The 9 Best Tools for Your Startup Tech Stack

As a founder, you might know exactly what tech stack you need to build your product, but what about the tools you need to run your business?

Many founders fall into the trap of prioritizing the former without thinking too much about the latter. But these days, there are so many innovative and impactful tools that can massively streamline your workflows and help you succeed as you scale.

This is especially important for small teams, where you need to operate at a scale far beyond your headcount (without wearing out your team working around the clock). The right tech stack can help you grow your workforce 10x by removing time-consuming tasks and administrative tasks, improving efficiency, and allowing your team to focus on areas where they can have the most impact.

By building a solid stack of enterprise technology for your startup — covering everything from onboarding to developing lasting customer relationships — you can not only save time and establish best practices, but create a solid foundation for the growth of your business.< /p>

Ready to take your startup to the next level? Here are our best practices for choosing the right tools for your startup, as well as our top picks for each stage of your journey.

Best practices for choosing the right tools for your startup tech stack

With more and more tools aimed at startups, how do you know which ones your business really needs? And more importantly, which ones are really going to deliver ROI for your precious (and limited) budget?

Here are three best practices for building your starter tech stack.

Look for tools that can grow with you

When selecting tools for your starter tech stack, you don't need all the bells and whistles of enterprise software. In fact, tools designed for more mature businesses will likely be more complex (and therefore more expensive) than you really need at this early stage. It is therefore important to look for tools that take into account the unique needs and challenges of a startup.

"When you choose tools with scalability opportunities in mind, you ensure that you leave enough room for your business to grow and evolve"

That said, you won't be a startup forever. While you need tools that can meet your needs today, you also need to think about how they can work for you in the future. What you don't want is to grow your business — and perfect your workflows — on tools that need to be scrapped and replaced at the first sign of growth. On the other hand, when you choose tools with scalability possibilities in mind, you ensure that you leave enough room for your business to grow and evolve, without needing to create entirely new ways of work.

Questions to ask Can we add more features as our needs change? Can we easily onboard new employees or teams as our numbers grow? Does it have flexible pricing? Make sure the tools you use integrate together

Time is essential for any business, but when you're a small team with big goals, you have to be even more ruthless about how and where you spend it. This is why interoperability is essential. Before adding a new tool to your tech stack, check how it fits in with the basic tools you already have and use every day.

With the right integrations, you can automate workflows, share data between tools to keep things up to date, and create clearer, more efficient processes. Benefits? Less administration, no more sifting through tools to find crucial information, and less time spent switching contexts, which means more time saved for hard-hitting work and deep focus.

Questions to ask Can it integrate with the tools we use every day? Are these integrations out of the box or do they need to be created and maintained by our team? Does it have a custom API? Tools should complement your people and processes, not replace them

The right tools can be a total game-changer for your startup. But for a tool to be effective, you still need to have the right people and the right processes in place.

Before adding a new tool to your starter tech stack, it's worth asking yourself what the underlying problem you're trying to solve is. No matter how great a new tool may seem, it can't replace strategy or processes, so make sure they're clearly defined first.

"Your first hires have a big impact on the success of your business. Make sure your tech stack helps them rather than hinders them"

And when you add a new tool to your tech stack, remember that its job is to complement your employees and...