The Entrepreneur’s Toolkit: Software That Rocks
Author: Ray Cao
As part of my day-to-day, I spend countless hours as an entrepreneur and countless hours mentoring other emerging entrepreneurs. One of the many things that we talk about and share is the topic of tools and resources that we use to remain effective without costing us an arm and a leg.
Below is a list of some of the easy-to-use technology tools that many startups and entrepreneurs use for their businesses. These tools can range from file sharing to invoicing. There are an endless list of tools but there are some that really stand out as real winners.
File Sharing
Dropbox – this company has been one of the hottest startups as of late. Sharing on a network drive is a thing of the past. Dropbox makes it easy to seamlessly share files with your partners, clients and employees.
Box.net - this company has been touted as one of the fastest growing startups in Silicon Valley. Their file sharing system is easy-to-use, inexpensive and integrates nicely with many 3rd party applications such as Zoho, Salesforce, FedEx, and more.
Invoicing
Freshbooks – this is an industry leading invoicing solution for startups, contractors and freelancers. A friend of mine, Mike McDerment, has grown this company into one of the leaders in online invoicing.
Web Conferencing
Dimdim - save both time and money by hosting web conferences and sales demos online. Dimdim is an easy-to-use tool that allows you to host professional meetings online.
Project Management
Basecamp – Basecamp has made is simple, easy and cheap for companies to manage projects. Microsoft Project is not only expensive but difficult to use. With Basecamp, managing projects amongst large groups of people is both simple and intuitive.
Company Intranets and Knowledge Portals
Yammer – Yammer is widely known as the Twitter for enterprises. If you’re sick of sending emails back and forth and want to keep your employees updated on your progress, this is a great tool to be using.
Socialtext - Socialtext brings together all of the great tools needed in a corporate intranet. Tools such as wikis, blogs, spreadsheets, microblogging and social networking. If your company is exchanging information every day, you want to make sure that you’re capturing it in an effective way. Socialtext is definitely the way to go.
Document Generation
Google Docs – If you haven’t used this yet, then you better start now. Google Docs makes it easy to collaborate, share and work on documents with clients and co-workers.
Zoho – Similar to Google Docs, Zoho provides many applications all through the cloud and on a browser. You can get access to your files from any computer as long as there’s internet access.
With all of these tools, they are not only inexpensive but far more effective than many existing applications that we use. As any entrepreneur will tell you, time is the most valuable thing. These tools will save you time and ultimately will allow you to focus on the things that really matter to your business. Please feel free to share any other tools that you have come across that have worked wonders for you and your company.
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