constantly monitoring every word you type and sentence you finish, and redlining it the moment you make any grammatical mistake. More like a good teacher, because it will also suggest you the right answer immediately with just a click. Thus saving you a lot of time. What I have observed with long turn use, you get rectified so many times that you have finally learned the correct spelling or sentence format. So that’s that. Fun apart this is very important while writing emails and important memos. It not only just rectifies what you are writing it also, suggests what can be written in different situations, in different tones. Thus making you look professional when required and casual when needed. As an entrepreneur, your goal is to reach out to people and make sure they understand your vision. Grammarly insures, that you are able to comply with your thoughts as you intended them to be perceived.
Highlights:
Free
Easy to install browser extension
Sends reports to improve
Uses AI to predict better output
Wellfound (Formerly Angelist)
So you have sorted out our website, and sent out emails to raise funds, now what? You need a team to execute your vision. Now you can go to traditional portals for the same. But you might get some obstacles as there is a mix of candidates who are just looking for cushy jobs and some who what to do something meaningful with their skills and are willing to take risks like you. You need to signup for “Wellfound“. It is a portal dedicated to startups. You can not only find like mined, hard-working candidates as employed but even business partners. You can post your ads for free and start hiring your candidates.
Wait there’s more. Angelist also helps you connect with potential angel investors. So basically, different Angel Investors who are interested in budding entrepreneurs and startups are hanging around in Angelist. It’s a good place to make good impressions and increase your credibility.
Highlights:
Free Listing
Like-Minded Candidates
User-Friendly interface
Social Profile
Network with other Entrepreneurs and Investors
Slack
Ok then, in addition to our website and presentations, you also have a team who will help you build and bring your idea to life. But how to communicate?
Well, Slack is a free application that helps you can your team to communicate with each other in real-time. Not only you can create different groups like WhatsApp you can create multiple channels for different projects. Thus making it easy to manage your communications from one place. It has an app as well, that is always in in-sync with the laptop application, making sure you do not miss a single ping.
Post-pandemic, Slack introduced a couple of more new features. This includes, video calls and one-click connect. Video calls are self-explanatory. One-Click connects are very handy when your team (Especially the tech team) is communicating with each other. If they have any doubt they need not even leave their desk just click on the person’s name and connect on a voice/video call/share-screen immediately. Thus saving a lot of time to switch between different applications. They have a number of integrations available, along with APIs to connect to your applications. So you can receive notifications of your app on Slack, instead of creating your own app. Its Free version has a lot of features, that can carry you a long way.
Highlights:
Free Desktop and Mobile App
Chat, Voice and Video Communications
Multi-channel support
Supports most app for integrations including custom
Trello
Now your team is communicating and working on the project. But you have to keep an eye on them. You haven’t hired a project manager yet. Well, fear not, you have Trello. This application has been in the market for some time and gained a lot of respect from entrepreneurs for its ease of use and free features. It not only helps you to manage different projects but also different departments in one place. What to assign and track team progress, one tab. What to hire and train new candidates, One tab. Now bring the selected candidates to the previous tab and assign them their roles. From Ideation to execution this is very useful. With Kanban boards for literally everything, it is a very user-friendly way to manage your business. It has paid version as well, which might come in handy once you are expanding your team and projects.
Highlights:
Free
Kanban boards to manage projects and Team
Integration with other apps
Multiple User collaboration and user rights
Easy to scale and manage
These are some very easy-to-use management tools available today to make your life a little easy. Being an Entrepreneur is hectic in itself, leveraging such free tools is the key to making sure you do not go insane.
Want some help setting up a free/affordable website and hosting for your company? Well, check out this post. (Click Here) I’m sure that will help you to start easy and save money in the process.
Best Wishes!