By Callais Team
Tech Stack Startup Essentials
Whether you’re starting your first company, or a seasoned entrepreneur, the tools you use to build your empire are constantly changing. What once was the most useful resource has most likely been overtaken by a competitor, companies have evolved, and new automation and reporting tools have launched to make your life easier. We are moving quickly towards a single, harmonious platform for businesses. But right now, many companies have to build a tech stack with a hodgepodge of essential services; paid and free.
At Callais, we wanted to cover a list of options for all companies looking to improve a particular area of their company. Whether you’re looking to improve your customer communication, improve your team’s organization, or find new business prospects. We’ve got you covered.
So, below we’ll be covering the most useful tools for various
Customer Relationship Manager (CRM)
Customer Relationship Management tools are essential in keeping in touch with your community. 91% of businesses with over 11 employees rely on a CRM system. You should leverage your platform to not only develop email marketing rhythms, nurture and nudge campaigns, but to expand on what you know about your customers.This will not only help you nail your sales pitch, but it will improve your customer service process. It’s time consuming to field and respond to emails, website visits, social media clicks, and chat bot requests. But some solutions out there easily streamline the process to let even a solo founder keep up.
CRM companies are evolving right before our eyes. Even this article might sound out of date when reading it. Mailchimp has expanded into a full CRM tool. Hubspot now accepts payments, like Stripe. And Monday is now more than just a project management tool. The universality of websites, tools, and companies connecting to each other is on the horizon. Just in the VC world, Affinity has taken off as a leader in the CRM space.Otherwise, CRMs with two-syllable names are leading the pack.
- HubSpot
- Salesforce
- Pipedrive
- Mailchimp
- Monday
- Affinity
- Sugar
- Sendinblue
- Attio
- Keap
- Insightly
- Nutshell
- Copper
- Streak
- Overloop
- Propeller
Words of advice: Use open rates, clicks, and A/B testing data to steer you in a direction of future business. Maximize ever piece of communication and touch point you have with a subscriber by offering them unique piece of content instead of just promotions.
Automation Tools
Although the near future holds a one-click solution for every integration under the sun. Right now, you’re going to need to use a webhook tool to connect all of your tech stack platform together to gain insights across platforms. By far, Zapier is the leading company with the most integrations and “zaps” offered. But that might change.
On top of sharing data between your tools, there might also be a need to automate redundant tasks for your company. In those cases, below are a few suggestions to look into for your specific needs.
Analytics
Although many solutions I’ve listed throughout this article have dashboards and analytics, sometimes you just want to bring it all together and get a high-level overview of your business. For that, there are a few tools that you’ll need to connect them all together for a complete dashboard. These out-of-the-box solutions allow a super quick connection to your account data once you’ve shared your credentials.
Hiring
Finding the right people for your team is the most challenging task for a startup. In the early stages, underperformers who aren’t running as fast as you are can slow down development time and sink your business. Make sure you’re hiring the right people for the right job. And don’t try to do everything yourself. If something will take you hours to troubleshoot, it’s probably best to leave it to the experts. Your most valuable resource right now is your time and energy. Do everything you can to not burn yourself out.
Website Builder
Although we recommend hiring a web development team to customize your company’s website, sometimes that’s just not in the cards due to budget restraints. Below are a few solutions that will quickly give your company a professional look while you build your core MVP, or minimum viable product.
Hyper Growth
Everyone has their secret tools to improve business. Here are ones that we’ve found helpful along the way.
Finance
If you can afford Quickbooks, I would recommend it. It’s an industry standard and integrates into any platform or service that you could think of. Besides Quickbooks, there are some other alternative financial solutions that will keep you on top of your finances and expenses as you build your company towards profitability.
Legal
As a founder, it is really easy to overlook the legal expectations of a business owner when you’re worrying about a million other things. Below are some reliable companies that offer a range of legal solutions that’ll keep you out of hot water later on.
Communication Tools
Moderation is key when it comes to communication tools. You don’t want to have a day packed with meetings or start a new Slack channel for every topic under the sun. But all of these tools below offer a quick way to share information between your team and make you more successful.
Social Media
Paid and organic social media platforms are a stable for companies. Research your needs, build a monthly social media calendar, and start sharing interesting content as soon as you can! Organic interest in your company is the best, free advertising you can ask for. Make sure your social media profiles are properly built out to connect with the right audience.
Project Management
Project management tools have always been a staple with web development, but nowadays, they’ve crossed over into every department. It’s a wonderful progression that gives team members a glimpse of project-based progress and acts as a great location of truth.
Are you a startup founder in the Gulf Coast? It’s never too early to reach out to us, even if it’s early in your fundraising process. We know that companies take time to turn a profit and find their product market fit. But we would love to hear from you.