8 Apps Every Entrepreneur Can’t Do Without
(How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love My Phone)
Making something out of nothing has been the single greatest expression of creativity since time immemorial. To do so, Cesar had his legionaries. Genghis Khan, the bow. It’s a brave new world, and the modern day entrepreneur has a new tool in his toolbox with which to face it; The App. Learn how to keep analytics, invoices, payments, itineraries, and other modern day nuisances in check. Get the most out of that shiny contraption in your pocket, as we go from the obvious, to the must haves, to the app store’s best kept secrets.
1. Dropbox (free): We’ll start you off with something easy. You’ve heard of it. You’ve seen it on every person’s smartphone. Even your crazy aunt figured out how to use it, and managed to send you an entire folder of cats in pirate costumes. Why do you not have it yet? Dropbox is the undisputed champion of sharing platforms, in an era when not storing your files in the cloud is the business equivalent of jumping out of an airplane with no parachute, and hoping to land somewhere soft. Get rid of that ancient external hard-drive (that you forget at home whenever you need it anyway), and get this nifty, no hassle app.
2. Square Register (2,75% swipe): We’re often skeptical of anything that involves our own money, even more so if it’s our clients’ money. Square Register made us reconsider everything we thought we knew about transactions. This one stop mobile lifesaver can save you thousands on register equipment, when starting a business. Customize your products, track inventory in real time, even apply discounts or issue refunds without getting mixed up in the math of it. A relevant app for every business owner. An essential tool for any serious entrepreneur.
3. Evernote (free, $5 / $10 per month): Find yourself jumping from your notebook to your devices, trying to figure out the right way to take notes? This key cloud-based app is the flawless personal assistant you’ve been looking for your entire digital life. Got a big presentation coming up? Skip making slides and let this pal present your ideas directly to your team, in a much better way than you ever could. Designed to work within a professional workspace, Evernote allows for team collaboration, acting as an actual hub for you and your team to brainstorm, develop, and launch projects. Just pour in your information and core daily tasks, and let it do the rest. You will have to squeeze out a few bucks if you want to get the full experience, but what’s $5 a month compared to killing it at your next investors meeting?
4. Producteev (free): How do you communicate with your team? Whatsapp? Facebook? Maybe even Snapchat? If the answer is all of them, you’ve been doing things wrong up until now. ‘‘The task management service of your dream’’, according to VentureBeat, has gone from being the best kept secret of top executives, to the go-to business task management platform, without dropping as much as a buck on marketing. The seamless integration between your apps and Producteev allows for easy outsourcing and grouping of tasks, creating the first ever virtual workspace. But how to know for sure if you should get it? If you don’t need the help of a robot to keep your infinite list of tasks from taking over your life, you’re not taking yourself seriously as an entrepreneur.
5. Venmo (free, 3% per credit card payment): Have you ever lost a friend over splitting the check? Do you spend 20 minutes figuring out how to pay for a basket of garlic bread? Should you be willing to pay for someone else’s drinks just to get out the door? College kids don’t think so. Do you? Keep your Facebook friends list intact and start making and sharing payments right from your phone, for free! And while you’re at it, get all of your employees to start using it too. You can’t afford to have a grudge between marketing and IT over who didn’t pay for his side of avocado. We know what you’re thinking. What’s the catch? That it didn’t get here sooner.
6. Instapaper (free, $2,99 per month): Let’s face it. All entrepreneurs are geeks at heart. But good entrepreneurs don’t waste time during the day to read through every geeky article they come across. That’s where this guy comes in. Instapaper’s minimalist and utilitarian interface makes it impossible for other apps, trying to do the same, to compete. It looks like the love child between Wikipedia and Instagram, but unlike them, you won’t waste your time scrolling down for feed that keeps running away. And hey! Even if you never get to reading something, you’ll still get the satisfying feeling of storing, somewhere in your phone, an article on how to grow your own coffee.
7. Pocket Analytics ($8,99): Considering how important SEO, conversion tracking, and all that crap has become lately, we probably should’ve talked about this app a little sooner. Point taken. Yes, you should only have to worry about big picture issues surrounding your company and have a webmaster keep track of your website, but you ought to take a look every now and then. You don’t want to lose touch with the little guy as long as he’s a potential costumer. This app lets you easily survey all the data sources that matter. Granted it may not be as pretty as looking at a sunset in Prague on Instagram, but you’d have gotten an art major if you wanted to see pretty pictures. Don’t forget start ups live and die on metrics.
8. Glide (free): On our last article we said that what doesn’t kill you makes stronger. What we forgot to tell you is that it may actually kill you! Let’s talk stress. If you wanna build your own business and avoid a lawsuit at the same time, you need to find a healthy outlet that doesn’t include torturing your interns. Keep the moral of the team high by sharing daily shenanigans through this neat app, while keeping all channels of communication open between you and your employees. A very successful entrepreneur once said; monkey business is the most important part of business.
If you’re still unsure as to why you should overcomplicate your life by putting additional icons onto an already crowded, insufficiently large touchscreen, ask yourself this simple question before adding any new apps to your repertoire: will this save me time and/or money? Remember, there’s a reason the best apps on the app store are for free, and it’s not Apple’s and Google’s unconditional love for the user.
