A crowdsourced selection of useful tools for startups

A few weeks ago I shared with you a list of resources for startups put together by Steve Blank in the following post. 

Today, I want to share a crowdsourced selection pull together by Tom Hulme, design director at Ideo in London, a fine conference speaker, and an entrepreneur. He’s gathered a bunch of useful links in an editable Google document, and is encouraging you to add your own. There is a PDF of the story so far, which you can download here.

Here’s a selection of the tools recommended so far — together with the person who suggested them.

 A crowdsourced selection of useful tools for startups

General inspiration around business models:
Business Model Generation book – Alex Osterwalder — added by @thulme
Online version of BMG: http://thestartuptoolkit.com — added by @corrijo
The Personal MBA, Master The Art of Buisiness: goo.gl/JmUyT — added by @joshkaufman
The killer startup book list from YCombinator: http://ycombinator.com/lib.html— added by @thulme

Fundraising:
Raise cash without giving up equity? Cool! www.kickstarter.com — added by @thulme
Get seed funding and a like-minded network: www.hackfwd.com — added by @amylondra
first tuesday — added by @daveslocombe
open coffee — added by @daveslocombe
seedcamp — added by @daveslocombe

Business plan and case templates:
http://score.org/business_toolbox.html — added by @guido4000

What should I name the product?
Adwords enables you to trial name & keyword combinations — added by @thulme
KnowEm lets you check the availability of your name across channels — added by @mikkojarvenpaa

Finding freelancers:
http://www.elance.com — added by @thulme
odesk.com — added by @startupbus
http://www.freelancer.com — added by @ajhai
http://programmermeetdesigner.com/ — added by @dguaraglia
http://vworker.com, used to be rentacoder. YMMV with this one — added by @dguaraglia
http://sortfolio.com — added by @kyle.maloney

Iterate the product:
A/B testing – http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com — added by @thulme
https://browserlab.adobe.com/en-us/index.html — added by @globetreter
http://userfly.com — added by @globetreter
http://mouseflow.com — added by @shoptimate
http://www.usabilityhub.com — added by @globetreter
http://fivesecondtest.com — added by @kevinmctigue
http://optimizely.com — added by @guido4000
http://www.hoptoad.com — added by @chcart
http://www.usertesting.com — added by @beanchips
http://johnnyholland.org — added by @joshr
Clicktale.com — user session recordings — added by @freiert

Product ideas / feature requests from the community:
Getsatisfaction.com — added by @thulme
Feedbackify.com — added by @thulme
Quirky.com — added by @thulme
ZenDesk.com — added by @thulme

Talk to market experts:
Post market based questions on
http://answers.yahoo.com — added by @thulme
Quora: http://www.quora.com — added by @thulme

By David Rowan

Do you have other resources to suggest?

Tell us more about it!

4 Comments

  1. guadalupedelamata on 23 de January de 2013 at 22:28

    Gracias Carlos por Compartir!



  2. Andy on 11 de January de 2014 at 20:37

    Under fundraising:

    Stay mission-aligned and in control with a direct public offering
    http://www.cuttingedgecapital.com – posted by @cuttingedgecap



  3. Sebastian Carrasco on 27 de October de 2014 at 13:15

    Another option for fundraising:

    https://www.fundedbyme.com/

    Offers 3 forms of crowdfunding (equity, loan-based and reward-based)



    • Guadalupe de la Mata on 30 de December de 2014 at 18:59

      Thanks Sebastian for sharing! Happy 2015, best. Guadalupe