The Best 27 Startup Resources and Tools We Use
One of the most common questions I get from Maine’s startup founders is about which tools we use to get things done or the people we hire in order to get things done. I thought that it would be a good idea to put together a list of our go-to people and tools for growing Maine startups.
Our Tortoise Labs team focuses on a small offering of services that encompass customer research, product design, and software development. But, anytime we need to accomplish something outside of our core competencies, we look to work with someone else (and we try our best to work with contractors in Maine).
So, who do these startup resources benefit most? The resources listed below have been ideal for the startups we work with earning less than $10,000/month.
I’ll plan to add to this list as readers request additional resources. If there’s a startup resource that you could use (but is currently unlisted), we’d love it if you contacted us. I’ll be sure to share the resource that we use with you, and I’ll publish it below.
Advisory: SCORE Portland
SCORE has been a critical part of our business growth, especially in relation to financial modeling. When we first got in touch with SCORE, I was looking to talk to someone about the assumptions we had in the modeling of our growth. I was assigned to an excellent mentor who guided us to make smart, long-term decisions about how to best position ourselves for sustainability. Since, we have sent dozens of founders to SCORE for guidance on a variety of entrepreneurship topics.
Case Studies: Annie Bacher
Whenever I can offload work that takes me a significant amount of time (like writing), I do. For the past two years, I have struggled to share compelling stories of the successes we’ve helped startup founders to achieve. Annie and her team have been essential to our business’ storytelling. The results that Annie has delivered is very high-quality, and they have helped me to save 10-15 hours/month of writing.
Cold Sales Outreach (List Building): Hunter
When I’m building a cold outreach campaign, I rely upon Hunter as a helpful tool to build outreach lists. Hunter helps me to identify the contact information of target customers who I want to reach out to.
Cold Sales Outreach (Scaling): Klenty
When I first started building products, I didn’t know a lot about sales and marketing. But, I did know that personalized cold outreach was always highly effective with the businesses I built in college. Today, cold outreach remains my favorite channel for learning about and selling to potential customers. Klenty is an affordable cold email outreach tool that helps me to send personalized sales emails and automate my followups. Before Klenty, I organized my cold email campaigns in Google Sheets, and now Klenty helps me to save 10-15 hours/week when I’m building an initial cold email outreach campaign.
e-Commerce Website Builder: Squarespace
Whenever we’re working with an e-Commerce brand that’s beyond the point of customer validation (i.e. they’re consistently making money from a well-defined customer), I use Squarespace. Squarespace is a drag-and-drop website editor with lots of templates to work off of (or build from scratch). To see a few of the sites that I’ve made, check out Tree Free Fire or The Good Crust. This site was also built using Squarespace. If you’re moving serious product, Shopify is probably a better choice (albeit, one we’ve found that others see a steeper learning curve).
Email Deliverability: Warmbox
Whenever I’m working with a client who’s yet to use their new email address, I’ll use Warmbox. Warmbox helps to “warm-up” your cold email inbox so that your deliverability score increases (and makes it less likely that you’ll land in someone’s spam folder
Expenses and Invoicing: QuickBooks
There are a lot of options for tracking expenses and income, as well as invoicing. I have used Quickbooks since 2015, and I don’t have a good enough reason to leave for something else. It’s simple to use, and it always just works. I find it convenient to have expenses, income, and invoicing in one single system. There’s a 3% processing fee on all invoices, but that’s a standard fee on any payment processor. The link will earn you 50% off of Quickbooks for six months of usage.
Fulfilled by Amazon: Brickyard Collective
Brickyard Collective helped one of the startups we work with go from $0/month on Amazon to $7,000/month in less than six months. If you’re selling a product that you think might be suitable for Amazon, Brickyard Collective (based in Portland, Maine) is the team you’ll want to work with. They’re a startup themselves, so they understand startup cost and resources constraints.
Grant Funding: Maine Technology Institute
Maine Technology Institute (MTI) offers grants, loans, equity investments, and services to support Maine’s innovation economy. MTI defines innovators as individuals or groups who introduce ideas that create something new or improve an existing product, service, or process. To learn more about our experience with grant funding, read Free Money to Grow Your Startup? Apply for Grant Funding
Graphic Design (DIY): Canva
Canva is my preferred home for doing any graphic design work—It’s a drag-and-drop graphic design editor. As compared to all the best free online design tools listed in this article, Canva is where I spent the most amount of time. Throughout the day, I have a Canva tab perpetually open. Whether I’m making a pitch deck, social sharing icons, prototype mock-ups, or doing custom graphic design work, it happens in Canva. Photoshop, Illustrator, and Sketch are significantly more “high-performance” tools. It's absolutely true. But, Canva is ideal when it comes to rapid iteration. Canva, too, is a much more affordable solution.
Graphic Design: Deer Designer
Deer Designer offers professional graphic design at a fixed monthly cost. If you’re in need of constant graphic design (e.g. social media content, website content, landing pages), Deer might be an ideal option to keep your costs low (while still getting high-quality work). I’ve used Deer for several years now, and their team has consistently produced excellent results (across a number of different brands).
Landing Pages: Carrd
Whenever we’re building something that requires just a single page, I opt for Carrd. While sites on Carrd absolutely can have more than one page (with a bit of manipulation), Carrd is ideal for simple, fully-responsive one-page sites (for pretty much anything, in their words). Like Squarespace, it’s a drag-and-drop editor (with various templates). The primary benefit of opting for Carrd, especially during customer validation, is the low-cost. It’s just $25/year.
Legal Contracts: Avodocs
We’re not lawyers, and this isn’t legal advice. If you’re in need of legal counsel, we’d be very happy to refer you to our Maine-based lawyer (who we’re very satisfied with). Please just contact us to ask. If you’re a founder or owner of an unfunded startup who simply needs something like an internship agreement, IP transfer agreement, letter of intent, NDA, privacy policy, or SaaS agreement, we use Avodocs ourselves.
Merch for Your Brand: Printful
Printful allows you to sell merchandise without actually holding any inventory, through their dropshipping system. I’ve now used Printful with nearly a dozen of the startups we work with, and it’s never let us down. Whether you’re selling sweatshirts, tote bags, or fanny packs, Printful is easy to use and integrates with everything.
Password Manager: Dashlane
If you’re a startup founder, you’re likely using dozens of different services on several devices. I have used Dashlane for several years, and it helps me to stay on top of highly-secure passwords and payment information so that my data and work stay safe.
Payroll: Square
Square is tomorrow’s bank, and today we use it for both payroll and payment processing (in-person). Easy to setup and easy to use.
Podcast Placement: PodMatch
Whether you’re looking to be a guest or find guests, PodMatch is an ideal solution. We’ve referred a handful of founders to use PodMatch in order to find podcasts to go onto as a guest, and they’ve seen some great results (i.e. invitations to relevant podcasts where they can promote their product or service). After you fill out a profile about who you are and what you’re hoping to accomplish, PodMatch sends you a daily set of possible matches.
Podcast Publishing: Transistor
Transistor is the easiest way to publish a podcast. It’s as simple as adding a recording, sharing the episode details, and publishing to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever else you publish.
PR and Grant-writing: Pen Name
Run by Elaine Theriault-Currier Pen Name is a Maine-based PR and grant-writing firm that’s been hugely helpful for the growth of our business, as well as a number of the startups we work with. PR isn’t just a strategy for large brands. PR can be beneficial for small startups announcing a fundraising round, a product launch, or a big milestone. It takes me forever to write, especially grants. Elaine, the author of dozens of grant awards, has helped to save me a countless amount of time. Every grant application that we have worked on with Elaine has gotten funding.
Printing: Franklin Printing
Ask for Jason. Before we even were a paying customer, Jason was answering so many of our questions. He’s so patient and knowledgeable that he served as our printing teacher (never having printed large-scale packaging before).
Professional Photography and Videography: Story Silo Media
High-quality photography is essential for any e-Commerce brand. Having worked with Sarah on a number of different projects, she produces consistently high-quality work. To see some of the work that she has produced, go check out the Tree Free Fire photography and videography. Also, she’s based in Bangor, so you’d be supporting a fellow Maine entrepreneur.
Savings Account (for Quarterly Taxes): Yotta
Whenever I get paid by a client, I immediately put 20% into a Yotta savings account. Then, every quarter, I send this money to the IRS. This way, I’m not hit with a giant tax bill when annual taxes are due in April. Yotta is a savings account that pays out interest in prizes. How does it work?
For every $25 you have in your account, you earn 1 ticket each and every week.
Every day, your tickets are entered into a random prize drawing.
Depending on how many numbers you matched, you could win $5,000, a Tesla, or the $10 Million Grand Prize.
So far, I’ve won $225 in 2022 (which is awesome because the money put into this savings account is just going straight to federal taxes).
Scheduling: Calendly
During an especially busy period early this year, I was averaging 52 meetings/week with clients, classes, and teammates. I was curious how much time Calendly was saving me, so I did the math:
It takes me 10m to schedule a meeting without Calendly.
That means I’m scheduling meetings for 24,960 minutes in a year.
24,960 minutes is 8 days, which I now save by using Calendly.
Calendly costs me $96/year.
SEO Writing: INK
INK gives me a shot of ranking on the first page of Google searches. Not only does INK help me to find hard to read sentences, passive voice, and grammar/spelling mistakes, but it also makes sure that my headlines, keywords, are suited for SEO.
Stickers: Sticker Mule
I’ve found stickers to be an affordable and simple advertising and giveaway item, and I always include them when I send thank you notes to customers. I’ve worked with Sticker Mule for the past five years, and they offer consistently excellent customer service. Most importantly, the stickers always look great.
The link here will give you $10 off your first order (if you don’t already have an account).
Transcription: Descript
Whenever I talk with a customer, I record our conversation (after asking, of course). This way, I can focus entirely on listening and asking questions, rather than taking comprehensive notes. I might write down a word to trigger a follow-up question, but the quality of my conversation drops significantly when I’m focused on listening and taking notes. Descript helps me to transcribe conversations affordably.
Whenever I’m doing client work in which a customer expects perfect transcription, I rely on Rev. Rev uses a combination of machines and people to transcribe super accurately.
Video Recording: Loom
So often, a video explanation is so much more clear than a long email. Video is a more efficient and expressive way for me to communicate. Whenever possible, I use video to explain things, walk through product demos, answer a customer support question, express excitement, or send especially convincing follow-up outreach messages. Loom makes it incredibly easy to screen-record and send a link to customers and teammates alike. It saves me an absolute ton of time.
Need a resource that’s not listed?
Just let us know what you’re looking for, and we’ll add what we use to the list.