The most successful entrepreneurs tend to surround themselves with the best tools and information. You can find much of it online. Everyone has gaps in their knowledge or capabilities. Being aware of valuable web destinations can help you compensate in areas that you’re working on. They also can help you achieve even more in your areas of strength. Here are 30 highly useful websites that highly successful business owners use on a regular basis.
Productivity Sites
- Evernote: This product allows you to organize notes and collaborate while syncing everything between your desktop and mobile device. Great for recording and sharing ideas.
- Basecamp: Coordinate communication and workflow between an entire team to manage a project and get tasks done.
- Bugzilla: Open-source software originally created by Mozilla to manage workflow, keep track of outstanding issues and easily prioritize projects.
- Sanebox: Unlike traditional e-mail filters, it offers tools to quickly unsubscribe from lists, show less important e-mails when your inbox is uncluttered and notify you when an e-mail you sent hasn’t been responded to so you can follow up.
- Drobpox: Great for those who like to split work between home and office, who just want a backup in the cloud or who have to send files too large for e-mail.
Funding Sites
- Small Business Administration: It may not get the press that big VCs do, but $50 million in SBA loans are provided per day in the US.
- AngelList: This useful website allows founders to pool smaller investors into one large syndicate and apply to accelerators. Also a useful tool for finding new employees.
- Kickstarter: It may get a bad rap sometimes for its fluffy projects (remember the potato salad campaign?), but Oculus Rift raised $2.4 million on the site before getting acquired by Facebook for over $2 billion.
- Gust: Create a profile, connect with investors and decide who gets to look closer at your financials and make a deal.
- Indiegogo: Similar to Kickstarter, only slightly lower fees and you still get to keep your funding if you fail to meet your goal. The downside is less traffic, which makes it harder to hit ambitious goals.
Blogs
- Both Sides of the Table: Blogger Mark Suster has founded two companies and now works as a VC, hence the name of the blog. He utilizes his significant experience to tackle topics and situations relevant to entrepreneurs.
- StartupNation: On this site you’ll find business advice from a wide variety of entrepreneurs. They cover every step, from launch to growth to day-to-day management.
- Under30CEO: Specifically aimed at young entrepreneurs with a mix of detailed advice and big idea articles.
- A Smart Bear: Blogger Jason Cohen has founded four different tech companies and shares his advice on both technical subjects and more general problems facing all entrepreneurs.
- Quora: Not a blog per se, but it does help you find answers to common questions from experts in the field, ask your own questions and follow your favorite entrepreneurs to get their insight on a regular basis.
Hiring Sites
- Dice: Specifically geared towards companies recruiting tech employees, it is used by big names like Amazon, Cisco and HP, but can also be helpful for small businesses.
- Upwork: Hire freelancers of any type, be it developers, writers, customer service agents, accountants, etc. to work on specific projects when it doesn’t make sense to hire a fulltime employee.
- Zirtual: A quick and easy way to find a virtual assistant.
- LinkedIn: Hardly a revolutionary suggestion, but there’s a reason it is so ubiquitous. It remains the best way to connect with a massive range of professional talent.
- Startuphire: Post your job and get searches only from people interested in working in a startup environment.
Learning Sites
- Codecademy: Coding is an increasingly important skill for anyone looking to start an innovative business. Few schools teach it though. Codecademy is a free tool to learn the basics of coding.
- HubSpot Academy: A beneficial site if you’re in the position of having to wear many hats, it helps develop skills in content marketing, website optimization and lead nurturing.
- Coursera: Continue your education with free online classes from elite universities. Learn on your own time with a high degree of options and flexibility.
- Udemy: Similar to Coursera, except with classes taught by experts of all types, not just professors.
- Moz: Learn SEO and the details of building links, improving your social media and making your website easy to find.
Marketing Sites
- Hootsuite: Manage multiple accounts, analyze traffic and schedule posts all from the same site.
- Pixxfly: Automate the syndication of your content marketing and get analytics for every post.
- DynamicSignal: An employee advocacy site that allows you to share content with employees. They can then post it on their social media profiles and promote the company to the world.
- Unbounce: Test and optimize landing pages to improve conversions, decrease bounce rates and drive revenue growth.
- Mention: Keep track of social media discussions of your brand so that you can quickly and effectively respond. You will be better able to catch opportunities to engage with potential leads.
Honorable Mentions:
Creating a Website for Your Business – from the School of Healthcare at George Washington University
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