So you’ve began the year in earnest. In fact, you’ve already mapped out some plans for your startup–budget, investment opportunities to cash in on, what proposal to write, and who to bring on board. Good. Now, let’s help you with the how-to stuff!
We found you 9 tools for running a startup from anywhere in the world, from the practical to the fantastical.
Slack
At its basic core, Slack is a group communication app and so much more.
Slack is a virtual office space, the digital water-cooler if you will. You can run multiple work feeds at one time and team members can chat feeds by topic or by project. If you used GitHub to work on code with your team members, updates made on your team’s GitHub page would automatically appear on your Slack feed.
Slack offers a way to keep an eye on all your projects, what people are saying about them, how it’s progressing, and what needs your attention.
World Time Buddy
One of the biggest challenges to working with groups of people remotely around the world is communicating across time zones. The solution is World Time Buddy. It’s a very simple web and mobile app that shows your time and the times in other places of the world you have workers in.
Nomad List
Planning a trip and want to know how remote-worker friendly your destination is? Nomad List is a database of just about every major city across the globe. Each city is rated based on its accessibility for digital nomads. It provides information on a city’s cost of living, general safety, strength of available WiFi, intensity of nightlife, and more. It’s a go-to resource any time you’re ready to explore somewhere new.
Trello
Long, confusing email threads are hard to track and sort. Fortunately, there’s Trello. Trello acks like a giant virtual bulletin board that’s keeps track of medium- to long-term projects. Divide up tasks by upcoming, in progress, and released so you can easily see the current status of projects.
Basecamp
Basecamp is a project management tool to end all project management tools. It’s not free, but fairly affordable when you consider it’s less expensive than office space. Basecamp has more functionality than can be listed in this article, but, to name a few, you can have individual and group to-do lists, assignable tasks, file sharing, milestones, messaging, and more. Much like Slack, Basecamp is also great for integrating other group project programs you use.
Google Calendar
Google Calendar is one of many free tool home-based entrepreneurs can use for sharing schedules. Through shared calendars, you not only know what projects your team members are working on, but also you know when they’re away from work, or when they have a conference or meeting scheduled. It automatically incorporates the local time zones of each user, to avoid confusion when working with people around the world.
Skype
Skype is one of the most effective tools for connecting workers—voices, faces, everything—no from anywhere in the world there is Internet access. With Skype you can do weekly group conference calls or check in with specific workers individually. You can use it to interview potential virtual workers, as well as to train them. One perk of Skype is the personal, face-to-face (if using video), voice-to-voice connection that can you and your team feel engaged together.
Toptal
Toptal provides a network of freelance programmers to help you with your tech needs. It personally matches you with developers based on the specifications of your project and team. It’s a win-win because developers receive fair pay and diverse work, while companies are guaranteed quality work.
iDoneThis
Another challenge to having virtual teams, especially if you’re the boss, is knowing what everyone is doing daily. It’s a daunting task to get everyone’s laundry list of activities they worked on that day. iDoneThis has got you covered. A nice complement to Trello, iDoneThis is a daily to-do list tracker in which employees reply to an email reminder with the tasks they accomplished that day, and once everyone’s replied, you get an easy-to-read digest of all the work your team completed.
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