Below is a curated list of tools and resources to help you launch, build and scale your startup, all segmented by their respective categories.
Arm yourself.
Idea Generation & Validation
- LeanCanvas — Battle-hardened business model tool.
- QuickMVP — Easiest way to test your ideas, without wasting time or money.
- Generator — The quickest way to make a landing page for your startup.
- The Name App — Find a name for your brilliant idea.
- Germ.io — Get from idea to execution.
- Naminum — Discover a perfect company name.
- Product Hunt — Best new products, every day.
- Proto.io — Web platform enabling users to create fully interactive mobile app prototypes. Prototypes that feel real.
- Startuptabs — Startup discovery search engine.
- ErliBird — Early adopter feedback and beta testing community.
- Launching Next — The world’s most promising startups. In one place.
- IdeaSquares — Bringing business ideas to the crowd. Feedback and advice.
- Surveypal — Transform online surveys into great customer experiences.
- Qualaroo — Behaviour insight surveys.
- SurveyMonkey — Create surveys. Get answers. For all primates.
- Google Consumer Surveys — Market research that’s fast and accurate.
Team Workflows & Productivity
- Slack — Team communication in one place.
- Asana — Project MGMT tool for teams both large and small
- Trello — The free, flexible, and visual way to organize anything with anyone.
- Evernote — Your life’s work, organized in one place.
- Basecamp — Chaos, organized. Manage and finish your projects, together.
- Markticle — A highlighter for the internet.
- Pocket — Save an article for later. Put it in your Pocket.
- WeTransfer — Email large files (up to 2GB) free.
- Cyfe — All in one dashboard. Sales. Social. Marketing. MGMT. Free.
- GoogleDrive — All your files. Ready when you are. Wherever you are.
- DropBox — Free, shared cloud storage.
- OneTab — Save up to 95% memory and reduce tab clutter. It’s that simple.
- Focus — A Mac app that blocks distractions for you.
- 1Password — A password manager and secure wallet for Mac, Windows, iOS, and Android.
- WorkFlowy — Organize your brain… And manage your to do lists.
- Streak — CRM in your inbox. Turns your GMail into your new sales funnel.
Content Creation
- Hemingway — Hemingway App makes your writing bold and clear.
- Grammarly — Makes you a better writer by finding and correcting up to 10x more mistakes than your word processor.
- Pexels — Best free stock photos. In one place.
- DesignersPics — Free hi-res photos for personal and commercial use.
- Startup Stock Photos — Go. Make something.
- PicJumbo — Totally free photos.
- Medium — Everyone’s stories and ideas. In one place.
- HubSpot Blog Topic Generator — Plug in key words and away you go.
- ZenPen — The minimal writing tool of the web.
- Liberio — Simple ebook creation and publishing right from GoogleDrive.
- WordPress Editorial Calendar Plugin — Plan and manage your blog posts right in your calendar.
- Portent — Headline idea generator.
- Compressor.io — Optimize and compress your images online.
- Buffer — Schedule and automate social media.
- Latergram — Schedule your Instagram posts.
Marketing & Analytics
- Google Analytics — Deep analysis of your website engagements, acquisition and behaviour.
- MailChimp — Send better email. Simply.
- HubSpot — The world’s leading inbound marketing and sales platform with 11,500+ customers in 70+ countries.
- Customer.io — Email people based on what they do (or don’t do) in you app.
- Really Good Emails — A collection of the best email designs in the universe.
- Crazy Egg — Heat map and scroll map reports of how your visitors engage with your website.
- KISSmetrics — Customer Intelligence & Web Analytics. The insights you need to optimize your marketing.
- BuzzSumo — Analyze what content performs best for any topic or competitor. Use plugins to drive lead generation.
- Quick Sprout — Complete analysis of your website.
- WordPress SEO by Yoast — A better way to do SEO via WordPress.
- HubSpot Marketing Grader — Analyze your marketing efforts… Free.
- Sidekick by HubSpot — Powerful profiles in your inbox. Email tracking and profile mgmt. Everyone needs a Sidekick.
- KeywordTool.io — Free alternative to Google Keywords
- Browseo — How search engines see your site.
- FullContact — Stay Fully Connected and Master Your Contacts.
- Rapportive —Get LinkedIn profiles right inside your inbox. Rapportive shows you everything you need to know.
Growth Hacking & Development
- Growth Hackers — A community, unlocking growth. Together.
- Instapage — Makes building and A/B split testing landing pages simple.
- Untorch — growth hacking referral tool.
- Google PageSpeed Insights — See how your site performance is doing.
- Blocs — Build fully-coded websites without touching a line of code.
- Codefresh — Your complete development environment, in the cloud.
- GitHub — Powerful collaboration, code review, and code management for open source and private projects.
- Divide.io — An open source backend library.
- Exit Monitor — Turns exiting website visitors into leads.
- PetitHacks — Small hacks. Faster growth. A collection of Acquisition, Retention, & Revenue hacks used by companies.
- Optimizely — A/B testing you’ll actually use.
- WordPress — Create your new website for free.
- Bootswatch — Free themes for Bootstrap.
- Invoice to me — Free invoice generator.
- Social Locker WP Plugin — Get users to pay for your content with a ‘tweet’.
Design
- UXCam — User experience testing for mobile and websites.
- Canva — Incredibly simple graphic design platform for the web.
- Pixlr — Full stack graphic design program online.
- Social Image Resizer Tool — Optimize your images for social.
- FlatIcon — A search engine for 16000+ glyph vector icons.
- FontAwesome — The iconic font and CSS toolkit.
- Bit.ly — Shorten and share your URL’s
- Dribble — A treasure trove of “freebies” on Dribble.
- The Noun Project — Icons. Drag, Drop, Done.
- GraphicBurger — Tasty design resources made with care for each pixel.
- Marvel — Free design resources from amazing designers.
- UI Space — Freebies for User-Interface and User-Experience.
- Pixeden — Free design resources
- TETHR — The most beautiful iOS design kit you’ve ever seen… also happens to be free.
- Material Palette — Generate and export your material design palette.
- Coleurs — Pick any color. Anywhere on your screen.
- Colorful Gradients — Computer generated gradients in a number of different styles.
- Flat UI Color Picker — Best flat colors for UI design.
- Filament — Floating and customizable social sharing bar.
- ReciteThis — Turn quotes into beautiful visuals.
- Crowdfire — Follow and unfollow on Twitter and Instagram.
Inspiration & Learning
- FLTDSGN — The best flat designs in app and web.
- MaterialUp — Daily material design inspiration.
- Kahn Academy — Free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere.
- Coursera — Free online classes from 80+ top universities & organizations (Here are the best courses for tech entrepreneurs).
- CodeAcademy — Learn to code, interactively. Free.
- Udemy — Free courses. Any topic. Choose wisely.
- Launch This Year — Guide to help you launch your online business.
- Land-Book — The best of product landing pages on the web.
- Awwwards — The awards for design, creativity and innovation on the Internet.
- Agile Designers — The best resources for designers and developers.
- Zana.io — Democratizing entrepreneurship. Your guide to startups from zero to IPO.
Danny J. Williams
Venture For Canada | Fellow
Halifax, Canada
t. +1.(902).880.0272
w. http://dannyjwilliams.com/