9 Links You Need to Know About When You Launch a Tech Startup

The planning period usually takes a long time. And it should do so! The more you plan, the more prepared you are to the issues and pitfalls which appear on your road. The software projects have their own peculiarities and differences compared to the other kinds of businesses. Here are the tools which can help you to figure out how to launch a tech startup easily.

AYTM is one of the best marketing tools for startups. Before you start your development, you need to understand whether your idea is worth something. It means that you need to verify your idea. What if no one needs a product you are going to create? You have to make sure that there is a group of people who would be happy to use your mobile app or a software piece. Moreover, you also need to find out what category of users would use your product the most, what is their average age, social status, occupation and location. With this information, you can adjust your product according to a target audience needs.

AYTM is definitely the best market research tools for startups which you need for these purposes. It helps perform a pre-launch target audience verification. Here, you need to create a survey to conduct a highly-qualitative market research. The tool gives you actionable market insights. The data you get comes with crosstab analysis, which gives you a chance to get maximum out of your survey.

After you have defined the niche you want to work in, you need to attract people's attention to a project. If you still don't know how to introduce your product to the public then you should read our article about a landing page and it's influence on a future product. With the help of a landing page, you can keep in touch with your potential customers, tell them a story behind your product, collect a database of emails of the future users, and inform them about a release. A landing page is a unique instrument to attract as many customers to your product as possible within a minutes after you created it.

Launchrock is a free landing page builder which makes it the best tools for startups. Apart from that, it also has a lot of other advantages. Here are the most evident ones:

Nevertheless, despite all these benefits, an automatic builder is only a set of templates. If you want to create a landing page, which would be really appealing and unique, you have to find a professional team, with developers and designers to implement all your ideas into reality. At Cleveroad, we balance visual logic and business objectives to bring you eye-pleasant and user-friendly software within UI/UX design services.

When you defined your audience and drew it's attention, you finally can start thinking about the development. The development costs money. That is why you need to find investors for your project. Of course, you can go to different meetings and advertise yourself because investors would look at you first and at your project second. 

A great solution is Wellfound. It is a platform where startups can find investors for themselves. What is great here is that potential investors see your idea and estimate it, not you! The platform is known to have a network of investors who like to cover all the costs of startups. Wellfound is only one of many platforms where you can find investors to assist you on the project. For example, you are wondering how to create an app for church and where to find investors. Choose the platform you like and go ahead!

These startup planning tools help a product owner understand if he or she should really move forward with the initial idea or it should be modified and adjusted according to the needs of a modern society. So, add these platforms to your startup launch checklist and let's move on.

When you've verified your idea, it's time to think how to promote a startup business. But when you promote your product, you have to show something to people, not just saying nice words. That is why this stage is better to start with a prototype or an MVP ready. And only then, apply the promotion tools to launch a startup which we've listed below.

Beta Testing is a great business promotion tool for product owners or developers and beta testers. These people cooperate to build better products. Beta Testers is one of the most famous startup collaboration tools. A person submits an app for free and gets a feedback from testers almost immediately. This collaboration makes the improvement process easier and faster. The platform supports only mobile apps, so you need to apply for mobile development services rather than website development ones if you want to benefit from this tool.

When one thinks how to promote a startup company, social media always get the first place. If you didn't know, promotional campaigns in social networks are the most effective ones. And you don't need any special knowledge to create an account there and post various interesting information about your project. Nevertheless, we would lie if we said that it is easy to manage your posts if you have three or four social media accounts or even more. That is why you need a special tool to do it all.

ContentStudio is one of many programs, which look like a dashboard, where you can lead your social media promotion campaign. Here you have access to Facebook, Linkedin, Pinterest and Twitter. It is a fantastic instrument to manage all your profiles, groups and pages from one place. If you find it difficult to create popular content for your posts, you can actually spy on your competitors and see what post connected to your sphere was the most popular among users. This is how you can learn to create nice, appealing posts. There are also a lot of filters which will help you find a needed source of inspiration. It is not a free platform, however, there is a free trial which gives you a chance to understand if it really is what you need.

These were the most important tools to use if you don't know how to promote a startup business. Now it's time to move on and see what the best project management tools for startups there are.

Managing every aspect of your business is a primary necessity of every business owner. But it does not mean that he or she should do everything by their own. There are so many programs to assist you with the management, let us walk you through some of them to make sure that you will not spend too much time searching for the best one.

When you work in a team with multiple documents, emailing is not an option. You need an instrument, where you will be able to create, share, edit documents in different formats. OnlyOffice is a great solution. Why is it so great? Because it is compatible with almost all existing platforms, like Windows, Linux and MacOS. The system can process files created in the most common formats nowadays. It also has a fully-functioning mobile version. The other advantage is that the project has an open source, which means it is easy to customize and scale.

Accounting is never easy. It is always time and efforts consuming. If you agree with me, then you need to discover QuickBooks. How does it help? Well, first of all, the system isn't figured on accounting experts, so even me (math hater) can easily deal with it. The system keeps everything organized in one place and helps you to run a startup business successfully. You can connect your bank accounts to the program and it will pull the data about all transactions. Here are also such highly required features as reminders, tracking, and a wide reporting system which keeps you informed all the time. A platform also has a mobile version for your convenience. The tool isn't free. But the prices are very reasonable, for instance, if you are self-employed, you will have to pay only $5 a month.

All there platforms, systems and applications require secure passwords to protect your personal business data. Of course, you can buy a notebook and write all of them down (yeah, I know, very secure, just like my dad always does) or you can use Dashlane. Dashlane is a highly-secure storage for your passwords (guess what! It also needs a password). The program generates unique passwords to protect all your accounts, identity and sensitive data. It stores these passwords on your device(s) where only you have access to it.

If you are really into the security issues of your Android app, you should watch our video about the mobile app and data security!

There are three pricing models for the Dashlane customers. First one is a free option, which you get for life. With this variant, you can store all your passwords only on one device. The second option is for unlimited devices. It costs $3.33 per month. And the most expensive, business solution, costs $4 per month. It seems to me that the cost is reasonable to make you sleep well at nights.

Probably the most important tool for any business is a CRM.  A Customer Relationship Management system allows you to manage all your contacts properly. There are thousands of great CRM tools for startups with hundreds of useful features. Nevertheless, we wanted to show you one with a nice ratio of functionality and pricing. We offer you to try Bitrix24. Actually, you can start with a free model here! The system provides you with 12 users, 5 GB of storage. It is enough for the beginning. When you feel like you are running out of space, you can easily buy a more advanced version for $99 or $199 per month. An extended version includes built-in email marketing functionality, call recording, sales automation, reporting, invoicing and much more.

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In our list, we've tried to find either free or the least expensive instruments for a startup toolkit with a decent functionality. The lifecycle of a software project is a long and thorny path. But with the right instruments, it can be even fun and pleasant. If you are ready to start your own business project or a startup, drop us a line and we can do it all together!