How to Create a Successful Startup – Part 5.

Halfway there. Your product/service is out there, you’re analyzing user behavior like a pro and offering high-quality customer support to your users. Time to focus inward for a bit and take a good hard look on the inner working of your company, the work-flow, the workforce, how to iron out redundant tasks and effectively focus on the important ones.

Project management

Every project has to be managed in a cost-effective and simple way. More and more teams are operating from different places in the world, but the tools we picked out for you are as much helpful for teams operating under one roof:

Asana                  

Asana is used in thousands of big companies and lets users put conversations and tasks together, track their status and priorities and see who owns each part of the effort. Free for teams of up to 15 people with unlimited projects and tasks, this one is a must-try.

Basecamp            

Basecamp has gained a lot of friendly feedback and is a web-based project management and collaboration tool. To-do lists, wiki-style web-based text documents, milestone management, file sharing, time tracking, and a messaging system. Basecamp Classic’s interface is available in different languages (e.g. Spanish, French, Italian, German, Finnish and Japanese).

Collaboration and Communication

Inside your team, you have to be able to communicate every issue in a direct and simple manner and be sure that a task is carried out when it supposed to. Are there tools for this? Yes they are:

 Podio                  

Podio is our personal favorite here at Billdu. We use it to keep track of all issues that each team-member has been assigned and what the state of said issues is. Podio users create workspaces to collaborate with specific groups of people and get their work done using Podio Apps. Anyone can build their own Podio Apps – using drag-and-drop, without a single line of code.

 Join.me                

If you need instant screen sharing for spontaneous collaborations, training or online meetings, join.me can deliver an effective way to do so. Review designs, train staff, demo stuff or simply meet for a brainstorming. join.me is fast, free and requires no download by the viewer.

Productivity

Timeful                   

Time management is one of the most important factors of productivity. Schedule every single task you need to undertake to get results and then get them done. Timeful lets you merge your calendar and to-do list, it’s free and connects to Google Calendar, Microsoft Outlook / Exchange, Apple iCal and other. It learns from your behaviors, adapts to your schedule, and personalizes the recommendations the more you use it.

 Evernote              

There aren’t many people who haven’t at least heard from Evernote. Tired of your old simplistic notes apps? Evernote pushes the note taking business to a new level wit it’s digital workspace. Evernote works across all your devices and synchronizes every piece of information you entrust with it.

Feedback & Bugtracking

Not a single product or service has remained the same from their start. Constant adjustments and modifications based on feedback from your users is a must in every industry. You and your whole team can’t possibly hope to find every little bug hiding in your system, nor seeing your work from the perspective of every one of your users. So let them tell you what’s wrong, and how to fix it:

 Bugherd                

The world’s simplest bug tracker, just point and click. Collect feedback, resolve issues give your customers what they want. It can be embedded in your website without much effort and your users can send their thoughts without tedious filling out of lengthy forms.

 Doorbell                

If you’re looking to collect feedback from websites and mobile devices alike in one place, Doorbell is for you. Javacsript, iOS and Android SDK’s are available for setting up Doorbel in your application or use their API to create your own client. Doorbell is integrated with popular services like Pivotal Tracker, Trello, GitHub, Sprint.ly,Asana, Jira, Highrise and Lighthouse.

Shop

Opening your own shop online can be both a daunting and at the same time, an exhilarating experience. Digital products are on the rise as well as physical products sold online, so if you want to sell, nothing stands in your way. Check out the e-commerce platforms we’ve picked out for you and you’ll be well on your way to having your own online enterprise in no time:

Big Cartel                

Simple shopping cart for artists, designers, bands, record labels, jewelry, crafters. Over 500,000 clothing designers, bands, record labels, jewelry makers, crafters, and other artists use Big Cartel to sell their merchandise.

 Squarespace        

Squarespace lets you create whole websites including various functionality, but we had to mention it specifically for their e-commerce websites which are fully integrated and accept payments instantly. an Online Store. They are level 1 PCI compliant and use 128-bit SSL encryption to ensure credit card data is safe and secure. SEO is built in to ensure search engines find your store online.

 Gumroad                

Gumroad is aimed at independent writers, designers, game developers, musicians, artists, filmmakers, and anyone in-between. In other words, if you create – you have to take the Gumroad. They pay all the necessary fees to move money into your PayPal account. Every transaction on Gumroad happens through an encrypted HTTP Secure connection. Your customers’ download links are also secure. The download links expire after one use and require verification before another download happens.

We hope you’ve gained some interesting insights and tips in our startup series’ fifth part. We also hope to see you open shop in the near future if that’s your plan. As always, leave us a comment with your own views and tips on these topics and stay tuned for the next part, in which we will dwell deeper into the whole “money-making”(or to be more appropriate – capital and resources acquirement) process of your startup.