Some of today’s coolest tech startups were launched out of dorms, basements and friends’ living rooms. The majority of entrepreneurs launch their ventures with $10,000 or less to their name. In fact, 75% rely on their personal savings only to get off the ground.
Certainly, it’s nice when you have some additional financial support from friends or peer investors. But if your finance are really tight, that doesn’t mean you should steer away from launching your business. You can bootrstarp an MVP product such as an interactive mockup, a simple website or landing page, or even a demo video for less than 10K. Here are some tools to help you do just that.
1. Framer
Framer offers a robust toolkit for designing animated protorypes. Non-designers should enjoy the drag & drop functionality, while more advanced users will appreciate a bunch of additional editings tool, which allow to create pixel-perfect designs. Framer comes with handy presents for desktop, iOS and Adroid, which streamline and speed up the design process. With this tool you can create an attractive app prototypes to pitch to potential investors and test with early-bird adopters.
Also read: Planning to bootstrap your business? Follow these 7 tips
2. Deluxe Logo Maker
Speaking further about design, don’t understimate the power of your logo. That small visual makes your brand unique and memorable. According to the Association for Psychological Science, logo design can also strongly influence how customers perceive products. More angular logos, for example, meant that customers were more likely to rate a company’s products as “durable.”
Deluxe Logo Maker is one affordable tool to help you design just the right logo for your brand. Even the most basic package provides the talents of multiple designers, redesigns to incorporate your feedback, and multiple scalable image files. Deluxe’s most comprehensive service, its Platinum Package, includes services such as a hand-drawn mascot and printed business cards, while its do-it-yourself service lets you customize a wide variety of templates for only $50.
3. Shopify
If you plan to launch an ecommerce startup, Shopify is the safest bet. Lifehacker recently called this platform “unquestionably the easiest way to open an online store.” You can use it build customizable ecommerce storefront, choose from 70 payment gateways and enjoy over 1,200 pre-integrated ecommerce tools such as discount code generator, shipping, vendor relationship management and more. Shopify can even take over handling sales in your brick-and-mortar location.
4. Chargify
Subscribtion businesses and booming. This industry as a whole has been growing at 200% annually since 2011 and is no where close to slowing down. So why shouldn’t you capitalize on the trend? The particular appeal here is that you can launch a subscribcribtion business as relatively low cost as you can direct the customer’s recurring paymets first and use them towards paying vendors, rather than using your own funds to keep everything in stock.
Also read: 5 reasons why subscription models can be a double-edged sword for e-commerce retail
Chargify will help you collect those recurring payments and keep your records neat. You can also integrate it with Xero – a popular accounting software – to have complete control over your books and cashflow.
5. Packlane
If you choose to go the ecommerce or subscribtion route, beyond the storefront and payment processing, you should also think about how your products will be delivered. Packlane lets you provide your customers with a customized, branded, and beautiful experience whenever they receive a package. With an easy-to-use online platform for box designs and almost endless options for color printing, interiour printing, and box size and shape, Packlane will please your inner aesthete. And because its minimum order is so low–they’ll even print you just one cardboard box, if that’s what you need–it’s a truly small-business-friendly solution.
6. MailChimp
According to Wordstream, businesses experience an average of $44 dollars in returns for every dollar spent on email marketing. Many email marketing systems are out there, but some are better than others. MailChimp is among the top choices. It provides a comprehensive platform for sending out customized email content and newsletters to interact with your audience e.g. ask for their feedback on the product; notify about new deals, beta launch and so on.
7. Animatron
You probably know that Dropbox got started as a screencast video created by founders and posted on Hacker News. That’s exactly how they measured the interest in such product and acquired some beta adopters. Today, video marketing still remains among the most promising tools any the entrepreneurs stack as it converts better than any other type of content. Want even better news – you don’t need to hire some fancy video production study to create an animated explainer video. Try Animatron instead. The free version will allow you to choose from 2,200 pre-animated objects, style them into a quick video reel, add a voice over and share your creation in one click.
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This article was first published on February 19, 2018
The post Bootstrapping your startup? Here are 7 tools you can use to make launch and growth easier appeared first on e27.