StartupResources.io — Issue #137
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Another Friday, and I’m typing this on a Windows machine because my trusty old MacBook Pro decided to finally go to the spa for a few days of diagnostics and probably replacing the graphics card after over 4 years of faithful service.
It is only now that I realize how incredibly ugly the emoticons I use at the start of the headings below look on Windows. Come on Microsoft, you can do better! 🤢
⚙️ Tool of the week
Quip | Collaborate and take action — quip.com
Quip looks sort of like a collaborative version of Bear (which I love… as you may have noticed before). It’s free to get started with any number of users and you don’t have to pay until you reach a certain usage level, after which it starts at $30/month for a team of 5.
🛠 Tools discovered recently
VoxGun | Assemble videos, get voice-overs
A fairly cheap way to put together videos using various stock snippets and overlays, then preview them with a robot voice-over and finally order a full version with a professional voice-over.
Twilio <Pay> | PCI-compliant payments over the phone
If you take orders over the phone, this could be great for you. Twilio takes care of collecting the user’s card details through an IVR system so you don’t have to be PCI compliant yourself. Integrates with Stripe and soon others.
Trix | Drop-in rich text editor
Need a rich-text editor within your product? Drop in this free one from the folks behind Basecamp.
Credit Card Payment Form | Adam Quinlan — codepen.io
Another drop-in you could use for your product, this credit card payment form made by Adam Quinlan looks beautiful. Free to use.
Danal | Phone verification for mobile apps — phoneverification.io
Phone number verification for mobile apps, without the usual text messaging. Instead, the app makes a phone call in the background, leading to a quicker and more secure verification.
You Don’t Need WordPress | Create a blog with Google Docs
This is a free and very simple service for setting up a blog site. Uses Google Docs as its editor and as its data store.
🤓 Articles of the week
The Digital Marketer’s Guide To Google Ads (2018 Rebrand) — KlientBoost — klientboost.com
Very comprehensive guide to Google Ads.
How to Keep Your Job As Your Company Grows — steveblank.com
If you’re in a high-growth startup, this new article from Steve Blank is likely to help you get through the next phases of your startups life. Plus it’s a compelling read for anyone.
How to optimize SaaS landing pages for rapid comprehension
This article revolves around a couple of different case studies where they take an existing landing page and optimize it, then run it through some usability tests to see what people think the page is about. Very interesting.
Unslacking Tideways Company
Benjamin Eberlei of Tideways, on why they no longer use Slack and try to minimize use of real-time messaging. This strikes a chord with me, as I feel that knowledge work goes so much better when you try to minimize interruptions. What’s your take?
😢 That’s it for this issue
Until next time! Sorry for the ugly emoticons, Windows users. If you start a petition for Microsoft to change them, send me the link and I’ll sign it 😁
Cheers,
Jói
