top of page
  • Facebook - Black Circle
  • Twitter - Black Circle
  • LinkedIn - Black Circle

Tools for Entrepreneurs

1. develop Idea

It all starts with an idea. The first step in your startup journey is to discover an innovative idea! We like to say innovation is the intersection between invention and market insight. So as you are connecting the dots between interesting problems and solutions, we have developed and curated idea creation resources to help you put your best foot forward.

RESOURCES:

 

1. The Big Idea Canvas (www.bigideacanvas.com)

2. Mural (www.mural.co) - 6 mos. free for downloading the Big Idea Canvas 

3. "The Innovator's DNA: Mastering the Five Skills of Disruptive Innovators" by Jeff Dyer (Amazon)

4. James Altucher's Blog (www.jamesaltucher.com)

5. Startup Grind (www.startupgrind.com)

​

Online Education Sites:

  1. Coursera Career advancement topics; data analysis, business, and computer
    science

  2. Udemy 40,000+ courses taught by expert instructors

  3. edX Courses from top institutions like MIT and Harvard

  4. YouTube For entertainment and miscellaneous education

  5. Khan Academy Free education videos on scholastic topics

  6. Clarity Startup mentoring and coaching from world class experts

  7. WIN - Wasatch Innovation Network helps entrepreneurs cultivate relationships 

​

​

​

2. TEST HYPOTHESES

Before you jump in, take a step back and apply the scientific method on your idea just as a scientist would. Turn your idea into a testable hypothesis to validate customer-product-market fit before you launch. Who are your customers? What jobs are they trying to perform? Does your solution address their problems? Regardless of how good you think your idea is, right now it's just your best guess.

RESOURCES:

 

1. "Nail It Then Scale It: The Entrepreneur's Guide to Creating and Managing Breakthrough Innovation" by Nathan Furr & Paul Ahlstrom (Amazon)

2. Big Idea Course (www.bigideacourse.teachable.com)

3. "The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses" by Eric Reis (Amazon)

4. "The Four Steps to the Epiphany" by Steve Blank (Amazon)

​

Social Amplification Tools:

  1. Buffer For scheduling your social media updates

  2. Buzzsumo For curating top-performing content

  3. Canva For designing graphics for social media, blog posts, and your website

  4. Flare For increasing social shares and engagement

  5. Narrow For building a targeted following on Twitter

  6. Sprinklr Enterprise social customer experience management (CEM)

​

Data Analysis Tools:

  1. Google Analytics For tracking web traffic and goals and for optimizing experiences

  2. Maptive For quickly data interpretation and action upon complex location-based data

  3. Moz For optimizing SEO, word-of-mouth, and brand awareness

  4. Chartio For organizing and understanding business intelligence data

  5. STAT Analytics SEO rank tracking and SERP analytics

​

​

​

2

3. nail model

Now that you have validated your customer-product-market fit, the next step is to explore and validate your go-to-market strategy and business model. We have assembled a list of world-class resources to help you work through the process to find and validate the elements of a scaleable business model and go-to-market strategy.

RESOURCES:

 

1. "Nail It Then Scale It: The Entrepreneur's Guide to Creating and Managing Breakthrough Innovation" by Nathan Furr & Paul Ahlstrom (Amazon​)

2. Big Idea Course (www.bigideacourse.teachable.com)

3. Business Model Canvas (www.strategyzer.com)

4. Business Model Generation (www.strategyzer.com)

5. Startup Grind (www.startupgrind.com)

​

Lead Generation Tools:

  1. SumoMe For capturing and nurturing website leads, boosting traffic, and increasing brand awareness

  2. Kissmetrics For increasing website conversions, tracking analytics, and personalizing experiences

  3. Adwords For spreading the word about your business on Google through advertising

  4. Convert.com For running A/B tests that help you optimize your website and influence interactions

  5. Content Marketer For promoting your blog content, connecting with influencers, building relationships, and increasing traffic

​

​

​

3

4. BUILD PRODUCT

There's only so much you can learn without getting your hands dirty. It's now time to build your product. During the building process you will be able to make observations and learn things that were unknowable in advance. We've assembled a list of our favorite tools to help you cost-effectively build out your product, team, strategy, and support materials in preparation for launch.

RESOURCES:

​

Online Coding Schools:

  1. Pluralsight The on-demand technology learning platform

  2. General Assembly Innovative courses in design, marketing, technology and data

  3. CodeCademy Learn to code interactively, for free

  4. Treehouse Learn Web Design, coding with full-access free trials

​

Project Management Tools:

  1. Basecamp Simple project management and communication tool for multiple teams

  2. Asana Top free web and mobile application designed to help teams track their work

  3. Evernote App for personal project management and knowledge collection

  4. Pocket For saving helpful resources and reading them at a later time

  5. Jira Leading enterprise project management tool

  6. Wrike For SMB team collaboration

​

Customer Support Tools:

  1. Groove For helping and interacting with customers

  2. HelpScout For nurturing and improving relationships with customers

  3. Zendesk For building a help center and providing live chat

  4. Intercom For automating and optimizing prospect interaction and customer support

  5. Help.com For customer support and lead management

​

​

​

4

5. LAUNCH STARTUP

You have one chance to make a first impression. Do your homework and make it count. There is a well-researched and understood psychology of how people and markets accept and adopt new ideas. The materials here will help you explore, understand, and adopt the best practices that will increase the odds of customer and acceptance for your new product launch.

RESOURCES:

​

Courses:

   1. YCombinator Startup Class

​

Productivity Tools:

  1. RescueTime For tracking your time, eliminating distractions, and optimizing your daily productivity

  2. AnyDo For building personal and professional task lists

  3. Toggl For tracking time and optimizing productivity across your team

  4. Google Drive For sharing documents, collaborating with team members, and working from anywhere

  5. Pocket For saving helpful resources and reading them at a later time

​

Marketing Automation & CRM Tools:

  1. Marketo CRM lead management vendors similar to Hubspot

  2. Hubspot CRM lead management vendors similar to Marketo

  3. Infusionsoft Email automation CRM for SMBs

  4. Zoho CRM Free CRM software for customer relationship management

​

Back-Office Tools:

  1. Zenefits For managing all your HR needs in the cloud (payroll, benefits, compliance)

  2. BambooHR For centralizing employee information and managing your team

  3. Gusto For all your payroll, compliance, and benefits needs

  4. Xero For your accounting needs

  5. Square For accepting payments from anywhere and managing your team

  6. Due Due.com is a free digital wallet that lets you make and accept payments online

​

​

​

5

6. SCALE STARTUP

So you have nailed your customer-product-market fit and your business model is working. Now it is time to scale it until it breaks. Each industry will have unique growth requirements. Here is a collection of tools and guidance to support you in this exciting phase of the company.

RESOURCES:

 

  1. "Nail It Then Scale It: The Entrepreneur's Guide to Creating and Managing Breakthrough Innovation" by Nathan Furr & Paul Ahlstrom (Amazon​)

  2. "Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers" by Geoffrey Moore (Amazon)

  3. "Mastering The Rockefeller Habits: What You Must Do to Increase the Value of Your Growing Firm" by Verne Harnish (Amazon)

  4. "Scaling Up: How a Few Companies Make It...and Why the Rest Don't (Rockefeller Habits 2.0)" by Verne Harnish (Amazon)

​

Employee Interaction Tools:

  1. Slack For communicating with your team and departments

  2. TinyPulse For keeping a pulse on employee happiness and loyalty

  3. AnyPerk For showing employee appreciation and praise

  4. When I Work For building employee schedules and communicating with your team

  5. IsoTalent For hiring and onboarding your employees

​

Sales Enablement Tools:

  1. Consensus Drives agreement across B2B buying groups with personalized video demos

  2. Drip For sending trigger-based and educational-based email campaigns

  3. Close.io For automating the tedious tasks associated with closing deals

  4. Yesware For automating and scheduling email communication

  5. AppDataRoom For designing sales presentations that can be used on-the-go

  6. Marketo For automating and scaling your lead nurturing & sales processes

  7. TechBuzz News For PR, VC directory, startup industry news and resources

​

​

​

6

"Congratulations for the amazing work you have been doing in catalyzing the evolution of the Startup Ecosystem in Peru. The content, caliber of speakers and the quality of your VC Conference is by far the best event that has been organized in Peru so far for our industry."

​

- Gary Urteaga, Founder Cine Papaya

"Nail It then Scale It helped us get our initial feature set and
pricing nailed and set us on a path to significant revenues two years ahead of our original plan and our competition."

​

- Adam Blum, CEO, RhoMobile

"Thanks a lot for what you are doing for our ecosystem. The support of Alta has been the spark we needed to get the whole thing going here."

​

- Pedro Neira, CEO MiMediaManzan

Footer
  • Facebook - Black Circle
  • Twitter - Black Circle

Get in touch with us.

Success! Message received.

Copyright © 2022 Alta Innovation Institute. All Rights Reserved.

​

bottom of page