by in Entrepreneurship
Today, I bring you the second piece in our two part series on keeping a lean business stack. Part one covered the Achilles heel of business: leaning too far into the future and ignoring the needs of your business as it stands today.
In part two, Stacklist’s VP of Content & Research, Naomi Newman, is back with advice on how to keep an agile business by building a lean but powerful stack of business tools.
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by Naomi Newman, VP Content & Research at Stacklist
A lean stacklist is not for everyone, of course, but from our experience and our discussions with generous Stacklisters, it’s certainly a worthwhile pursuit for early seed-stage startups. How to achieve this zen-like state of leanness? Follow these best practices.
#1: First, identify your core needs and processes. Tools will not solve your problems—specifically when it comes to management and communication. In fact, they will only complicate matters if you haven’t yet figured out your pain points. Before investing in a tool, get a feel for your own processes and figure out what you really need.
#2: Consult other founders (or, ahem, Stacklist?). Find out which tools worked for them, which didn’t and why. Your peers and trusted advisors will be your best source of information on this, and will be most honest with you about the pros and cons of particular tools.
#3: Choose tools that are right for your team. Don’t sign up for the hot new tool just because it’s hot and new. If you’re not going to use a tool, be honest with yourself, and choose only those that complement your organizational style.
#4: Educate yourself and the team. Once you’ve selected the tool that addresses your particular pain points, educate your team on why/how this tool will add value. Bring everyone (including yourself!) up to speed on the tool and how to use it. Yes, people. Watch the video. Review the tips. Ping the helpline if you must.
#5: Enforce adoption. The only way you’ll get maximum value out of a tool is to make sure your team uses it! Be a leader in total commitment to adopting the tool; the sooner everyone adopts it, the sooner you’ll start reaping its benefits (OR, the sooner you’ll discover that you actually need a different solution).
#6: Integrate your tools for maximum impact. Zapier is awesome for this. You’ll be able to use fewer tools by choosing those that work together, making certain tools work double-duty. Intercom is a great example of this for seed-stage companies; Brightpod puts the platform to work for CRM, email marketing and customer service, and Simple Texting uses it for both customer service and CRM.
What’s in our stacklist?
We launched Stacklist with the goal of helping startups find the best tools for their business in a faster, smarter way. Every day, founders introduce us to new tools that improve their life—both business and personal—and it’s tempting to test them out. But we’re also very aware of where we are in our business: just starting out, a handful of full-time employees, all working feverishly to grow our brand. So while it’s tempting to try out the hottest new apps, we’re making do with as little as we can for now. And in the true spirit of transparency, we are pleased to present you with Stacklist’s stacklist.
Stacklist survival kit for seed-stage startups
So what are stacklist essentials for Day 1? For at least a few months, all you really need is the good old Google suite. It’ll cover all of your bases, from email to project management to communication, file sharing and BI/analytics. If you’ve got developers on hand, they will likely appreciate some GitHub love, and InVision will be a boon for site design. Any tools much beyond that will prove to be a distraction, so just take your time to figure out your pain points and internal workflows.
When it comes to stacklists for early-stage startups, we believe Judd Apatow summed it up best in Knocked Up: You just need to “tighten up.”
Now, go forth and build!
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