Software for startups
Starting up a new company can be a little bit daunting. There’s a temptation to think that everything has to be done properly, as if you were really starting a multi-national corporation. You know, buy everyone a copy of MS Office, install Exchange Server, buy a file server, some network equipment, get an office, chairs, desks, lamps, the whole thing.
There’s no need to do things this way though. There are so many bits of software that you can use to get your company up and running at a fraction of the cost of buying ‘enterprise software’. Here’s a quick list of the software and services we’ve been using in the first month or so of our existence.
- Basecamp - really simple project management and collaboration tool that can grow with you - includes to-do lists, messages, milestones and more
- Campfire - web-based chat with automatic transcripts - ideal if you’re behind a corporate firewall (as we are at the moment) and can’t use anything that doesn’t go over port 80
- Google Apps - email, calendar, docs and spreadsheets all for free - there’s no need to buy copies of MS office. Plus, now that GMail supports IMAP, you can use Mac Mail or Thunderbird from the desktop and then use the web interface for times that IMAP isn’t available.
- WriteRoom (version 1) - distraction-free writing environment. Once you’ve got the words right you can format them with Google Docs. Version 1 is free and, in my opinion, superior to the later versions because of the auto-save functionality.
- WordPress - the software that powers this blog
- MediaWiki - the software behind Wikipedia and others
- del.icio.us - social bookmarking - useful for bringing links to others’ attention
- Seashore - open-source, free image editor
You’ll need somewhere to host WordPress and MediaWiki - and we’ve had very good experiences with BlueHost.com so far.
Since we’re feeling a little bit more generous towards each other, we also spice this lot up with some software we actually had to pony up some cash for:
- iWork - Apple’s version of Office, just much much nicer
- OmniGraffle - easy charting application from the OmniGroup - I will never go near Visio ever again, I promise
- OmniFocus - not-yet released Getting Things Done task manager from the Omni Group. Worth it for the quick entry window alone.
- NewsFire - absolutely beautiful RSS reader for the Mac.
1 Comment