StartupResources.io — Issue #70
Hi again folks,
The results of last week’s one-question survey were interesting. A total of almost 65% of respondents work as solopreneurs or in a small startup of 2–5 people. See the full results in the graphic below.
Since a majority of us seems to be either working solo or with an early-stage team, I think this next question might be quite interesting:
Where are you in terms of funding? (click the most relevant answer)
Tool of the week
Parse Emails by Zapier — parser.zapier.com
This is a fairly limited but completely free alternative to MailParser and Parseur that have both been previously featured in the newsletter. It can’t do nearly all the magic MailParser can, but for some basic needs it can work great.
Tools I actually used recently
Snappa — Quick & Easy Graphic Design Software — snappa.com
This is a serious contender to dethrone Canva (which I also love). Snappa is super easy to use. It has a slightly different model than Canva, where for free you can get 5 design downloads a month, and some of their templates are for paid plans only, whereas Canva effectively makes you pay each time you download content that has paid bits to it. Looks like Snappa will be my go-to for now.
Anymail finder — anymailfinder.com
This is similar to the Hunter email finder, which I use all the time, but Anymail finder sometimes works when Hunter doesn’t.
Mailshake | A Simple Cold Email Outreach Tool — mailshake.com
I’ve used this tool for a while, and it’s really solid. Integrates with your Gmail, tracks responses, manages unsubscribes and more. They just increased their pricing to $19 a user/month (used to be $9) but I’d say it’s still good value. See If No Reply below for an alternative with a small free plan.
Tools discovered recently
Crisp | The Best Live Chat and Customer Support for your Website — crisp.chat
Crisp is an interesting option for live chat. Free for up to two agents, with mobile and email notifications.
ProfitWell — www.profitwell.com
ProfitWell will connect to various billing platforms and automatically calculate key subscription-related metrics such as MRR and churn. Their basic plan is completely free.
Amplemarket Fetch | Enriched notifications about new signups
This is an interesting Slack bot that’s free. Just forward them the signup emails you’re already receiving for your product or newsletter, and they’ll send enriched lead information into a Slack channel of your choice.
Recast.AI | Collaborative Bot Platform — recast.ai
This is a platform to build chatbots, and for a developer like myself it seems really intuitive, with GitHub integration, the ability to fork bots and more. The platform is free for up to about 3 requests per second, which should be plenty for a lot of startups. Let me know if you try it out!
If No Reply
A simple tool for cold email campaigns that works straight from within your Gmail. They have a (small) free plan and reasonable pricing after that. This is similar to Mailshake.
Discounts for our Audience
Get 4 months free WP Engine hosting
Click this link and use the code summersavings20 to get up to 4 months free on an annual plan. Expires end of July.
Funding
AcquiredBy | Definitive list of tech acquisitions — acquiredby.co
If you’re fundraising from VCs, you might want to know what’s hot in acquisitions. For others, this may be of general interest (I know I spent a good while looking at recent acquisitions after I discovered this).
Articles for this week
Peek Inside Slack’s Multi-Million Dollar SaaS Growth Strategy | OpenView Labs — labs.openviewpartners.com
My favorite article this week, a very detailed, in-depth look at Slack’s go-to-market strategy. Lots of food for thought here.
We Recorded VCs’ Conversations and Analyzed How Differently They Talk About Female Entrepreneurs — hbr.org
More on the female-hostile culture in VC. This is based on Swedish VCs, but serves to illustrate gender bias that is often unconscious.
3 Pillars of the Most Successful Tech Products — medium.com
I loved Nir Eyal’s book Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products, and here is an interesting article from him on the holy triumvirate of startups: Growth, Engagement and Monetization.
3 Crucial Features of High-Growth Startups — medium.com
A different take on 3 things you need for a high-growth startup: High retention, viral growth, and knowing who your early adopters will be.
That’s it for this issue
I hope you enjoyed this week’s issue. In next week’s issue, I plan to post the second instalment of my 3-part series on The $0 Subscription Startup Stack, which will focus on sales and marketing.
It’s Sunday as I write this. I’m queueing up this issue because I’m going camping with my family this week, but the forecast is on the worse end of the typically bad Icelandic weather. Odds are that when you read this, I’ll be in a tent trailer in pouring rain at just a few degrees above freezing. Wish me luck!
Cheers,
Jói
PS
Have you checked out CrankWheel for your startup yet? You can use it for free as a tool for meetings as well as for lead capture leading to a software demo. Also, we’re nominated as Startup of the Year in Iceland, go vote for us if you’d like to help me out a bit! 😇 (give it a couple of seconds after you click, and it’ll show you a button to vote directly for CrankWheel).
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